Any Still Made in Germany?

[midnight flyer]

I know what you mean, David. This has been done by many others before; I mean letting the knife being made somewhere else and then finish it Germany just to get the predicate "Made in Germany". That´s somehow sad. But being honest - there seem to be two types of Klaas knives out there. One are originally made in Solingen and others are finished in Solingen. For a non-known-knife-guy it would be hard (nearly impossible) to see the difference.

Sadly, this practice exists on a great deal of products. I am looking at a new wood router for my work and was looking at the Bosch routers. At one time they were made in Germany. Then they were made here in the USA. Now, the router I looked at is marked with Bosch's USA address all over the router and box, but at the bottom of a permanent branding sticker on the side of the machine out of the way in very dim letters it says, "assembled in China".

NO telling where the parts came from.

Many years ago I bought several small Puma one bladed folders from a dealer in Kentucky that got them on closeout. Great guy, loved knives and to talk everything blades. I got the knives and was hugely disappointed with their quality. And this was the Puma 4 star (mini) marked as made in Germany! The scale fit was bad on some, one of the blades (I still have this knife) didn't have enough spring to close the knife. It didn't matter. When the knife was closed the point was above the handle by a good amount. I was glad I paid closeout prices, and he confirmed that the reason "this batch" was on closeout was because the quality wasn't up to par. So they dumped them on the market instead of dumping them in the trash.

He told me then that he had been to Germany to visit the Puma Werks plant (after the fall of The Wall) and they told him they had started to employ all manner of unskilled workers and while they thought they could train them, one of the folks he talked to said he thought quality would get worse. He also told me that he found out on that trip that Puma was using a lot of foreign stampings and parts to assemble their knives. He was straight with me on the whole deal and offered to give my money back.

Many years later, who knew that Puma, the company that to me was the king of all knives in the 60s would start having knives made for them in China? Then when they started, they only marked the box the knife was in as made in China! I recall a discussion here on that subject from another company as well. Well, if I want a pacific rim knife, I will pay my hard earned sheckels to RR, Remington or Colt branded hardware. The Puma name doesn't cut the mustard well enough to get a few times the price of the other pacific rim offerings just because it is marked Puma. The quality of their German line and Chinese line aren't that much different these days, so no more Puma. (OK... unless I find some of those beautiful older models you guys post from time to time!)

I pulled out the Klaas knife I have, and again, it is quite well made. Equal spring pulls on all blades, grinds were crisp and even, and the tang etchings are clear and precise almost as if done by laser and polished out with the rest of the knife. But NOWHERE does it say where it was made. To me, that just isn't right.

Thank goodness for the honest dealers out there.

Robert

 

[knifeswapper]

Seems as I heard a while back that when David Hall (Hallmark Cutlery and formerly United Cutlery) lost the Kissing Crane brand, he kept the Robt Klaas brand and there are actually two split brands now. So I don't think the same folks own the two names; and am relatively sure that Hallmark owns Klaas.

But it seems to require a little too much blind faith these days to be comfortable where most of these old names are actually "made" and/or "assembled". I have seen some Hen & Rooster knives that were marked Solingen, that there was no way were made (entirely) in the Boker / Olbertz factories. Boker knives are showing up now that say "Germany" on the box & shield only and I would not want to put any money on where they are made. But I do know that if a knife is made in Germany these days, they should stamp it all over it. So when they go the long way around to not mark it; just has a strange odor to me.

I think if all things were known we would be very surprised how few knives are made start-to-finish in Germany today. And it was this having to "wonder" that has caused many dealers to just stop carrying some of the brands altogether.