Bad quality knives you've seen in use

L

LostCause

Joined
Apr 1, 2022
Messages
840
I don't know where to start... I guess from least to worst...

Girl from my university using credit card knife.

My ex girlfriend's dad having Boker mermaid.

Former coworker using rainbow CS-GO karambit on our team building camping trip (yea, the tip broke off).

And the guy from university using this monstrosity just in different color:



That's the most ridiculous POS I ever saw anyone use.


Did you ever see people using really crappy knives?
 
A friend gave me a Boker "Magnum" in 440a because he couldn't sharpen it/attain an edge.

My sharpening "skills" are ok and I've many quality stones etc...

Too thick behind the edge and pretty much all the way to the spine and the worst steel I've ever come across.

Absolutely dreadful knife and Boker should be ashamed to put their name on such a useless piece of crap.
 
So, in 1967 4 high school friends and I told our parents we were going camping, but we actually took my friend's old station wagon and drove to Juarez, Mexico to buy switchblades and booze for ourselves and some classmates. We actually took orders. And, naturally, we caught a donkey show, but I won't go into that here.

So we are in this tourist shop haggling in Spanglish for the switchblades, which were the Italian stiletto-type. We got him to $2.50 per knife or so and he suddenly started yelling, accusing us of stealing. We deny it, thinking this was a scam, and he calls the police. It got very heated. So we gave him an extra couple bucks and escaped before the police arrive.

We return across the border to El Paso and our hotel room where one of our crew waves a switchblade and boasts that he stole it. We almost killed him.
 
Locutus D'Borg said:
So, in 1967 4 high school friends and I told our parents we were going camping, but we actually took my friend's old station wagon and drove to Juarez, Mexico to buy switchblades and booze for ourselves and some classmates. We actually took orders. And, naturally, we caught a donkey show, but I won't go into that here.

So we are in this tourist shop haggling in Spanglish for the switchblades, which were the Italian stiletto-type. We got him to $2.50 per knife or so and he suddenly started yelling, accusing us of stealing. We deny it, thinking this was a scam, and he calls the police. It got very heated. So we gave him an extra couple bucks and escaped before the police arrive.

We return across the border to El Paso and our hotel room where one of our crew waves a switchblade and boasts that he stole it. We almost killed him.
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Hold up... I thought I finally cracked the code that donkey shows are a myth made up by Americans. My whole childhood I thought donkey shows were something that definitely happens in Mexico and would joke about it from time to time. Over the past decade or so I became friends with quite a few Mexicans and donkey shows came up in conversation at one point or another. Every Mexican that lived in Mexico that I've asked so far has no idea what I'm talking about and says that doesn't exist. You're saying you actually DID go to a donkey show?? 🤣
 
LostCause said:
Former coworker using rainbow CS-GO karambit on our team building camping trip (yea, the tip broke off).
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LostCause said:
Former coworker using rainbow CS-GO karambit on our team building camping trip (yea, the tip broke off).
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Couldn’t have been much as a co-worker if he quit after a team building campout.

But what I really wanted to say is, it’s trickier to retip a karambit than say, a broken off clip blade. I do it on a particular radiused wheel. But if you don’t have one of those, here’s the secret to making it easy: take all your regrind off the spine. Don’t have to blend the edge much then.

Parker
 
Dav1 said:
A friend gave me a Boker "Magnum" in 440a because he couldn't sharpen it/attain an edge.

My sharpening "skills" are ok and I've many quality stones etc...

Too thick behind the edge and pretty much all the way to the spine and the worst steel I've ever come across.

Absolutely dreadful knife and Boker should be ashamed to put their name on such a useless piece of crap.
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Might be poorly HT'd 7Cr17MoV.
Back in the day when 440A and Aus6 was common I don't think there were many complaints. Maybe.
 
99% of knives I see people carrying or using are low quality garbage and yet all the owners seem to be perfectly happy with them...and then there is us, complaining about the tiniest thing on our $1500 folder that we're too afraid to actually use so that tiny detail that annoys us doesn't really matter.
 
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Dav1 said:
A friend gave me a Boker "Magnum" in 440a because he couldn't sharpen it/attain an edge.

My sharpening "skills" are ok and I've many quality stones etc...

Too thick behind the edge and pretty much all the way to the spine and the worst steel I've ever come across.

Absolutely dreadful knife and Boker should be ashamed to put their name on such a useless piece of crap.
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Yeah but thickness behind the edge isn't really relative to low-cost knives. There's a good share of moderate to pricey knives out there that are sharpened pry bars.
 
Hashishiin said:
There are lots of non-knife people who carry Opinel, Victorinox, lots of simple knives that are still good.
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Lots of people the world over use knives that most on this forum would turn their collective noses up at. Its the natural
arrogance of the cut worship object people, like car nuts, gun nuts, knife nuts, motorcycle nuts. The Harley people look down their noses at Jap bikes, the Glock fan boys look down their noses at Rugers or whatever, and knife nuts look down their high held noses if it isn't what they worship. What isn't recognized is, that we, the over obsessed knife nuts, are the 1% of society. Most of the rest of the world doesn't even bother to carry a knife at all. How many times do you see someone opening a package with a key? In reality, the 500 dollar cult worship knife is not really needed 99.9% of the time. That piece of twine or plastic packaging is not that tough. A small keychain size SAK is all most people in an urban environment need most of the time. The lowly gas station knife will cut packaging, open mail good enough for the non knife person. All they care is, that it works, sort of. Just like for the non gun nut, a low cost Ruger LCP will shoot a mugger just as well as a Sig or Glock.

The non knife person simply doesn't care.
 
I wear an inexpensive Timex watch that watch afis would turn up their noses at, but so far it's given me 10 years of reliable service, and still going strong. And instead of paying thousands for it, it cost only about $30 to $40 at most. Cheaper than many 'budget' knives.

Lots of people the world over use a simple, cheap machete for the vast majority of their work knife chores, use them hard, and use them very skillfully.

I'm not being critical of knife afis; I am one. I own, use, and like both expensive and very inexpensive (but not poor quality) knives. But if someone else is happy with whatever they've got, that's fine with me. They probably have interests of their own that I'm totally ignorant about.

Jim
 
jackknife said:
Lots of people the world over use knives that most on this forum would turn their collective noses up at. Its the natural
arrogance of the cut worship object people, like car nuts, gun nuts, knife nuts, motorcycle nuts. The Harley people look down their noses at Jap bikes, the Glock fan boys look down their noses at Rugers or whatever, and knife nuts look down their high held noses if it isn't what they worship. What isn't recognized is, that we, the over obsessed knife nuts, are the 1% of society. Most of the rest of the world doesn't even bother to carry a knife at all. How many times do you see someone opening a package with a key? In reality, the 500 dollar cult worship knife is not really needed 99.9% of the time. That piece of twine or plastic packaging is not that tough. A small keychain size SAK is all most people in an urban environment need most of the time. The lowly gas station knife will cut packaging, open mail good enough for the non knife person. All they care is, that it works, sort of. Just like for the non gun nut, a low cost Ruger LCP will shoot a mugger just as well as a Sig or Glock.

The non knife person simply doesn't care.
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The cool thing, though, at least as far as I can tell, is that all are welcome here, whether they’re sporting a drawer full of $2000 Pro Techs or a $20 SAK. I haven’t seen a hint of snobbery here - everybody seems to appreciate what everybody else is carrying. It’s a great place for anybody from the life-long collector to serious users to short-time idiots like me who don’t know squat.
 
Frotier76 said:
Yeah but thickness behind the edge isn't really relative to low-cost knives. There's a good share of moderate to pricey knives out there that are sharpened pry bars.
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A lot of people, even on here seem to think that some super thick "overbuilt"(which a nice way of saying lazy design) knives are how to tell a knife is quality.
 
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