Bye, Bye United Cutlery

yeah, right it was hurricane Rita that killed them. :jerkit:

"painstakign attention to detail" :jerkit: :jerkit:

"United Cutlery has been one of the nation's largest and most respected knife manufacturers" :jerkit: :jerkit: :jerkit:

I think is just a dodge, they'll leave their creditors with nothing and reorganize as "Crap Cutlery" or something.
 
:jerkit: People will only put up with a crap product for so long. And how many Konan the barbarian swords does a collector want anyway?:jerkit:
 
I know it's make out of crappy 420J2, but the Hibben-designed Alaskan Small Pro Guide Hunter guts deer and takes out their backstraps like crazy. Stays pretty sharp for lousy steel...wish someone would continue to turn it out-in better steel. (AUS 8, maybe?) (yeah....I know, keep dreaming.)
 
Oh, if only I'd bought the Eye of Drakonus when I still had the chance. You know they'll just SKYROCKET in price among collectors now.
 
I can assure you there are no United items in my private collection, but this brand has been a consistantly huge seller, beating the likes of Benchmade and Spyderco in some retail locations.

While there won't be many tears shed on this board, this blows a huge hole in the marketplace and will deprive a lot of dealers of a big chunk of livelihood. The profits that this brand provided helped many dealers finance a better selection of higher-quality knives.
 
bubinga said:
While there won't be many tears shed on this board, this blows a huge hole in the marketplace and will deprive a lot of dealers of a big chunk of livelihood. The profits that this brand provided helped many dealers finance a better selection of higher-quality knives.
Click to expand...

Good point. The hole it opens up will probably be stuffed with Made in China knives in a short while, which doesn't pay those 100 former US knifeworkers anything.
 
bubinga said:
I can assure you there are no United items in my private collection, but this brand has been a consistantly huge seller, beating the likes of Benchmade and Spyderco in some retail locations.

While there won't be many tears shed on this board, this blows a huge hole in the marketplace and will deprive a lot of dealers of a big chunk of livelihood. The profits that this brand provided helped many dealers finance a better selection of higher-quality knives.
Click to expand...

I agree I worked at a knife store and I'd say more than half of the items sold were made by United Cutlery and Fury. People love to buy those wall hangers, the swords, the daggers, hibben stuff, throwers etc etc. They just sell because most people dont know and most people dont want to know. They like it on the wall and blade steel be darned.

I have mixed feelings about this but all in all it does suck and jobs are lost.
 
The only United Cutlery knives I have are wall hangers (LOTR knives of Legolas) and I wouldn't have them if I was wealthy enough to commission the man who made the originals. Unfortunately, there are a lot more people who will buy crap knives that "look cool" than there are of us. I'm sure UC will be missed by them and the people who cater to them.
 
Hammer27 said:
Who Shall Make The Rambo V Knife?!!!!
Click to expand...

My vote goes to Busse. If not, then maybe Rambo could just pick an off-the-shelf Randall.

I'd love to see people start spending their hard-earned money on knives with substance.
 
Hondo.3 said:
I'd love to see people start spending their hard-earned money on knives with substance.
Click to expand...
*snort* Don't hold your breath. Most people wouldn't know quality if it came up and bit 'em on the backside. Some you can approach and teach 'em about quality and why it matters. Most couldn't be bothered.

My feeling is I can't afford cheap things. The time out of my life spent earning the money to buy the things I want or need means too much to me to throw it away on crap.
 
The only UC product I liked was MetalGlo, but I am sure I will like another metal polish just as good or better, it was just easier to find and worked well. I don't know how they figured a knife was an unneccessary item?
 
No Henckels or Kissing Crane fans around here I presume? If you like Boker made knives, grab some Henckels as United owned the name and they killed the market for them so there probably won't be any buyers.
 
I liked Kissing Crane when they were good knives and have quite a few Henckels.

My feelings are divided on this subject. I don't care for any of the United knives that I have handled over the years. I'm not a collector of fantasy knives/swords, so as a cutlery company I won't miss United at all. However, the loss of this company has cost over a hundred jobs directly, and may cause quite a few more indirectly. It will also hurt the bottom line for many knife dealers. In retrospect, I think this is a bad thing for the industry.
 
bad news= a lot of people will lose jobs
Good news= I won't get any more of their knives for x-mas!
 
Back around 22 years ago, I purchased a United Cutlery Indiana Jones machete. By that time I had long been into factory and customs knives and knew exactly what I was buying; but, I was intrigued by the text printed on the box; the notion of a Khyber knife, or a knife from the Khyber Pass, struck a romantic cord. I bought the thing and set off to find a real antique khyber knife and as much information as I could on the khyber pass and regional knives. That wasn't all that easy to do in the days before Ebay and the internet and it took months to find a good example at a local antiques shop; even, the information was only coming in a paragraph or page at a time, as I was pulling together a variety of refrence books. Eventually, I got around to reading the rest of these books and I have been hooked on ethnographic knives ever since.

United Cutlery has long been a stepping stone for entry level collectors. Even if the quality wasn't quite there, it introduced many a novice to the allure of designer/custom knives. They will be missed.

n2s
 
United mostly sold trash....very true, but my son begged for a few of the lord of the ring swords a,d as wall hangers in his room they are cool.....it has brought him closer to knife collecting and that makes it worth the money...
 
I have a couple of United that I bought years ago and for the price I think their fine. I know serious blade users and makers consider them junk but for someone just starting who can't afford the expense of highend knives they fit the bill. Just my opinion.

Cazio
 
Gasoline prices shot up, markets cooled, and people quit buying non-necessary items. You can count knives in the latter category.
Click to expand...

Further proof that they just didn't understand.

Then again, I guess that really crappy knives, are a non-necessary item.

Jubei
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top