Speaking of - I went to check out a new knife dealer in town today. The place had a great selection - ESEE, ZT, Spyderco (PM2s in stock!), Mora, and Case, among others. I asked to see a CV Medium Stockman, opened the clip blade, and (very lightly) checked it for blade play (which, by the way, it had, to a degree that I would not have bought the knife.) I thought the guy was going to give birth right there on the floor. He launched into this whole sermon about how Case knives are made in the USA, and how they have pinned blades, and how he's sold over 5,000 of them and nobody has ever complained about blade play, and how it's bad knife etiquette to do that, because you should be using a knife straight up and down without any sideways force anyhow.
I calmly told him that I had put very little force on the knife, not nearly enough to possibly damage it, and that I didn't care where it was made, or how the blades were attached; I knew that Case knives often show blade play from the factory, and that, if he thought I was buying ANY folding knife from him, especially a Case, without checking, then he was a lot crazier than I had given him credit for.
We agreed to disagree. It's a pity, too. The guy has no friggin' idea how many of those knives in there are on my wish list, many of them that aren't stocked anywhere else nearby.
As for the Stockman, aside from blade play, there was also the normal space between springs and liners, and the edges were rough as hell, with a huge burr. Pretty standard stuff, unfortunately.
