China POS

Joined
Jun 29, 1999
Messages
9,816
First off, I only reluctantly buy made-in-China goods. On the other hand, it’s practically impossible not to these days, with the majority of running shoes and many garments now being made in China, Singapore, Viet Nam and other low-wage countries. Welcome to globalization, I guess. That being said, I have yet to purchase any hardware that is marked made in China, mainly because the stuff I’ve seen is bottom-of-the-bin quality. The other day, though, a colleague from a sister company dropped a made-in-China lockback on my desk, one of those give-aways with the company logo on the bolster. While it isn’t anything I’d invest my money in, I thought I’d give it a once-over.
The frame is steel, 4” long, with laminated wooden red-blue-brown grips (six layers), varnished. The grip is contoured toward the bolster, 11/16” wide at the butt, with a lanyard hole. It fills the hand nicely. The clip point blade is 3¼” long with a nail nick for opening. The blade release is positioned about 2/3 of the way back along the spine. It has a nicely brushed finish and the blade grind is even on both sides, quite nicely done. It had an edge of sorts, with a bit of a burr, not sharp enough to slice paper cleanly. No specs as to what the steel is, but I suspect it’s not even close to 440A. Probably 420J or something similar. Still, materials aside, it is better work than I’ve seen on the rip-off Leatherman and similar mini tools I’ve seen from China.
The blade opens smoothly, with very little side by side play. It is nowhere near as slick as a Buck or Schrade or CS lockback, but it does lock and disengage relatively cleanly. The machining inside the frame is a bit rough.
Five minutes work on a DMT regular hone took care of the burr OK, but I could achieve little improvement on the DMT fine hone, for some reason. It does not seem to want to take a hair popping edge. Seems to lose it fast, too, cutting cardboard, which led me to the assessment of steel quality. I don’t know if it’s been heat treated, but I doubt it.
Overall, I’d give it (out of 10) a 6 for aesthetics, 5 for quality of workmanship and 3 for steel quality. I‘m going to keep it as a loaner for those inept folks who never seem to have a knife when they need one. But you know, at one time Japan had a reputation for shoddy goods. Maybe, once China evolves from a slave state, they’ll start producing quality blades.
 
I dont know how they do it?The screws I put in my knives cost me more
than they can sell a whole knife for?

Arlee
 
I split the thread and moved the discussion of politics to a new thread in the Political Arena: Re China

Please continue discussing knives here, and discussing politics there. The vBulletin split thread option is cool! :cool:
 
Would you believe double action auto? I was shopping a flea market north of Phenix City AL and ran across an import knife retailer. Most of the stuff was ornate diecast daggers - the kind that look good for reenactments and fair for opening letters. He was popping a knife behind the counter, apparently having sized me up for the sucker I am. It was a 3 1/2 inch liner lock, heavy stainless. The hard part was guessing how the kicker spring was released. The upper bolster above the whatzit wood scale seemed coaxial to the blade pivot screw. The extra phillips was a dummy. A nice job on finish, about equal to our cheap lockbacks. The blade was serrated and the grinder couldn't decide to bevel both sides or leave the serrations chisel edged.
Had this been finely finished American made it could go $250 up easy. Chinese? 20 bucks. I can't wait for them to import half ton pickups. Mao's little red truck? :D
Edited 12-20: I found it's progenitor on 1SKS: the Microtech Lightfoot Combat Compact, ironically a manual.
 
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