china using 440 stainless whats up with that?

K

knifeaholic101

Joined
Oct 17, 2005
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118
i have a blade made in china thats 440 stainless yet we here often use less than 440. is it that the chinese can afford 440 and we cant?
 
Is it 440A, B, or C? From what I understand 440C is the only one worth using in a blade, but A & B are cheaper. Usually when they just say "440" isn't NOT 440C.

-d
 
right on . That's how stainless got a bad name, when it was introduced.
It simply wouldn't hold an edge. Quality steel is expensive, but it is a
minute portion of the price of finished product, most of it being labor.
 
If it's from mainland china, it may not be any version of 440. They're not exactly known for adhering to trade regulations of any kind.:thumbdn:

The make copies of Leupold scopes and put them in boxes marked Leupold, with similar serial numbers, etc. Many an unsuspecting newcomer gets sucked in by them, and there's nothing anyone can apparently do. The government sure won't help.

They will infinge on patents or copyright with impunity. IMO, they're a nation of thieves.:eek::rolleyes:
 
there our friend,why else would gwb let them buy companies that make stuff for our military when the law says they cant-

within 20 years if not sooner we will be at war with china over the far east-
they are preparing for it,we arent
 
rosconey is correct, the Chinese openly declare (in their military press) that they intend to go to war with us by 2020 to push us out of the Sea of Japan and Asia. They still consider themselves to be the center of the world, "the middle kingdom". We are so damn greedy that we are turning them into a super power which plans to oppose us, just so long as we can make a buck. Don't forget that that they are infiltrating South America, Central America and Cuba now. We need to wake up and watch our own rear ends.
 
A few Months ago, R.W. Loveless, and myself split a shippment of steel. Why? Because everyone was out of what we wanted. It was all going to China. Here's what worries me. As most of you know, Loveless and I use Jet Turbine Steel. What do the Chinese want with it. I can tell you this. They arnt making knives with it. It may hit the fan sooner than we think. China has never had much of an Air Force. I'm afraid that change in in the wind. Mike Lovett http://www.lovettknives.com/
 
here ya go guy's
ask any steel /titanium supplier what has caused the big price hikes we are stuck paying for ??ive heard from several sources the chinese are buying up everything they can get from stainless to titanium to carbide . that jack's the prices up real high .makes ya wonder
 
Copper, cotton, soybeans, soy meal (at least, before the bird flu slaughter) have all gone through the roof, due to China's imports. They are growing VERY fast, economically and militarily. If they ever manage to create a unified asian currency of their own, kiss goodbye to the purchasing power of the US dollar, and possibly even the US dollar as the standard world reserve currency. While I don't like to wish ill will on the chinese people, who are only trying to crawl out of poverty, I can't help but hope that China's massive debt implodes and slows their leaders down a bit.
 
It's probably the cheap 440, eg. 440A. Hardness test it, you can tell from that.

IMHO, I don't think China would attack the USA, they have nothing to gain by doing that. They're smarter than that, they'd rather keep things going the way they are now -so they do better in terms of economics. The US of A has a culture of consumerism, no other country (except for maybe Japan) comes close, but we like our stuff cheap. That's where the problem is. We like cheap over "Made in the USA" -if anyone doubts this, why are the Walmarts, Targets, etc. doing so well? And it's not just us, the US government is making it easier for them (as opposed to Europe where goods from Asia are taxed very heavily, so Walmarts over there resort to importing Russian/ Solvakian goods).

Today money is power, not imperialism and war. The only country they might invade is Taiwan -and that's about it. However, first they want to be an economic superpower.

I also read somewhere, can't find it now, that they have an imperial decree that is not to invade other countries -except for ones they believe are part of the "Real China" eg. Tibet and Taiwan.

We'll be alright. But we might get screwed in terms of jobs -and it's not just China; India and South America are gearing up too. eg. Notice how the US auto manufacturers moved everything south of the border or to Canada? Ironically, it's the Japanese that have plants in the US now (and supposedly they treat workers better than the US automakers -I have friends who work for GM and Nissan). The world works in mysterious ways.

Just my 2 cents ...
 
flatgrinder -- your comments are worth far more than 2 cents -- you've got it bang on. It is economic power China will end up wielding. They already hold so many US treasuries that they could cause serious damage to the US dollar just be selling them off. The US knows this, and acts accordingly.
 
I find this thread quite ironic. 200 years ago, China was the main exporter of high quality porcelain and everyone in the West was trying to find out the secret of making it so they could have a slice of the market and stop making low quality low price pottery. Now its the other way round, China is making the cheap stuff and the West is making the good quality stuff. But it will only be a matter of time the Chinese will start to go for the higher quality, high profit and high status end of the market.

China may rattle its sabre and talk about war with the US but the problem with war is its unpredictable. The top politicians and military in China have a comfortable life with lots of privilages and theres no such thing as elections to disrupt that. The last thing they want is a threat to that and why should they bother to go to war with a country that gives them so much money
 
Hey guys, I was in our local Ace Hardware store a couple weeks ago and noticed a rack full of Coast knives manufactured in China and they have 440C blades!!!!! I bought a lock back folder just to see if it was any good and it's not to bad for what I paid for it. Cost around $8.00 including tax.
Don't know how they do it but it might have something to do with paying the labors next to nothing. Or maybe it's the Steel company's doing what the drug companies do here to us every day, stick it to everyone in the US without any lubricant :yawn: and sell it cheep across the boarders.

Ron
 
Shing said:
I find this thread quite ironic. 200 years ago, China was the main exporter of high quality porcelain and everyone in the West was trying to find out the secret of making it so they could have a slice of the market and stop making low quality low price pottery. Now its the other way round, China is making the cheap stuff and the West is making the good quality stuff. But it will only be a matter of time the Chinese will start to go for the higher quality, high profit and high status end of the market.
Click to expand...


Trouble is, porcelain wasn't patented, or copyrighted. There were no trade laws except what you could enforce with a gun/cannon. And it was 200 years ago and Britain was trying to get the world hooked on Opium.

That was then, this is now.

Today there are all these things and China uses slave labor and ignores the conventions of civilized countries conducting trade by violating all known patent and copyright laws, even down to using the names of those they copy, IE: K-Bar, Leupold and many, many others.

The shame of it is, there are those in this country willing to sell that crap.:rolleyes:
 
R.Duncan said:
......Or maybe it's the Steel company's doing what the drug companies do here to us every day, stick it to everyone in the US without any lubricant :yawn: and sell it cheep across the boarders.

Ron
Click to expand...

Ron, do you really think the pharma companies are "screwing" you any more than any other business in this country? If the distributor doubles or triples the price of a medication, and the pharmacy does the same, is it just the manufacturer that's to blame? In a pharmacy, a generic may cost 20% of a branded med, but the pharmacy charges you 80% of the branded price. Their profit margin is 4 times what it is for the brand name. The generic houses, meanwhile, don't spend a billion a year on research and don't develop new drugs. Check the profit margins of the entire supply chain. The insurance giant that carries my health insurance bitches about the rising costs of health, yet still managed to record record profits last year.

I see silly circulated emails with "Do you know what the drug is actually worth" that is just so much misrepresentation. They say we get charged $1 for what only costs 1 cent. What the email fails to mention is they quote bulk chemical manufacturing costs, and ignore the fact that drug chemical has to be formulated with maybe ten other "exipients" and then put it in a capsule, bottle it, box it, then sample and test before shipping to a distributor. Typical spin-doctoring BS about an area I know something about.

Pharma companies' profits are in keeping with many Fortune 500 sectors. I looked up Walmart and they had a higher margin last year than Abbott Labs where I worked. Do you think a McBurger in Beijing, where $300/month is a common wage, costs the same as here?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not implying that big pharma doesn't gouge on new drugs. That's called capitalism, the foundation of our society, and we all both benefit from it and suffer alike. I just think it's a little more complicated than the typical one sentence complaint I hear all too often because people don't like to spend money on drugs to stay alive when they would rather spend it on X-boxes or bass boats. There isn't a damned large business in this country that doesn't charge everything their market will bear or not try to maximize profits.
 
Mike my friend, I should have did a little better job of trying to get across what I meant instead of just implying that the drug company's alone are the only ones guilty of charging us more in the good old USA than they do other countries around us. Please don't misunderstand me here. Having worked in the pesticide industry in the past and dealt with chemical companies for a number of years, several of whom also manufactured prescription and non prescription drugs I do know and understand what it takes to get a new product to the market place and it ain't cheep by anyone's standards.
The part that I don't understand and the one I was trying to get across in my last statement is why when that product finally gets to market and then crosses any of our borders into another country it gets so much cheaper for anyone to purchase including us like 440C coming out of China in the knife I purchased.
I guess I just don't understand why it cost less from another country be it steel, chemicals or drugs when it was manufactured in the USA to start with, shipped abroad and ends up back in the USA cheaper than we could buy it to start with. Sorry if I touched a nerve, I truly didn't mean to imply that the drug company's were the only ones doing this but I guess I did even though I know better. Ron
 
Part of the reason for the higher cost of the product here in America may be due to the business practices used here. My cousin is an oncologist (cancer specialist). Some pharmacutical company flew him to Honolulu to speak at a medical conference. They put him up in a fancy hotel, paid his expensed and paid him a $500 honorarium. That money has to come from somewhere. This sort of practice is virtually unheard of in the other countries that I have lived in (Canada and New Zealand).

Phil
 
A lot of the corporations of asian countries that are selling cheap goods to us are doing so at a loss (many at huge losses). The corporate debt levels in China are quite bad. The Chinese government and the Chinese banks try to hide the level of debt in order to avoid scaring away foreign investment, but it is a big problem. They are doing this in order to "grow", hoping that they can accelerate the growth and get out from under. When GDP grows the way China's is, it is always fueled by massive growth in debt (in fact, in our world of fiat currencies, GDP is pretty much a measure of debt).

US banking, while far from prudent, will not tolerate the levels of corporate debt that China's will. Companies in the US would never be allowed to accumulate that kind of debt (unless they hide it, like Enron) and US banks cannot hold the kind of debt ratios that the Chinese can. So, it's not just about cheap labor, or US companies trying to gouge -- it is debt and foreign-exchange related.
 
Ron, it was one of those mornings for me and I should'a just kept my mouth shut. It's obviously a touchy spot with me because of working for "them" for 30 years and it grows tiring hearing them singled out as if they're the only profit-center in the US with lower prices offshore. I'm sorry to jump your butt. We can't solve it, so it's one of those things best left alone, eh?

Part of the issue is that a lot of the drugs sold in countries other than the US may have been produced in other countries, too. Abbott had so many non-US manufacturing sites, as do the others, it's hard to tell where drugs to Canada may have come from. Offshore manufacturing costs are almost always lower than here, both because of tax incentives and lower labor costs.

There are price controls in some countries, too, and governments negotiate prices, so in those places a corporation will lower prices just so they make some money rather than none. It's sort of like the "dumping" we see some nations do here. Add in the lower average income and savvy marketing folks take that into account, too. We both know that economies and prices are very complex beasts that mean one sector can't be singled out as a culprit. The bottom line is everyone is trying to take as big a piece of the pie as can be. I know for certain I never offered to turn down a raise so the corporation could help hold costs down. ;)

Phil, my wife worked for a lot of the top people in the same company. We had a rule we couldn't talk about all the secrets she heard. Once in awhile, though, you'd hear stuff like 6 of the top honchos flew out to the desert in the company jet to play golf in some tournament sponsored by some hospital corporation the company was courting, or the honchos from there would be flown out here. She just said, "duck hunting in Mexico is another good example." "Perks" like that are just considered the cost of business and seem to be very common. It's very common with big pharma to "sponsor" graduate projects at big universities and have high-dollar professors on the roles as "consultants" as a way of having access to their brightest grad students. All sorts of crap went on all the time that could easily piss off the common man. All of that contributes to the higher prices, but not in a great way.

The biggest contributor is the fact we are one of the wealthiest nations on earth, and prices are higher because it's perceived we can afford them. A lot of places, you can't even get the drugs or a set of monster tires for our jacked up 4x4 to haul our $30,000 bassboat to the reservoir.
 
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