Chinese Manufacturing Sharpness

T

Tonie Nichols

Joined
Apr 8, 2004
Messages
277
Over the last year I've purchased or have had friends who've purchased knives from Cold Steel and Blackjack that were manufactured in China. And it seems to me that ever since they've gone away from the Japanese manufacturing the consistency in sharpness has gone down hill fast.

Between me and my friends we ordered six Blackjack knives, an Anaconda, three Grunts and two smalls (admittedly their lower end offerings) The Anaconda was fairly sharp, none of the Grunts were sharp and two had big wire edges and one of the Smalls was just plain dull.

I ordered two of the Cold Steel Kobuns to replace the two that I had been carrying and while one was sharp, the other definitely needed work to approach the sharpness of the first. I have never before received a dull Cold Steel knife.

Is this just me? How about other companies who use Chinese manufacturing? Has anybody noticed if they have been getting dull knives too?
 
I agree with the OP except for the Byrds. Most of my Byrds have been very sharp. My Flight was so-so.
 
My Tenacious was very sharp from the box and had excellent blade edge grind goementry!,,,VWB.
 
No problem with the Byrd knives here. I have just about every model of Byrd and all have been extremely sharp.
 
I don't place a lot of emphasis on out of the box sharpness. Such a thing is easily fixed.
But, I have two knives that were made in China, a Byrd Flight and a Buck Colleague. Both were acceptably sharp.
 
The byrd and rough rider knives that I got were all shaving sharp. A blade's sharpness out of the box does not bother me much, since I can always fix that. The F&F is another matter.
 
Chinese companies can make knives as sharp as you want them to. It's a matter of what your quality control inspector finds acceptable, and the contractors you are working with, and their employees. Just like anywhere else. Joe
 
All my CS knifes are made in China and came very sharp. Personally, i don't really care if it comes sharp or not, the factory edge last but one cut.
 
I have a BM Mini TI Pika and it has very sharp edge. Close to Spyderco and American made BM. Maybe as good as Kershaw.
 
The 'el cheapo' CS knives are remarkable sharp, also the rough rider/marbles pocket knives.

Initial sharpness isn't as important as correct tempering and long-term edge retention.
 
Rough Rider slippies come very sharp
Steel Warrior come plain sharp

But the first thing I do when I get a new knife sharpen it.
Who wants a factory grind on their knife?
 
But the first thing I do when I get a new knife sharpen it.
Who wants a factory grind on their knife?
Click to expand...

That used to be the case but things are changing. Kershaw and Spyderco have both gotten pretty amazing with some of their knives. A Kershaw Ti/JYD2 Super Gold , and the Spyderco Stretch 2 in ZDP I bought not long ago came out of the box sharper than I can make them. They both were easily able to split, and disect hairs. I'm not talking about a wire edge that soon bends or falls off either, but very competant employees taking pride in their jobs when they hand finish the edges. Joe
 
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