Could someone explain Frost Cutlery?

[Razoredj]

I've noticed that Frost Cutlery seems to have a split personality. There are the knives with Frost's logo, like the fantasy "Undertaker" bowies and that whole line, plus Frost's many multi-colored-wood-handled folders. These are all of acceptable quality, at least for the price. Then there's a look-alike line, particularly clones of the fantasy blades, that are ALSO marketed as Frost Cutlery but obviously come from Pakistan or somewhere. Anybody know what the deal is with this? It's become increasingly difficult to differentiate between the acceptable material and the Pakistani garbage, particularly when looking at the layouts in the catalogs.

Razor

 

[Corduroy]

I'll try to be gentle about this, not trying to offend.

I think the real crime is that some of Frost's knives show reasonable quality, not that some don't. I say this because it offends me that they would devote any production effort to what is, in effect, a functionless design in a poor simulacrum of steel. 420J2 is not even remotely acceptable as a blade steel, so I can't consider their products "knives" so much as "knife-shaped objects." And strange knife-shaped objects at that!

Yeah, occaisionally Frost's products look as if some effort has been put into them, but these aren't really any better than those that are obviously junk. If you put all of the production knives of the world into a "quality centrifuge," Frost would not be at the bottom - but they would be near the bottom of knives that are even decent enough to bear a manufacturer's name.

In short, don't worry about Frost's "split personality" and save your dough for something that you can really be proud to own and even use. There are some great bargains out there, and none of them have blade cut-outs in the shapes of hearts or are made of 420J2.

Just my two little pennies

-Corduroy

 

[Razoredj]

I wasn't speaking primarily of the fantasy blades, but the folders, some of which (the wood-handled lockbacks specifically) are actually quite nice for the under-twenty-dollars you pay. I've also handled a reasonably good Frost butterfly knife, which was crap compared to a Benchmade but better than a lot of the Taiwan junk and at least as good as Bear MGC, which are the only sources for butterflies these days.

My curiosity is in regard to Frost's approach to marketing what appears to be a dual line of products under the same manufacturer: a higher quality American-made (?) line versus an obviously inferior foreign-produced line. Given the recent discussions on knock-offs, I found it puzzling that Frost was apparently knocking itself off.

Razor

 

[Corduroy]

Hmmm, fair enough. I thought you were mainly concerned with their "fantasy" type knives, and I, er, don't care for those much

Checking their apparent website, www.frostcutlery.com, doesn't tell me a whole heck of a lot. From other places I gather that the "Frost USA" part of their line is quite small, and consists primarily of synthetic-handled folders. As to where their other manufacturing occurs, I'm not sure. I have definitely seen knives with "Frostwood" handles (shudder) from Pakistan but not marked in any way with the Frost logo. Their online catalog can be found many places (e.g. www.discountknives.com/Frost) and is over 40 pages long! This leads me to believe that they are more an importer than a company with a unified product line and pricing between their products.

I still feel that they are about the bottom of the barrel as far as knives that carry a manufacturer's name, but if they are simply an importer then who knows? They may indeed have some bargain gems hiding in there. Of course, they also have a load of outright copies, which ticks me off to no end, but that's a moral issue, not a quality one.

Anyhow, sorry If I was venting a bit earlier. I wouldn't worry about how their products stack up against one another because they are so numerous and perhaps have many manufacturers, so there may be no unified product line at all. I figure, if you see one you really like, pick it up, but don't buy anything sight-unseen because there is no universal quality standard in such a product line. Of course, you could scrounge up a little extra for that Gerber or Kershaw, but...sorry, doing it again!

-Corduroy