Avoid Gerber "cut"lery unless it dates from their first five to ten years or so. (I don't know about their baby food and other baby products ...
Maybe they get those right. I don't know. When my kids were infants we didn't use Gerber products.)
I had a 1990's early 2000's Gerber small lockback.
Worst knife shaped object I have ever had the displeasure of owning. After sharpening and stropping, slicing or scraping warm butter length wise dulled it. The pivot's Chicago screw kept falling apart no matter how tight you got it.
I eventually gave up on it, and took it apart.
One week I sent the lock bar to the land fill in the trash.
The next week the rear spacer and spring (after cutting the spring in half).
Two weeks later I cut the mark side liner and cover into three pieces and sent those to the land fill. I also cut the pile side liner and cover into 8 pieces and stuffed them down 5 blue crab holes that were in the yard by the concrete fence.
A week later I intentionally used a grinder to make the "cutting edge" (note quotes) as "sharp" as the spine, then cut the tang off and the rest of the blade into 4 pieces using a cutting wheel, and sent half of them to the land fill.
The tang and remaining two pieces of blade went into the septic tank just before they put the lid back on. (as luck (fate?) would have it, the septic tank needed emptied and they showed up the day after I destroyed the blade.
)
I didn't want to take a chance on someone "rescuing" it from the landfill.
For what it is worth, when I cut the blade it didn't spark any more than a butter knife or spoon would. (a butter knife would hold a edge better than that Gerber - scraping warm (or cold) butter doesn't appreciably dull a butter knife.)
Never again will I waste funds on a Gerber. Even if they were free, they would cost too much. IMHO, if they paid $10 to customers to take them, they would still be over priced garbage. The old sub $1.⁰⁰ Frost gas station/truck stop special knife shaped objects from Pakistan or India are garbage, but infinitely better.
The Gerber knives made in the 1970's were supposedly high quality knives. They went down hill ("fell off a cliff" or "jumped out of a perfectly good aircraft at 2000 foot without a parachute" might be more accurate) quality wise starting in the 80's.
