Green Thorn Knives ?????

This is a tough subject with (again) many adjectives.
Personally I am on the fence as to how I feel.

I see the "Green Thorn" brand selling for slightly more than other clones, and we all know $$$$'s do not equal quality.

The way "I" see it is... Make a product/any product, and put your name on it.
Once YOUR name is on it YOU stand behind what you are marketing.

There is the catch 22 in this entire situation. If I sell cookies, am I going to taste every cookie to be sure it meets MY standard? NO!
Who is gonna buy a tasted cookie?

If you mass produce (anyone/anything) you have to accept that some items fall below YOUR standard. Do customers accept that? Should they?
F no...

Soooooo The fellas that put their sweat into their limited production/one of, have ALL of my respect.
The companies that charge for "one of" quality yet make thousands of units that they never see? Not so much.

I guess I am leaning toward one side of that fence a bit more than a moment ago.
It's a tough subject...

Maybe capitalism has something/everything to do with it.
People tell me ALL the time that "I will pay extra" to get "XYZ" done.
That statement puts them at the BOTTOM of my list.

Yes I do like to pay my monthly dues to live in America but $$$'s are not my motivation. Peace, and a free conscious are.
 
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uilleann said:
Its been about a year now since my knife collecting started with an Opinel #8. I now have almost $10K invested in knives. I kind of went a little crazy. Right now my favorites are made by Shirogorov, ZT, Reate, and a few others.

But I have been intrigued by the Chinese clones. I have not bought any that were full blown counterfiets with logos..... but the ones that look just like the originals with small differences.

I got a couple in the $20 - $50 range and they were crap with serious problems.

I then saw this copy of a Shiro F7 made by Green Thorn?? It was $246. I will never ever have a real F7 and figured... what the hell.

This knife blows me away. The action out of the box was 90% of what I have on my Shiro 95T. Some cleaning, relube, and lockbar tension adjustment and now its 100% the action of a Shiro. The fit, finish, and quality is amazing. Its does advertise M390 and it seemed softer to me than a 390 steel when sharpening.

So here are the questions:

1. Who is Green Thorn Knives?
2. If they can make a knife with this quality and action why don't they have their own designs? I do not want to support clone knives (yes I did buy some already). So I am not likely to buy more. But if they did their own designs I would be a regular customer??
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I have followed the same road brother hope my two grandsons like what I'm leaving them! Two of almost everything probably 20 grand in I think its time to stop!
 
I've seen this brand on AliExpress and people have raved about them in forums where clones and counterfeits are not frowned upon. Besides any moral or ethical considerations on the designs, a practical question with knives in that zone is whether or not the steel stamps are legit. Are they using the steels that they claim? (Are the heat treatments any good if they are?)

Some testing has been done. LTK had a couple of Green Thorn knives run in 2018. One was real M390 at 59.1HRC and the other was Chinese D2 at 61HRC. Does that mean a Green Thorn you buy today will be the advertised steel? I don't know. It's also true that a good HRC doesn't necessarily mean a good heat treatment. I'll probably remain skeptical until I see more testing.

As far as Chinese makers, there are a bunch of them. Several might be located in the same place. Is there some conspiratorial collusion between them? I have no idea. Companies like WE, Kizer, and Bestech seem like good people and make a decent product. Just because some of their facilities are in the same city as another that makes counterfeit Benchmades in 3Cr13 or the owners are aware of each other isn't particularly damning. Now, did a lot of these companies, both good and bad, get started by handling outsourcing from American companies? Sure. Do companies like Ganzo and Sanrenmu probably make knives for a bunch of other companies? Sure. We rarely know. It's entirely possible that the Green Thorn knives are being made by Ganzo, or somewhere else just a conveyor belt away from legitimate knives for Gerber, Schrade, or Buck.
 
Chronovore said:
I've seen this brand on AliExpress and people have raved about them in forums where clones and counterfeits are not frowned upon. Besides any moral or ethical considerations on the designs, a practical question with knives in that zone is whether or not the steel stamps are legit. Are they using the steels that they claim? (Are the heat treatments any good if they are?)

Some testing has been done. LTK had a couple of Green Thorn knives run in 2018. One was real M390 at 59.1HRC and the other was Chinese D2 at 61HRC. Does that mean a Green Thorn you buy today will be the advertised steel? I don't know. It's also true that a good HRC doesn't necessarily mean a good heat treatment. I'll probably remain skeptical until I see more testing.

As far as Chinese makers, there are a bunch of them. Several might be located in the same place. Is there some conspiratorial collusion between them? I have no idea. Companies like WE, Kizer, and Bestech seem like good people and make a decent product. Just because some of their facilities are in the same city as another that makes counterfeit Benchmades in 3Cr13 or the owners are aware of each other isn't particularly damning. Now, did a lot of these companies, both good and bad, get started by handling outsourcing from American companies? Sure. Do companies like Ganzo and Sanrenmu probably make knives for a bunch of other companies? Sure. We rarely know. It's entirely possible that the Green Thorn knives are being made by Ganzo, or somewhere else just a conveyor belt away from legitimate knives for Gerber, Schrade, or Buck.
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More clone defending nonsense in a thread necro-ed from 2017. :thumbsdown:

Snarky comment edited out.
 
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Chronovore said:
LTK had a couple of Green Thorn knives run in 2018. One was real M390 at 59.1HRC and the other was Chinese D2 at 61HRC. Does that mean a Green Thorn you buy today will be the advertised steel? I don't know.
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That sounds like 'defending' to you? He said they had a 50/50 hit rate on the steel they marked, which doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement to me.

That said, a lot of the counterfeits would put blade markings to match the original even if the copy was listed with its real steel on the website. So there's a chance they marked the blade unethically, but didn't try to pass off a cheaper steel on the *original* buyer.

Kiteman72 said:
More clone defending nonsense in a thread necro-ed from 2017. :thumbsdown:
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I’ve never bought one myself but I have heard nothing but great things about the quality of Green Thorn knives..with that being said,I’ve never bought a clone and I don’t know if Green Thorn even has any original designs
 
I didn't catch the necro when somebody brought it back. There has been recent discussion of this brand in other forums and I didn't notice that the main thread here was so old.

Yeah, there are some self-righteous but soft-skulled folks who enjoy calling me a "clone defender" (and much worse in the Whine and Cheese subforum). I don't think I really "defended" anything here. Since my earlier post, I went and looked at the current Green Thorn offerings on AliExpress. They appeared to be almost exclusively copycat designs. They might not technically be counterfeits but some are using similar model numbers or names as the originals. I've got to give this company a thumbs down. :thumbsdown:
 
What western companies are starting to realize is that very often when they have a successful product manufactured in China, after a while clones will start to appear on various sites like ebay and alibaba. And those clones are manufactured very close to their own manufacture, often just across the street or even part of the same complex, and using their own toolings, machine programs and material source. When you get a call that it's time to replace the tooling, how the heck do you control what happen to the old ones? In communist China?
One of the (many) pitfalls of doing business over there.
 
Cgw1984 said:
Homages arent illegal, and arent, by legal definition an infringement. Your feelings on the subject do not matter.
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We like to assume that whatever is legal is right and fair, but often it is not. What we are talking about here amounts to free commerce, free trade and the free exchange of ideas. The legal system is often co-opted to step on the scale and to favor specific products and property owners. Technology builds upon experience. A cave dweller doesn’t just wake up one morning and decide hey today I am going to invent the airplane.

When you design a new product it is based on available tooling and technology and entirely an iterative process. You just make minor changes which you believe would result in a more desirable product, and over time those minor innovations evolve into entirely new and more advanced technologies. We have lost sight of the bigger picture. If you are trying to innovate a better automobile, but are mandated to license thousands of components, many of which have remained on the market unchanged for decades. You are just being taxed for using current technology in order to reward innovators who have been sitting on their laurels contributing nothing for years.

We as a culture love these legal entanglements and view ever expanding government as the solution to everything. This limits our ability to innovate, produce and compete. Yes, property rights are crucial; but, they shouldn’t be absolute and should be limited to the duration of a practical business case. It not about left or right, liberalism or conservatism, but about balancing reward with the need for stability and the desire for accessibility and advancement.

We need to stop blaming China for our own misstep. The reason we continue to see more stuff produced offshore is because we make it impossible to produce domestically. It is in everyone’s interest to make things near the consuming market. It would come back if we choose to allow it.

n2s
 
Floatingby said:
What western companies are starting to realize is that very often when they have a successful product manufactured in China, after a while clones will start to appear on various sites like ebay and alibaba. And those clones are manufactured very close to their own manufacture, often just across the street or even part of the same complex, and using their own toolings, machine programs and material source. When you get a call that it's time to replace the tooling, how the heck do you control what happen to the old ones? In communist China?
One of the (many) pitfalls of doing business over there.
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You've already got my thumbs down for the company in question here. Let there be no mistake about that.

On this broader issue, I think it's worth remember that there are different companies, different actors, and ultimately different people involved over there. Some have much better reputations than others and for good reason. While some American or other companies still keep the identities of their overseas OEM a secret, others are proud to be using WE, Kizer, Bestech, etc..

An interesting example of what you might be talking about here is the Harnds Warrior. There are differences but the handle is exactly the same as on one of Kershaw's discontinued Speedsafe models in 8Cr13Mov. I've actually had both of them apart for side-by-side comparison and the tooling looks identical. The Warrior scale even has the pocket cut out for a torsion bar, despite being a manual knife. The easy conclusion is that they are cranking them out at the same factory. This is why I suspect that YangJiang Flyer Industrial (maker of Harnds and Tonife) is Kershaw's mystery OEM.
 
not2sharp said:
We like to assume that whatever is legal is right and fair, but often it is not. What we are talking about here amounts to free commerce, free trade and the free exchange of ideas. The legal system is often co-opted to step on the scale and to favor specific products and property owners. Technology builds upon experience. A cave dweller doesn’t just wake up one morning and decide hey today I am going to invent the airplane.

When you design a new product it is based on available tooling and technology and entirely an iterative process. You just make minor changes which you believe would result in a more desirable product, and over time those minor innovations evolve into entirely new and more advanced technologies. We have lost sight of the bigger picture. If you are trying to innovate a better automobile, but are mandated to license thousands of components, many of which have remained on the market unchanged for decades. You are just being taxed for using current technology in order to reward innovators who have been sitting on their laurels contributing nothing for years.

We as a culture love these legal entanglements and view ever expanding government as the solution to everything. This limits our ability to innovate, produce and compete. Yes, property rights are crucial; but, they shouldn’t be absolute and should be limited to the duration of a practical business case. It not about left or right, liberalism or conservatism, but about balancing reward with the need for stability and the desire for accessibility and advancement.

We need to stop blaming China for our own misstep. The reason we continue to see more stuff produced offshore is because we make it impossible to produce domestically. It is in everyone’s interest to make things near the consuming market. It would come back if we choose to allow it.

n2s
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Yep. Was looking at how we could bring what one of my friend is producing(high tech prosthetic for amputees) to the next level using serial manufacturing to bring cost down. The amount of red tape to start a new company and a new manufacturing plant in the USA is unbelievable. I mean, in our case lawyers fees would outcost all the others(tooling, property leasing, employees training etcetc) by... A factor of 8!

It rendered the project unfeasible as far as I'm concerned.

And looking to offshore to China come with its own sets of problems, not the least of which is how they view, and legiferate on "property", intellectual or otherwise.
 
Floatingby said:
Yep. Was looking at how we could bring what one of my friend is producing(high tech prosthetic for amputees) to the next level using serial manufacturing to bring cost down. The amount of red tape to start a new company and a new manufacturing plant in the USA is unbelievable. I mean, in our case lawyers fees would outcost all the others(tooling, property leasing, employees training etcetc) by... A factor of 8!

It rendered the project unfeasible as far as I'm concerned.

And looking to offshore to China come with its own sets of problems, not the least of which is how they view, and legiferate on "property", intellectual or otherwise.
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You can offshore in another country, Taiwan or India, for instance, without the ethical or IP concerns.
 
ferider said:
You can offshore in another country, India, for instance, without the ethical or IP concerns.
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Yes, we can all be 100% sure that there are no ethical or IP concerns in the far-off land of India. There is no way that anything would get copied or counterfeited over there.
 
Chronovore said:
Yes, we can all be 100% sure that there are no ethical or IP concerns in the far-off land of India. There is no way that anything would get copied or counterfeited over there.
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You can sue them. And they don't limit foreign (to China) investments. And they don't - say - force organ donations. True, there is corruption in India. Not sure anymore how that stacks up to the US these days ....

In any case, just to get manufacturing costs and red tape down is no excuse to manufacture in China. For medical equipment, the US federal red tape you have to deal with anyways on import. The state "red tape" and manufacturing costs vary largely in the US, maybe evaluate a cheaper state first ?
 
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ferider said:
You can offshore in another country, Taiwan or India, for instance, without the ethical or IP concerns.
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Probably. The beauty of China is you can get a complete, turnkey, ready to go quote on a production run.
The darkside is twofold: you can be assured that quality will devolve over time, and if your product is successful there will be identical copies appearing on the market that retail for less than yours.
I don't know how it would go in other countries, I decided that I'm too old for this.🤷‍♂️
 
ferider said:
You can sue them. And the government does not own 51% of the company you build. And they don't - say - force organ donations. True, there is corruption in India. Not sure anymore how that stacks up to the US these days ....

In any case, just to get manufacturing costs and red tape down is no excuse to manufacture in China. For medical equipment, the US federal red tape you have to deal with anyways on import. The state "red tape" and manufacturing costs vary largely in the US, maybe evaluate a cheaper state first ?
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I don't think anyone here thinks the Chinese government is good. Then again, very bad things can be said about a lot of governments. What some people don't know about their own governments or are willing to dismiss or defend on behalf of their own governments can be shocking. There is also an extent to which I wonder how much Chinese people know about or actively support relative to their own government. Of course, most of those discussions necessarily fall outside of the scope of this forum.

More within the allowed bounds here, where do you get that 51% figure?
 
ferider said:
You can sue them. And the government does not own 51% of the company you build. And they don't - say - force organ donations. True, there is corruption in India. Not sure anymore how that stacks up to the US these days ....

In any case, just to get manufacturing costs and red tape down is no excuse to manufacture in China. For medical equipment, the US federal red tape you have to deal with anyways on import. The state "red tape" and manufacturing costs vary largely in the US, maybe evaluate a cheaper state first ?
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Yes they do. And there are other options, like purchasing, in fulll or in part, an established manufacturer for example.
My suggestion to him, given the outrageous cost of starting from scratch, was to try to license his product to have them made by an already established company in that field.
 
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