So I just got these two knives in, the HTM Darrel Ralph Titanium and Carbon Fiber Gunhammer, as well as the Kirby Lambert SNAP!
Full discosure here: I have not spoken to Darrel or HTM about this since getting it, so it is not a review on their customer service at all. Darrel was very decent and helpful when I spoke to him regarding the potential purchase of the Gunhammer.
First the Gunhammer: I was super excited to get this knife. I love the look of it, I love the way it feels even in my hand. It's a great looking and feeling knife. Unfortunately, all of that excitement ended as soon as I opened it. Let me go back a bit first though. Before ordering it, I did my research and found countless times where there were QC and other issues with HTM knives. They did appear to be, by and large, issues that were supposed to have been corrected. I actually spoke to Darrel himself about my potential purchase and was told that those issues were all in the past and that I would absolutely love my new knife, if I was to buy it. I decided to go for it and, after speaking with the vendor about it, thought I was in for a real treat. Back to me opening it.
I flipped the blade open, and it was nice and smooth, if not a little slow for a knife with a bearing pivot. No worries, I thought, it must just need to be broken in. So I played with it a little bit, got out my benchmade blue tool to adjust the pivot, and that's where the trouble started. I first loosened it off just a hair (probably about 1/16 of a turn) and the blade developed significant play. When closed, it would not center. So i tightened it up a little bit (about 1/8 of a turn) and it got better with respect to blade play, but still not as smooth of an opener as I would expect (comparing to my ZT0561, for example, or even the CRKT/Ken Onion collaboration w/ the IKBS system). I also noticed that, when I went to close the knife, it would not smoothly close all the way. The tip was about 1/4" - 3/8" away from being fully closed, yet the blade developed serious resistance to closing any further. After working it a few times, it did not get better in any appreciable way. Disappointed, I checked the edge itself. It was almost nonexistent near the hilt end, and near the front it was there, but certainly not capable of cutting hair off my arm. Not even close. Finally the lock-up. I took a quick look at the frame lock, and was honestly not sure it was even fully engaged. I tried to close the knife on itself, and it wouldn't do it easily, so I knew the lock must be catching, but I'd call it at less than 5% lock-up. Obviously I can't measure percentage exactly, which is why I'm not saying less, but my point here is that it literally looks like the edge/corner of the frame lock is lined up right against the edge/corner of the locking surface on the blade. Now I'm sure that would break in over time, but this is a $500.00 knife - there should be Zero issues with it when someone receives it. I personally would not carry it with the lock in this condition, even if all the other issues were not there, simply because I feel that it is unsafe and would be very likely to close at the worst possible time. I played with it for another two or three minutes, and decided to put it away before I scratched it (the dealer I got it from has a no hassle return policy, so I wanted to make sure I could return it if I decided I couldn't deal with or fix the issues).
Now on to the Kirby Lambert. Same idea with the feel of the knife. Feels great in my hand, really like the way it looks too. Has good weight but feels nice. Flip it open and it swings open fairly quickly. Not a bad assisted system, maybe not the best but definitely good. Would say that my ZT0350 is a little better though, but not by much. I look at the edge on this one, and it's honestly pathetic. I don't mean that in an insulting way to anyone, but this isn't even reasonable to send out the door. From about 1" from the tip, up to the tip, the edge is so dull I wouldn't call it an edge. The only way it's doing anything even to paper is if you push hard enough that the paper rips. The angle is about a 40 degree angle, on each side. I am just floored that this could go out the door of any knife company. Walmart sells cheap knives that come sharper than this! As you go down from the tip, it does get a *little* better, but certainly not amazing. Right near the pivot, it's good, but not remotely good enough for a knife costing upwards of $200. It will cut paper with that end of the blade though. I figured, maybe I'll keep this one, but I wanted to see how it felt in my pocket, as it is rather thick (not meaning this in a negative way, I just wanted to make sure it was comfortable). I went to slide it in and missed the pocket clip. Tried again and same thing, it just fell into my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at the clip, and it was so mis-shaped that it was under INCREDIBLE tension. I couldn't pull it up with my fingers enough to sneek my jeans under it. I am too scared to even pull the screws because, since it's an aluminum body, I'm worried that the screw threads will just pull out when I get them backed out some. The tip of the clip is literally 1/16" away from the body of the knife - I could barely get my t-shirt under it, but couldn't pull the shirt right under the whole clip because of how tight it was. The lock-up on this knife is good, but it's a liner lock, so that is expected. The liner is beefy, and is one of the few liner locks that I would likely trust my fingers and tendons to. As for blade play, there is definitely noticable blade play from side to side. When I tried to tighten this out, the assisted mechanism no longer functions. It seems that I have the choice of either a little blade play (not much, but I don't accept any blade play from a knife that's going to be in my EDC rotation - it just pisses me off) or no assisted mechanism. Obviously when it's tight enough to have hardly any blade play, but no assist, it is also so tough to get open that you can't flip it open either. It becomes a two handed affair.
Now, a few notes. First, I have NOT contacted HTM about this. I don't want to simply because I do not want the hassle of shipping these knives back to them, waiting a month or two for them to be fixed, and then having to hope they get across the border back to me. It is just extra costs to me, and far, far too much time for me to wait to enjoy over 700 dollars worth of knives. I do believe, based on what the dealer said, and based on what Darrel told me previously and told others in recent threads, that they would fix the issues or replace the knives completely with fully functioning and good quality ones. As I said though, I just cannot wait nor be bothered. I will likely be trying to get my hands on a hinderer or a CRK seb, as they appear to be of amazing quality and I haven't seen a single bad review of them. I knew the gut feeling I had about risking it might be worth listening to.
Another note. The dealer I dealt with is amazing. The guy obviously loves the hobby and cares about his customers. He answered his phone the moment I called to talk about it. Before I could say much more than "I'm not really happy with these knives" he told me we could do two things. One, one of us could send them off to HTM and have them fixed, or two, I could send them back and upon receiving a tracking number for the package, he would issue me a full refund, including my shipping costs. This floored me. I know that there are some other dealers out there who would do a similar thing, but I also know of MANY who would say "tough, send it to HTM and deal with them. not my problem." Not this guy. I do not want to post who it was though, as I don't want him getting any sort of bad reputation regarding the quality of these knives. They are not his, he does not make them, and he only sells them. I can only assume that he did not look them over carefully or at all before sending them out, which is understandable - he shouldn't have to!
Final thing - this is not at all meant to be an attack on HTM in any way. This is simply my honest views on what I have in my hands at this moment. These were purchased as new knives which were supposed to be of the highest quality. No attack meant, no acid viper venom being spit, just an honest review of two knives. Hope I'm not crapping in anyones corn flakes here, I just stated that I would post a review when I got them, and I'm holding myself to that, as much as part of me doesn't want to hit the submit button.:thumbdn:
No bearing race
Horrible bevel/grind job
Zero lock up (this was actually after i had pushed the lock bar rather hard to try to lock it up as far as it could go - when the knife was opened normally the lock up was even less than in this picture. no amount of graphite or anything other than sanding/filing down the locking surfaces would fix this problem)
[EDIT #2] I also noticed that this pic shows another issue i may not have mentioned. The bearings themselves on the carbon fiber side do not completely fill the area they are supposed to. It looks like there is a bearing missing and you can see the gap in this pic. Also you can see how nasty looking the bearings/bearing area looks, and there were actually bits of grit and metal flakes in them!
Blade would only close this far when the pivot was barely tight enough to remove most of the blade play (but not even all of it). At this point the action became very rough and felt like it was grinding somehow/somewhere, though there was zero contact between the blade and the frame of the knife at all, other than on the detent ball.
This is the better side - you can see that there is barely any bevel/edge on this side - the other side is far worse and, at the heal, nonexistant
This is the worse side - you can see the last quarter inch or so has literally ZERO bevel or edge, and from there is gets only marginally better
This is an attempt to show that the edge itself was flat on top and not pointed/sharp - hard to see but i figured i'd include it for completeness
This is the Kirby Lambert SNAP - this nick was on the knife right out of the package. it was more noticable than it looks in the picture, and was large enough that it rubbed on your hand when you felt it. uncomfortable and silly to let a quality knife go out the door with damage. this should have been kept and sold as a blem model, or refinished properly
This is the clip - it's hard to tell by looking at it, but denim or even regular dress pants cannot fit under the tip of the clip. This is how it looks after i gave it a hard push to try to bend it slightly and allow it to be clipped to my pocket. The only way i actually got it clipped was to physically lift on the clip with a pen as i pushed it over my pocket
This is the tip of the SNAP - this is the worst bevel I have ever seen on a knife. To me, this edge reminds me of what I can expect to see on a flat style punch from princess auto. Approximately 80-90 degrees total angle, and a flat spot on top. No amount of effort will let this edge cut anything. The only thing it would do is rip paper. It just felt smooth when rubbed on skin and would not cut in any way. The edge does get better as it goes down towards the pivot, however the actual angle the edge is bevelled at changes drastically throughout the cutting edge. Totally unacceptable.
Slightly better pic of the tip - you can somewhat see what i mean by the bad grind angles from this pic
This is the best pic of the tip - you can clearly see that the angle is maybe even MORE than 90 degrees. I hadn't looked at this pic until now, but this even surprised me by how bad of an angle it is. I knew it was bad, but this really shows it
This pic shows how uneven the bevel of the edge is. the belly is a nice big bevel, however at a bad angle and not sharpened to a point. the heel is smaller, but actually sharp, somewhat. then the tip has a small bevel but the angle is just ridiculous as mentioned a few times above.
Hope these pics show what i'm talking about a little better!
Full discosure here: I have not spoken to Darrel or HTM about this since getting it, so it is not a review on their customer service at all. Darrel was very decent and helpful when I spoke to him regarding the potential purchase of the Gunhammer.
First the Gunhammer: I was super excited to get this knife. I love the look of it, I love the way it feels even in my hand. It's a great looking and feeling knife. Unfortunately, all of that excitement ended as soon as I opened it. Let me go back a bit first though. Before ordering it, I did my research and found countless times where there were QC and other issues with HTM knives. They did appear to be, by and large, issues that were supposed to have been corrected. I actually spoke to Darrel himself about my potential purchase and was told that those issues were all in the past and that I would absolutely love my new knife, if I was to buy it. I decided to go for it and, after speaking with the vendor about it, thought I was in for a real treat. Back to me opening it.
I flipped the blade open, and it was nice and smooth, if not a little slow for a knife with a bearing pivot. No worries, I thought, it must just need to be broken in. So I played with it a little bit, got out my benchmade blue tool to adjust the pivot, and that's where the trouble started. I first loosened it off just a hair (probably about 1/16 of a turn) and the blade developed significant play. When closed, it would not center. So i tightened it up a little bit (about 1/8 of a turn) and it got better with respect to blade play, but still not as smooth of an opener as I would expect (comparing to my ZT0561, for example, or even the CRKT/Ken Onion collaboration w/ the IKBS system). I also noticed that, when I went to close the knife, it would not smoothly close all the way. The tip was about 1/4" - 3/8" away from being fully closed, yet the blade developed serious resistance to closing any further. After working it a few times, it did not get better in any appreciable way. Disappointed, I checked the edge itself. It was almost nonexistent near the hilt end, and near the front it was there, but certainly not capable of cutting hair off my arm. Not even close. Finally the lock-up. I took a quick look at the frame lock, and was honestly not sure it was even fully engaged. I tried to close the knife on itself, and it wouldn't do it easily, so I knew the lock must be catching, but I'd call it at less than 5% lock-up. Obviously I can't measure percentage exactly, which is why I'm not saying less, but my point here is that it literally looks like the edge/corner of the frame lock is lined up right against the edge/corner of the locking surface on the blade. Now I'm sure that would break in over time, but this is a $500.00 knife - there should be Zero issues with it when someone receives it. I personally would not carry it with the lock in this condition, even if all the other issues were not there, simply because I feel that it is unsafe and would be very likely to close at the worst possible time. I played with it for another two or three minutes, and decided to put it away before I scratched it (the dealer I got it from has a no hassle return policy, so I wanted to make sure I could return it if I decided I couldn't deal with or fix the issues).
Now on to the Kirby Lambert. Same idea with the feel of the knife. Feels great in my hand, really like the way it looks too. Has good weight but feels nice. Flip it open and it swings open fairly quickly. Not a bad assisted system, maybe not the best but definitely good. Would say that my ZT0350 is a little better though, but not by much. I look at the edge on this one, and it's honestly pathetic. I don't mean that in an insulting way to anyone, but this isn't even reasonable to send out the door. From about 1" from the tip, up to the tip, the edge is so dull I wouldn't call it an edge. The only way it's doing anything even to paper is if you push hard enough that the paper rips. The angle is about a 40 degree angle, on each side. I am just floored that this could go out the door of any knife company. Walmart sells cheap knives that come sharper than this! As you go down from the tip, it does get a *little* better, but certainly not amazing. Right near the pivot, it's good, but not remotely good enough for a knife costing upwards of $200. It will cut paper with that end of the blade though. I figured, maybe I'll keep this one, but I wanted to see how it felt in my pocket, as it is rather thick (not meaning this in a negative way, I just wanted to make sure it was comfortable). I went to slide it in and missed the pocket clip. Tried again and same thing, it just fell into my pocket. I pulled it out and looked at the clip, and it was so mis-shaped that it was under INCREDIBLE tension. I couldn't pull it up with my fingers enough to sneek my jeans under it. I am too scared to even pull the screws because, since it's an aluminum body, I'm worried that the screw threads will just pull out when I get them backed out some. The tip of the clip is literally 1/16" away from the body of the knife - I could barely get my t-shirt under it, but couldn't pull the shirt right under the whole clip because of how tight it was. The lock-up on this knife is good, but it's a liner lock, so that is expected. The liner is beefy, and is one of the few liner locks that I would likely trust my fingers and tendons to. As for blade play, there is definitely noticable blade play from side to side. When I tried to tighten this out, the assisted mechanism no longer functions. It seems that I have the choice of either a little blade play (not much, but I don't accept any blade play from a knife that's going to be in my EDC rotation - it just pisses me off) or no assisted mechanism. Obviously when it's tight enough to have hardly any blade play, but no assist, it is also so tough to get open that you can't flip it open either. It becomes a two handed affair.
Now, a few notes. First, I have NOT contacted HTM about this. I don't want to simply because I do not want the hassle of shipping these knives back to them, waiting a month or two for them to be fixed, and then having to hope they get across the border back to me. It is just extra costs to me, and far, far too much time for me to wait to enjoy over 700 dollars worth of knives. I do believe, based on what the dealer said, and based on what Darrel told me previously and told others in recent threads, that they would fix the issues or replace the knives completely with fully functioning and good quality ones. As I said though, I just cannot wait nor be bothered. I will likely be trying to get my hands on a hinderer or a CRK seb, as they appear to be of amazing quality and I haven't seen a single bad review of them. I knew the gut feeling I had about risking it might be worth listening to.
Another note. The dealer I dealt with is amazing. The guy obviously loves the hobby and cares about his customers. He answered his phone the moment I called to talk about it. Before I could say much more than "I'm not really happy with these knives" he told me we could do two things. One, one of us could send them off to HTM and have them fixed, or two, I could send them back and upon receiving a tracking number for the package, he would issue me a full refund, including my shipping costs. This floored me. I know that there are some other dealers out there who would do a similar thing, but I also know of MANY who would say "tough, send it to HTM and deal with them. not my problem." Not this guy. I do not want to post who it was though, as I don't want him getting any sort of bad reputation regarding the quality of these knives. They are not his, he does not make them, and he only sells them. I can only assume that he did not look them over carefully or at all before sending them out, which is understandable - he shouldn't have to!
Final thing - this is not at all meant to be an attack on HTM in any way. This is simply my honest views on what I have in my hands at this moment. These were purchased as new knives which were supposed to be of the highest quality. No attack meant, no acid viper venom being spit, just an honest review of two knives. Hope I'm not crapping in anyones corn flakes here, I just stated that I would post a review when I got them, and I'm holding myself to that, as much as part of me doesn't want to hit the submit button.:thumbdn:
No bearing race
Horrible bevel/grind job
Zero lock up (this was actually after i had pushed the lock bar rather hard to try to lock it up as far as it could go - when the knife was opened normally the lock up was even less than in this picture. no amount of graphite or anything other than sanding/filing down the locking surfaces would fix this problem)
[EDIT #2] I also noticed that this pic shows another issue i may not have mentioned. The bearings themselves on the carbon fiber side do not completely fill the area they are supposed to. It looks like there is a bearing missing and you can see the gap in this pic. Also you can see how nasty looking the bearings/bearing area looks, and there were actually bits of grit and metal flakes in them!
Blade would only close this far when the pivot was barely tight enough to remove most of the blade play (but not even all of it). At this point the action became very rough and felt like it was grinding somehow/somewhere, though there was zero contact between the blade and the frame of the knife at all, other than on the detent ball.
This is the better side - you can see that there is barely any bevel/edge on this side - the other side is far worse and, at the heal, nonexistant
This is the worse side - you can see the last quarter inch or so has literally ZERO bevel or edge, and from there is gets only marginally better
This is an attempt to show that the edge itself was flat on top and not pointed/sharp - hard to see but i figured i'd include it for completeness
This is the Kirby Lambert SNAP - this nick was on the knife right out of the package. it was more noticable than it looks in the picture, and was large enough that it rubbed on your hand when you felt it. uncomfortable and silly to let a quality knife go out the door with damage. this should have been kept and sold as a blem model, or refinished properly
This is the clip - it's hard to tell by looking at it, but denim or even regular dress pants cannot fit under the tip of the clip. This is how it looks after i gave it a hard push to try to bend it slightly and allow it to be clipped to my pocket. The only way i actually got it clipped was to physically lift on the clip with a pen as i pushed it over my pocket
This is the tip of the SNAP - this is the worst bevel I have ever seen on a knife. To me, this edge reminds me of what I can expect to see on a flat style punch from princess auto. Approximately 80-90 degrees total angle, and a flat spot on top. No amount of effort will let this edge cut anything. The only thing it would do is rip paper. It just felt smooth when rubbed on skin and would not cut in any way. The edge does get better as it goes down towards the pivot, however the actual angle the edge is bevelled at changes drastically throughout the cutting edge. Totally unacceptable.
Slightly better pic of the tip - you can somewhat see what i mean by the bad grind angles from this pic
This is the best pic of the tip - you can clearly see that the angle is maybe even MORE than 90 degrees. I hadn't looked at this pic until now, but this even surprised me by how bad of an angle it is. I knew it was bad, but this really shows it
This pic shows how uneven the bevel of the edge is. the belly is a nice big bevel, however at a bad angle and not sharpened to a point. the heel is smaller, but actually sharp, somewhat. then the tip has a small bevel but the angle is just ridiculous as mentioned a few times above.
Hope these pics show what i'm talking about a little better!
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also got a couple of esee blades coming so i'm gonna be fine, just fine. but it sure is sad that, after all the crap that they've gone through, and after all of the problems they've had, that they STILL can't figure out that it's not cool to ship out a $500 knife with any sort of problems at all.
