I'm sure theres a lot of people, who upon reading that a strider was broken after it was stabbed into a car engine block repeatedly will choose not to purchase it, having entered into it with the idea that the knife was unbreakable. This is financially damaging to the company.
The thing that might be financially damaging to the company in this case is not that the knife broke, but that some potential buyers, for some reason expected it to not break.
As has been pointed out, you take any knife and apply enough force and you can break it. Apply enough torque you can twist it, snap it or shatter it. It is completely unreasonable to expect that a knife will be completely unbreakable under all conditions unless some authority has told you otherwise. It would be absolutely foolish for anyone to make such a claim(but especially a knife manufacturer – and I am not suggesting that any manufacturer let alone Strider has made such a claim)
When a company gets a reputation for a knife being unbreakable (as opposed to extremely tough), to such an extent that a failure will damage the company's reputation/sales, then it is the people who propagated the belief that the knife is unbreakable that are damaging the company - not the person who broke the knife. The person breaking the knife is merely testing what he has been told, whereas the people who propagate the idea that the knife is unbreakable are creating un-attainable standards for the knife to meet.
In other words the problem in such as case is the people who attached unqualified and/or unreasonable expectations to the knife.
And in my opinion this is the case far more so if the people making unqualified claims are the manufacturers (and I am not saying this is the case with Strider - I am not familiar enough with the Strider company or their claims or history to know).
Having said that the person testing the knife should only test against claims the company makes, not claims the fans or detractors make, if he expects the company to warrant any major damage.
Again I am not sure if this is the case with Strider, but if a manufacturer says "our knives are unbreakable" instead of qualifying the statement with something like "under normal knife usage" or "under most conditions" then that is their own problem for making unqualified and in my opinion un attainable claims.
Similarly if company A says "we make the toughest knives around" and some one breaks them by applying a test that company B applies to company B's own knives, then again that is company A's problem for making unqualified and/or false claims. If your knife really is the toughest it will be able to take the same tests as company B's knives regardless of whether those tests are normal use, sensible etc or not. If company A's knifes don’t survive company Bs test, then quite clearly company A's knives are not the unqualified toughest are they? The moral of the story is don’t make claims you can not or will not live up to. Again I am not implying that Striker or any other manufacturer is doing so in this case.
Again company A and company B can get themselves off the hook by simply qualifying their claims eg adding "under normal circumstances" or “virtually unbreakable” (or even better a combination of the two) or a similar qualifier(s)/disqualifier(s) to the statements/claims.
This next bit of the post is not addressed at Last Visible Canary or the quoted text, but rather some general comments on the thread and on Noss’s intended test
On the subject of putting a knife in a vice and bending it, I have seen (pictures of) at least one knife manufacturer do just that and have a useable knife afterward so it is not an unattainable goal. And if one knife can do it, then why not another?
And I can think of field/survival scenarios where it may be extremely useful to do so. Same with pounding a knife on the pommel with a rock or a piece of timber through some sheet metal or masonry. Not so sure about pounding a knife with a sledge hammer.
It's fair enough to say it's not fair to test a normal knife under abnormal conditions, but I don't think a $300-450 knife, which is according to the manufacturers web site probably designed for combat conditions a normal knife, designed for normal conditions.
However if you manufacture knives which are designed for people to bet their lives on in arduous circumstances (eg battlefields, military field exercises, search and rescue etc) then it is not unreasonable to expect the knife to be able to accept punishment that under less arduous circumstances (i.e. "normal" circumstances )might be considered abuse. I.e. if you manufacture knives for that market, you aren’t manufacturing “normal” knives for normal use, almost by definition. Striker does in my opinion give a strong impression on their website that they do indeed make knives intended to be used in unusual and arduous circumstances such as battlefields.
The first page on their website says (and I have cut and a paste this)
"Hardcore operators around the globe stake their lives on the ability of Strider Knives to withstand unbelievable abuse while remaining intact and functional. Indeed, stories about the ability of Strider Knives to perform extreme and almost ridiculous tasks abound. An integral component of this characteristic is the careful choice of the materials we use to construct our products."
I.e. they indicate that they expect their knives to be able to “…stake their lives…” on their knives while their knives undergo “…unbelievable abuse…” and to be used for “…almost ridiculous tasks…” (their words).
I also note the striker website does say "All Strider Knives carry an unconditional lifetime warranty". It does not qualify that statement, there is no * or other comment indicating that there are qualifications elsewhere.
It also says:
“
What is Strider’s warranty?
Per Mick Strider:
If you break it, I'll be impressed. If I can’t fix it, I will replace it.
We'll fix anything, but we won't fix anything for free.
We Guarantee that your knife will perform. We don’t guarantee that it wont get wear marks from use.
Function and Sharpness are free, like new frills cost.
“
Which I would take to mean that they will restore your knife to the point it will cut, pry and do the other functional stuff expected of a new knife of it’s class/model for free, but you may have to pay to have it made cosmetically “as new”.
So if someone busts one of their knives, I would expect them to replace or repair it for the costs of postage as the site states.
If they don't want to do that then all they need do is to qualify their warranty statement and perhaps qualify the statements that tend to indicate that they expect their knives to take abuse.
Thanks for the more appropriate vehicle analogy anyway.
