Keep me outa them Wal Marts!

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paulwesley

Joined
Sep 5, 2005
Messages
655
Couldn't help it. I was at wally world buying some of that great sams club diet soda and had to see if they had any Natives while I was there. You know how it is. Already bought 1 there. Sure enough they had one and it was tight,tight,tight. Perfect F&F. There went another $40
 
Seems the same thing happened to me...except for the diet soda part.

Knife is perfect in every way.
native24.jpg
 
I wish I could say the same for the Native that I purchased (and returned the same day) at Wal-Mart. Mine had significant blade play, an off-center blade, and poor fit & finish. Unfortunately, it was actually the better of the two that they had at the store. From the reading that I've done on several forums, this isn't an uncommon occurrence, and it's basically "hit or miss". It seems the ones at the store I went to were "misses". :(
 
I think sometimes knives get an unfair reputation for 'blade play'. Obviously if your had excessive play and flopped around, thats too bad...wish you had been able to get a good one.

I have read in other threads where somebody got one that had play only when plenty of pressure was applied. I have been collecting and using knives for many years and found that so many folders come with either no play, a bit of play when real pressure is applied and a few that have detectable play by feel, but not visual and none of them have ever suffered in performance for it.

Sal Glesser once posted that a small amount of play is acceptable (obviously a lot of floppy play is not) and he took a bit of heat for it. I just think as knife folks we tend to expect pure perfection and perfect tolerances in all knives and get overly worked up at the slightest hint of play.

That being said, the one I got at Wally-World has no play at all. I had an old Endura (original G2 blade with plastic clip) that had a tiny amount of vertical play and over several years it was used very hard and sometimes bordered on abusive. The play never affected performance and it never got worse.
 
Man I wish the Wal mart near my place had Natives, in fact theres two but I never see them there. I really like that knife. Owell I'll have to find one some where else.
 
Padawan said:
I wish I could say the same for the Native that I purchased (and returned the same day) at Wal-Mart. Mine had significant blade play, an off-center blade, and poor fit & finish. Unfortunately, it was actually the better of the two that they had at the store. From the reading that I've done on several forums, this isn't an uncommon occurrence, and it's basically "hit or miss". It seems the ones at the store I went to were "misses". :(
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Yea, Darn those crapy hit-or-miss Spydercos!
 
ya up in candad wal mart dosn't havea very good knife collection, we need good wal marts like they have in the U.S.
 
I have to wonder if this gets blown out of proportion here on the forums since we only hear of the cases where someone got a bad knife. Perhaps a poll is in order? Obviously, everyone doesn't go rushing to post that they got a good one. I also got one with no play. It was the first one the guy pulled out so I don't know about the others they had.
 
mr.trooper said:
Yea, Darn those crapy hit-or-miss Spydercos!
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I'm not sure if this reply was intended to be sarcastic, but I can assure you that I have read of numerous accounts of sub-par Natives, and since others appear to come through without any issues, these particular knives do indeed appear to be "hit or miss".
 
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