Knife that didn’t live up to the hype.

TRM Neutron and atom. These Knives are almost always off center and have weak detents that flip open with a shake. They are also super dainty. On the plus side they are one of the sharpest production knives I've seen. The pivot is finicky and to have smooth action the knife can easily flip open with a shake.
 
Emerson for the value factor. Fallkniven for the edge geometry. Both of those companies could do a lot better for the price you pay, in my experience.
 
Natrix & Bareknuckle ... good design, mediocre translation to the cheaper variants, horrendous quality control in manufacturing, US and China.

Emerson...feels like it’s made in someone’s basement, awful heat treat (soft for a totally illogical reason). If even 1/10th of the SEALs talk is true, I feel badly that they are often carrying something so poorly made when our domestic knife industry can give them so much better (Spyderco, ZT) for LESS.

Not to mention the behavior of the above two brands, Kai reps are total assholes on every social media platform they haven't abandoned and Ernie is living in a dystopian fantasy world where Muslims and Millennials are aggressively destroying America.
 
#1. Emerson. Hands down.
I love the designs on a few and they are super easy to pimp out with custom scales, blade finishes, etc. BUT, for the price tag with a budget steel like 154 and the fit and finish, I just can't. Too many knives out there are put together with better f/f and better steels. And every one of them is black G10 or has an even higher price tag. Ernie is an okay guy I guess. Never met him but there seems to be a LOT of hype behind some mediocre knives.
#2. Buck 110 and most Buck knives in general in 420HC. 420HC steel sucks as far as I'm concerned. I get the big box store appeal, low price, and Americana, etc. I get all of that. Why would you buy a hunting knife that can't even skin one deer or hog without stopping in the middle to resharpen it? I did that for 3 decades before I educated myself on better, high quality steels that perform immeasurably better than 420HC.
An American icon? Not for me, and I'm as American as anyone can be.
 
Medford - Infraction :poop::poop::poop::poop::poop::poop::poop:
CRK - Sebenza Large :confused: Beautiful shelf display queen though!
Dutch Blade Works - Xerxes - Absolute waste of my precious $400 :poop::(:mad::mad:
 
Benchmade 940 , had the most side to side play and worse action/lockup than anything i've bought.
After 14 years or so after wanting this knife i finally got one and it had worse QC than a 'cheap china knife' while being made in the US for 8x the price :poop:
 
jp9mm said:
Benchmade 940 , had the most side to side play and worse action/lockup than anything i've bought.
After 14 years or so after wanting this knife i finally got one and it had worse QC than a 'cheap china knife' while being made in the US for 8x the price :poop:
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Benchmade has had a quality issue from time to time but the two 940's I've owned were flawless examples of that model. You should have just called customer service and requested a different one. BM customer service is awesome.
 
PM2. The handle is too big and fat at the butt to carry very well in pocket (tip up, anyway), the blade is disproportionately small relative to the handle, I don't have much faith in that tip, it's a knife I periodically buy versions of and never keep.
 
Yimes said:
Buck 110. I have bought at least 5 in different configurations.
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This is one of those "hot and cold" situations for me. I didn't really like the 110 because to me it resembled a bar of soap. My fear was that any grease or sweat (making the grip slippery) would end up with my hand sliding onto the blade.

So I experimented. At that early period I had never owned a 112, thinking that a smaller knife might make a secure grip more difficult. I was wrong. From the manual series I jumped on their automatic series and never looked back.

To be fair, I used the same logic (most people laugh at me if they know me) with the Cold Steel series. Like most of my riding ilk, we need tools to work when a motorcycle stops thumping in the middle of nowhere. My loyalty there derives from the construction.

On my "tuff lite" which has a three inch handle has two pins and two screws. Cold Steel did not want this knife to come apart. Then I noticed the spine in the handle, and compared the width to other folders--this little folder beat most of my collection again. To end, I first felt their polished pocket clip would slip. No problem, it sticks where I clip it!

I consider the Buck 112 and the Cold Steel 'tuff lite' to be brothers of another mother. The same superior features of one also appear on the other.
 
jp9mm said:
Benchmade 940 , had the most side to side play and worse action/lockup than anything i've bought.
After 14 years or so after wanting this knife i finally got one and it had worse QC than a 'cheap china knife' while being made in the US for 8x the price :poop:
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Could you not tighten the pivot and eliminate the side to side blade play?
 
From "marrenmiller," Could you not tighten the pivot and eliminate the side to side blade play?

My guess--and it's a guess--is that the washers and spacers of any folder might be diverse enough to be either too tight or too loose. Even our precious folders are hammered out by the tens of thousands, and a bad one just might show up.

However, a "folder pivot" is technically a simple screw. If there is access, I would find differing brass washers and mix and match them to your personal liking. I set mine so there is some "drag and resistance" to the blade presentation, but not enough to slow activation if I really needed it.
 
As a fan of Emersons and Medfords, I knew what I was going to find when I opened this thread. ;):D

The only knife I've owned that I think really fits the "didn't live up to the hype" category for me was the Grayman Satu. The fit and finish in no way matched to the sticker price and the warranty experience was the worst I've ever had. Hyped > disappointed > will never buy another Grayman knife. :thumbsdown:
 
Hyped > disappointed > will never buy another Grayman knife.

Sadly, I think I know this guy personally from the old "knife magazine" days. If so, he wasn't really a bad guy, just another tradesman working from home.

I know it's madding when something you really wanted arrives less than satisfactory. But I'll give you some insight--I sell knives myself, and customer service is crucial. No honest tradesman is going to refuse to serve you. In fact, if the product truly has been dinged, dropped or scratched, the salesman or original cutler will bend over backwards to make the transaction good.

My advice is simply to calm down, get out your paperwork, the envelopes with dates on them, the serial number on the knife if applicable and your credit card number and/or personal check. Give the guy a fighting chance on what happened from both sides of the sale.

I buy a lot from "Blade HQ," a very 'hands on' little company because it's family owned. If a knife I paid cash for was hammered through a commercial shredder, Joyce and Nick would make it good. Period, no worries. I know what they were thinking, it's, "Yikes, one of our best customers just got shanked!"

I've been involved in the sales end of the cutlery industry since the late 1970s. I'm still in it because the people are honest. And wouldn't you know, the second Bush Ranger Lite I bought is overdue. I'm not worried a bit. Two honest tradespeople are tearing their hair out to find a lost knife that is already paid for!

...knives can be replaced...
 
The ZT 0909. I don't think it was hyped up per se, but the fit and finish I expect from ZT or any premium knife brand was missing. I loved the design and ordered one as they were being discontinued. The first one came uncentered, lock bar was discolored from heat it looked like, and had this gritty action where you could feel the bearings move. I exchanged it for another one at least 2 times and they all had the same issue, its like they were all lazily made on a Friday right before the shift ended.
Eventually decided to see if I could fix the gritty action at least. Loosening/ oiling the pivot didn't help, so I tried to take the whole knife apart. The body screws were so loctited that one stripped. At which point I threw it in my glovebox of shame, where it will forever be my car knife.
 
fonedork said:
PM2. The handle is too big and fat at the butt to carry very well in pocket (tip up, anyway), the blade is disproportionately small relative to the handle, I don't have much faith in that tip, it's a knife I periodically buy versions of and never keep.
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Interesting. Personally, I love the knife. At least the grip part of it. Handle ergonomics are spot on in my opinion.

The blade however is another story. It doesn’t do anything for me. It’s almost like it’s an afterthought added to a great handle.

Now, a PM 2 handle with a
Sheepsfoot blade...that would be something.
 
TheTourist said:
From "marrenmiller," Could you not tighten the pivot and eliminate the side to side blade play?

My guess--and it's a guess--is that the washers and spacers of any folder might be diverse enough to be either too tight or too loose. Even our precious folders are hammered out by the tens of thousands, and a bad one just might show up.

However, a "folder pivot" is technically a simple screw. If there is access, I would find differing brass washers and mix and match them to your personal liking. I set mine so there is some "drag and resistance" to the blade presentation, but not enough to slow activation if I really needed it.
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Every Benchmade ever made, unless there was one made with a pivot barrel rather than a conventional pivot, allows you to snug up the pivot screw and eliminate horizontal blade play. It's part of the design, and there's no need to adjust washers to do so. The post above strikes me as a ridiculous complaint where the pivot got loose over time, unless somehow the knife was missing a washer or something similar which is extremely unlikely. Even in that case, the solution is to return the knife if it's new, or to send it benchmade for repair if you can't return it.
 
stonproject said:
Thats how I feel about Olamic, granted I've only owned one, the swish. Great knife, but was really disappointed for the $650 price tag.
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Ston, what did you respect from a knife named a Swish?:rolleyes:
John_0917 said:
Emerson...feels like it’s made in someone’s basement, awful heat treat (soft for a totally illogical reason). If even 1/10th of the SEALs talk is true, I feel badly that they are often carrying something so poorly made when our domestic knife industry can give them so much better (Spyderco, ZT) for LESS.

Not to mention the behavior of the above two brands, Kai reps are total assholes on every social media platform they haven't abandoned and Ernie is living in a dystopian fantasy world where Muslims and Millennials are aggressively destroying America.
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That really depends on who’s Basement & do the care about the quality or are they busy being a delusion in their own mind with their Black ops Prowess & Coolness because they made a couple of knives for Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones... o_O Do keep in mind, when one our Navy Seal war fighters breaks one. They just get another from the Quartermaster. Disposable!:)
 
Brand new Randall Model 14. A flaming piece of shit for various reasons. Can't wait to sell it.
Edit : Emerson Bowie. Another piece of shit with numerous flaws that was eventually returned to the dealer.
 
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