Knives to avoid?

This is turning out to be an excellent thread. It should be very helpful to new knife buyers who haven't learned much yet about the reputations of various brands.

I will bring up another brand I am leary of. It is United Cutlery. It seems they sell some knives made from 420J2, including the fantasy knives with weird looking handles. Unless one is interested in collecting strange looking knives for use in devil-worshipping ceremonies, or Hollywood movie replicas to use as wall-hangers, the United Cutlery brand should be avoided.
 
Originally posted by Ryan M,
The lock was actually pretty solid, but after taking one swing at the "wheat," I glanced at the blade and :eek: :eek: :mad: :barf: :grumpy: --looked like a serrated edge!
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ROTFLMAO!!!!!!! :D :D :D
 
yes.. and excellent thread. I own a Fred Carter Designed united cutlery knife.. its "440" steel.. probably 440a, it was cheap tho and the finish on the knife was really rather good... it doesn't hold up to most of my knives and i do... but i wouldn't say that United Cutlery is complete junk.. and they also make Metal-Glo (just found that out recently) and that stuff is a good and cheaper alternative to Flitz... i have both and they seem to perform about the same.

Nowadays i would be careful when buying Case knives, Bear MGC is an iffy one too, CRKT in general has ups and downs (maybe depending on the factory they use?)... these can all be issues when buying online..
 
While they seem to be adding better knives to their catalogs now, alot of the stuff sold by Atlanta Cutlery is of poor quality. I once went over to their store in Conyers, Georgia to look at some Museum Replicas daggers (MRL is the sister company to Atlanta Cutlery). I asked the clerk in the store about their sharpening service. She told me the Museum Replicas blades could be sharpened, but the Atlanta Cutlery brand blades "couldn't take it". That was an astonishing admission coming from an Atlanta Cutlery employee.
 
Thanks for all the advice!

Maybe for some balance, I should create a "Knives you must own!" thread. hehe
 
Maybe for some balance, I should create a "Knives you must own!" thread. hehe
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Now that would really clobber the BladeForums server! I don't think they can handle a thread that long.
 
W.T. Beck= I concurr, atlanta cutlery, united....
:barf: :barf: :barf: :barf: :barf: :barf: :barf:
 
Hello rev_jch,

Yeah, I don't care if United Cutlery is the official knife and sword supplier to the Church of Satan, I still don't like there stuff.:D
 
Avoid the pricy knife-like junk marketed by the Franklin Mint. I have never owned their stuff, but I have had the opportunity to see most of it first hand at one of their stores. I am convinced an uneducated consumer is their only customer.

Avoid anything produced by Paragon. The stuff looks solid enough, but, you can expect any number of hidden flaws. Despite the relatively expensive price point for production knives, the quality is simply engineered out of the product. One of the folders I purchased from them had scales that were simply glued on to polished metal with rubber cement. The warranty is one of the worst in the business (90 days), and their customer service is a joke. I once called them over a dozen times over a period of two weeks in a failed attempt to buy a replacement part. Each call was answered by someone who did not have an answer, but promised to look into it and get back to me. None of the calls were ever returned, and when I finally did get through to someone on my final call, I was told that they did not carry spare parts and that I should simply buy another knife. That is one recommendation that I will definitely ignore.

n2s
 
I own 2 pieces (as in POS) from the Franklin Mint. My mother-in-law knows I'm into knives and bought me a couple as Xmas gifts. I am a gracious giftee, so I nod my head and thank her for thinking of me. Fortunately, we draw names in the family, and she rarely draws my name. These things are pure unadulterated trash. The only good thing I can say about them is that they limit their runs to around 10,000 pieces. Shouldn't overwhelm a landfill any time soon.

Also, avoid any knife that came from a batch of a hundred knives for 70 bux. I got this advice from our own Emanym Ton. :D
 
hi from germany! my first post at bladforums at all. Let me say, anything posted here about the puma's is true, with maybe one exeption: They recently made a small hunting fixblade called "silver lion", really made like the old time quality. I went to ask if they truly made it at puma.
another brand i avoid is boker, since i had a number of disappointments with it. I own three linerlocks, none of them stands a spinewhack-test: boker superliner, boker-brend tactical folder, boker "heckler and koch" tactical liner. Some of my other boker slipjoints look nice, but the edges hit the steel spring, when i close them. The brandnew boker diving knive comes in a lousy sheath, the locking mechanism breaks easyli...but to be just: they make some excellent integral hunting fixblades.
I'm looking forward for a thread "Knives You must own...:)
 
Mike and Coonskinner,
The Schrade Cliphanger I was given is a POS. The liner lock is paper thin, but it hasn't folded yet. The blade wobble is terrible. The plastic thumb "stud" is a stupid idea (i guess it's just cheaper). The only good thing I can say about it is that it did come pretty sharp (the thin blade helps, I think). I just used it to cut the hide off the skull of my 5-point buck. I used that knife because I didn't care if it got covered in blood, brains and hair.
 
When I first started out I bought many knives with blades made out of 440A...I just assumed opening 6 envelopes or cleaning one rainbow trout was all a "good" knife could take before it needed to be resharpened ;)

Well, that was several years and a couple hundred knives ago. I will now tell anyone new to knives who will listen that 440A is crap. Also, what I have found from first hand experience is that stuff Case calls "TruSharp" is anything but...if you want a neat lookin' butter knife, get a Case trapper.
 
Hello Don,

I have bought a few Case knives myself, but not to cut with. Some of them have pretty scales, and I bought them just for appearance. Case does make a few knives with carbon blades, though. Those should make better users.

Generally speaking I try to avoid any stainless knife if the steel is anything below 440C, with the exception of Swedish Sandvik 12C27. I have seen some claims that the Sandvik steel is as good or possibly better than 440C, although I am not totally convinced of this. One claim was made by a French metallurgist working for a knife company which uses Sandvik, so I wouldn't consider him impartial.

It is a shame that there are alot of well-designed, well-made knives out there that use steels like 440A, Aus6, Aus8, etc. I was very tempted to get a SOG Trident until SOG admitted that it was made from Aus8 rather than 440C, as they had previously claimed. Some of the Cold Steel models would be very attractive if they would just step up from Aus8.
 
Originally posted by W.T. Beck
Generally speaking I try to avoid any stainless knife if the steel is anything below 440C, with the exception of Swedish Sandvik 12C27. I have seen some claims that the Sandvik steel is as good or possibly better than 440C, although I am not totally convinced of this. One claim was made by a French metallurgist working for a knife company which uses Sandvik, so I wouldn't consider him impartial.
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Sandvik 12C27 is inferior to AUS6, all else being equal - both have about the same carbon and chromium - but AUS6 has added Nickel and Vanadium. The Nickel increases corrosion resistance and toughness, and the Vanadium reduces grain size, which also increases toughness, and allows sharpening to a keener edge. Just about any knife steel should have vanadium for grain refinement (only about 0.20% is needed for this - larger amounts of vanadium are used for forming super hard vanadium carbides which increase wear resistance).



- Frank
 
Thanks Frank,

I've been sketical of those claims about 12C27. There was a long treatise by a French metalurgist reprinted on another forum, claiming 12C27 is better than 440C, but given that the guy works for a knife company, I wasn't sure I should believe it.
 
Mike,

Our compadre above pretty much covered the things I don't like about the Cliphanger.

Blade wobble before the new even wore off, and a liner lock so thin that it inspired no confidence at all were my two biggest gripes.

I didn't care for the plastic thumb stud, though the knife is easily opened.

Whatever cheap stainless they used for the blade was far inerior to the 1095 in their Old Timers. I thought I would use it to skin coons because being made of stainless steel and plastic, it would be a snap to clean up, and it was. It was also a snap to dull. It didn't even hold an edge through one coon. I never used it on another one, and gave it away to somebody.

It did cut well while the edge lasted, which wasn't long.

Altogether a disappointing offering from a decent knife company.
 
It's a good steel. I have an EKA and Benchmade Balisong in that steel. They hold a reasonable edge, very corrosion resistant and are easy to sharpen. The steel also is very flexible, perfect for a balisong where you may drop it on the concrete floor while practicing. I personally think Benchmade switched to 440C just due to the ignorance of the American customer.

You can't always compare steels by their elemental content, the heat treat and edge geometry is just as important as the steel type. The Sandivik steel has an excellent reputation in Northern Europe (and France) as a fair priced good performing blade steel. It also has a reputation of a steel that needs a good heat treatment for good performance.
 
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