Originally posted by curious:
Some questions and educated comments:
First,
Mike why did you use a Four+ year old Mad Dog against new knives?
We were told that the one that we originally tested was new. It had been purchased 3 or so months before from a Mad Dog dealer, then was sent to us when the owner wanted to see how it would perform.
It was only after it was tested and didn't perform well that we found out the knife could be 3+ years old. At that time, we offered to perform an immediate retest with any current production Mad Dog SEAL ATAK, the honorable thing to do. Guess what? The current production ones still didn't do as well as the others.
You do bring up a good point though, I hadn't realized that Mad Dog knives spoil like milk and have to be replaced when they get older than a year.
second,
Kevin McClung did not heat treat, and selectively temper that blade!
So Kevin doesn't work on all of the knives that he makes? Knives make it out the door that he hasn't touched?
Are you saying that all ATAK's from this time period are flawed, and weren't heat treated or selectively tempered by Kevin McClung? How many potentially defective ATAKs are out there like this? 10? 100? 1000? Uh oh, I see some serious claims in the future....
Third,
That blade was not hand ground by Kevin mcClung!
The notch on the tang indicates that was a CNC experiment blade that did not pass Mad Dog quality standards.
Whoops!!!!!!!! One of us just called Kevin McClung a liar, and it wasn't me.
Kevin McClung stated, and I quote -
How do I know the knife is an illicit Ripoff?
Well, the knife in the cutaway picture has a big notch in the back of the tang on the end. This is something I do to mark a blade that has FAILED the heat treat for some reason or other. This notch mark means that the blade is to be scrapped.
I had suspected that several of these had snuck out the back door finished, as the numbers for chroming and handles done were sometimes wrong compared to how many knives I was actually shipping out. I never had any proof of it until now. Now I know for sure that it happened, but I can not prove exactly who did it.
This is directly at odds with your statement that the notches are there to show that it's a CNC milled blade, something
we've been saying since the very beginning....
Jim March also has copies of this email, he will corroborate it's having come straight from the dog's mouth.
Hmmm. Let's think. Kevin McClung says that the notch means that the knife failed heat treat, and is to be scrapped. Then his wife states that the knife was to be a shop knife. Now you say that he says that it means that the knife was CNC milled.
These stories are not the same. Ergo, someone is not telling the truth. Since all these stories are coming from the same person, that narrows down the list of just who is speaking with the forked tongue. Well, that answers more than a few other questions we had....
Fourth,
Why didn't you sand blast the Hardchrome off the blade instead of grinding it off?
That would obviously cause heat that could affect the RC test.
Sandblasting wouldn't have been effective. The surface grinding was done slowly so that the blade didn't heat up. One of you metallurgist guys / Bladesmiths please step in and say just how hot the knife would have to get to change the RC points?
Also, wouldn't the RC be uniform across the face if the heat from the grinding changed it? Just my two cents.
Fifth,
Why is ther always side stepping around the fact that there are thousands of Mad Dog knives that don't chip. There have been fewer than 10 knives returned(that includes the Stampinator ) in almost a decade for any reason. If one of my $300+ knives had the blade chip while I was chopping some wood I think I would send it back for repairs!
No one is arguing that there are 1000's out there that don't chip. The problem is that when ones that do are brought up, Mad Dog seems to turn into Mad Ostrich and deny it ever having happened before, and that the knife must be defective, stolen, [insert excuse here].
The only sidestepping is being done by Kevin McClung. Why won't he tell one story and stick to it? Why can't he honor his claims?
As for the "fewer than 10", let's not kid ourselves with this number. We both know that's not true.
About why aren't more returned, well boy howdy, I'm sure that someone is going to get great service judging from the track record I've seen when someone voices that they have a problem. I mean, first the warranty goes from "No Small Print" to "Sure, if it hasn't been
abused* - *<font size=1>abuse means using your knife for anything other than looking pretty in your sock drawer</font>". Oh yeah, if you do have a problem, you are going to have to deal with being called a liar, having all the other users of Mad Dog knives threaten and harass you, and of course, your knife isn't really a Mad Dog knife, it's a fake.
Finally, if there is any truth to the claims that so many in the military use Mad Dog knives, if the knife breaks on them when they need it, they may not COME back. Whoops. The worst time you can have your equipment fail is when you really need it, right?
If something I paid that much for broke on me in the field, I'd probably ditch it. I'm not going to lug around dead weight that's unusable, especially if it can't be repaired. If it failed despite claims that it was a super knife that could be used for pull-ups by Navy SEALs while hacking through cars, I know for a fact that I wouldn't be suckered again by the same maker.
My personal opinion is that most of the knives aren't being used heavily, which is why you aren't hearing more complaints. The ones that are being used heavily either work as advertised, or they don't and the person doesn't come back to get it fixed.
Where's the smoke and mirrors in that!?
I could be wrong, but I'm not.
Just be carefull not to believe everything you hear, 99% of Mad Dog customers are 100% satisfied! There is an unbiased comparison .
I'm not even going to comment on that laughable statement, except that you should probably follow your own advice. There's more smoke and mirrors coming from a certain doghouse than the combine talents of Siegfriend & Roy, David Copperfield, and Penn & Teller.
P.S.
Sixth,
All you had to do was prove payment to M.D. to get it replaced even after you chopped it into pieces? There's commitment to quality if there ever was any, anywhere!
A wise man once said that it's easy to like a person when things are going well, you only find the true measure of a man when the chips are down. I think we've found the measure of Kevin McClung. It's not great.
The best part is that he's hung himself with his own rope, and has been caught in his own web of deceit.
Proving payment is a joke. Mad Dog Knives are readily recognizable by their construction, the blade stamping / etching, sheath and construction materials. I don't see too many Mad Dog clones out there that look exactly the same as his production knives.
Oh wait, I forgot, I always keep my receipt for knives, just in case that they fail later. Just in case the maker has a breakdown of honor. Not.
TacTec, sorry that you've been suckered so badly. It's happened before, it will happen again.
Spark
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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com
Insert witty quip here
