Im not getting the impression that people want a top of the line sheath with bells and whistles. People want a sheath, that does not dull the knife, thats it. If every other knife manufacturer can do it, then Kabar/Becker can too. Yes, its not an expensive knife, but thats not an excuse to produce a substandard sheath.
sorry about my overyly snarky comment there. i don't think i was drinking grapejuice that night. actually, i don't even think i was awake then. weird.
a lot of factory sheaths just plain are junk, and many are just ok. i haven't seen many that make me take notice and go say "wow". when Critter was doing the sheath for his "BK12", he went out of his way to make a pretty good sheath, but as he mentioned, a lot of people just go custom anyway, and throw the darn thing away, so it's almost a shame to go overboard. it's hard to please all people.
at a minimum, the sheath is a useful vehicle for storing the knife, and doing so safety. certainly the BK11/BK14 sheath does that. if you get one that doesn't dull your knife a lot (i've had a couple that fit better), all the better. the new ones are reputedly just fine, but i haven't played with any as yet.
I can understand frustrations on both sides of the issue but I still come back to having the proper sheath for the knife or don't provide one at all. I have a BK11 and bought it a couple of months ago. It has the BKT Kabar logo on it so I don't know what the age of the knife is but I had thought that the newer sheaths were being made of a different material.
I do know that I can get my knife shaving sharp but after a few days of drawing it in and out of the sheath it will not cut paper easily. A few passes on a steel rod and it's good to go again but it can be frustrating knowing that your knife didn't cut anything but a couple of sandwiches at lunch and now it's not as sharp.
It still is one of my favorite knives and opens beers like nobody's business.
well, people really need a sheath of some kind. getting fixed blade without one stinks. so a good basic functional safe sheath is a nice thing.
Maybe Ethan could chime in and let us know.
I understand that Becker tries to keep costs down but SO many people complain about the damned sheath issues that it's giving them a bad name, which is a shame.
people shouldn't be complaining about the new ones. the old ones, yah. the biggest issue is putting that new edge on right away. a lot of draws with the factory edge, which is at 220 or so, should really groove up the sheath nice.
a small jig saw or other blade that fits in there can do up a good groove pretty quickly on the old (and new) sheaths.
back in the day, the original sheaths were some kind of thermal plastic - might actually have been kydex, because when they got really loose, i was able to fix them with a heat gun and a clamp. TIGHT.
I ordered a new Bk14 two weeks ago (received with the older glassed sheath) and showed it to a couple of people at work. They liked the size and feel of the knife but lost interest after learning about the dulling sheath issue and how it was (not) handled by Kabar/Becker. One ordered an Izula the next day.
I like the knife, but the factory sheath will be used as a shotgun target after buying or making a replacement for it.
pretty strange a new knife came with the glass sheath. try contacting KaBar and see what they'll do.
KaBar has been tinkering with the sheaths since they ran out of Original Camillus ones (don't recall if THOSE were GFN or not), and they'll probably continue to tinker as time goes on. they haven't been sitting on their butts about this. they've even replaced some sheaths for those who really wanted them and called. give them a chance to make it right.
:} :V
