New Cooper Cutlery knives?

This will offer some insight to shield, this is from an ebay listing.


Some knife Collectors find the shield Offensive, that has been said by some collectors, on various Knife Chatlines etc. One collector said that he would not collect this knife because of the shield that I put in it. SO BE IT. Here's the rest of the story behind the knife trademark and our Shield.

This shield and the trademark is in honor of My Grand Pa, Peter Cooper and his father William, and his father Benjamin who were Sharecroppers in Northern Kentucky, three generations that grew tobacco and Hemp.

Northern Kentucky Farmers grew Hemp. Northern Kentucky was the #1 producer in the United States. From the early 1800's until early 1940's Hemp was used for making rope etc. and was a played a key role in every major war. In World War 2, Hemp was Crucial, for the War Effort. Northern Kentucky Hemp farmers were Patriots and Honored so. I could go on and on about my family's heritage, they were poor sharecroppers that fought in every Major War from The Battle of Blue Licks to Korea. Poor to Most, But Rich to me, in memory and heritage. Patriots to the Core. But I get it some people just don't want a Hemp leaf on their knife, so for those folks we do offer other shields.

Best regards,
 
The knife should cost $1 less for every typo in that eye-roll-inducing sales pitch.
 
I don’t care one way or another about the leaf shield. For me it’s about putting out a product that matches the price. If the whole hemp sharecropper story is true why not run with it from the beginning? This community loves a good historical based story to go with the product.
 
Pollack said:
This will offer some insight to shield, this is from an ebay listing.


Some knife Collectors find the shield Offensive, that has been said by some collectors, on various Knife Chatlines etc. One collector said that he would not collect this knife because of the shield that I put in it. SO BE IT. Here's the rest of the story behind the knife trademark and our Shield.

This shield and the trademark is in honor of My Grand Pa, Peter Cooper and his father William, and his father Benjamin who were Sharecroppers in Northern Kentucky, three generations that grew tobacco and Hemp.

Northern Kentucky Farmers grew Hemp. Northern Kentucky was the #1 producer in the United States. From the early 1800's until early 1940's Hemp was used for making rope etc. and was a played a key role in every major war. In World War 2, Hemp was Crucial, for the War Effort. Northern Kentucky Hemp farmers were Patriots and Honored so. I could go on and on about my family's heritage, they were poor sharecroppers that fought in every Major War from The Battle of Blue Licks to Korea. Poor to Most, But Rich to me, in memory and heritage. Patriots to the Core. But I get it some people just don't want a Hemp leaf on their knife, so for those folks we do offer other shields.

Best regards,
Click to expand...

Hemp eh, that's why the knife came in a plastic sandwich baggie like a cheap bag of ditch weed? Sounds like they are trying to backpedal.
 
Cooper achieved his goal.
He's got y'all talking about his knives.
"The only bad press is  no press." is a political axiom, I believe.
The more talk, the higher he gets in the various search engine results.

Oh, do a web search for "hemp use during world war two".
The US government did use hemp, for boot laces and construction of parachute manufacture, but hemp remained an illegal crop.
The government ignored its own laws (like that is something new or unusual 🙄) concerning hemp from 1939 to 1945.
 
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afishhunter said:
The government ignored its own laws (like that is something new or unusual 🙄) concerning hemp from 1939 to 1945.
Click to expand...
They didn't ignore the laws, exactly.

"During World War II, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was lifted briefly to allow for hemp fiber production to create ropes for the U.S. Navy but after the war hemp reverted to its de facto illegal status.[1]"


I remember when I was a kid, I heard people say that marijuana smelled like burning rope. That didn't make sense to me because most of the rope I encountered was made of nylon.
 
Pollack said:
This will offer some insight to shield, this is from an ebay listing.


Some knife Collectors find the shield Offensive, that has been said by some collectors, on various Knife Chatlines etc. One collector said that he would not collect this knife because of the shield that I put in it. SO BE IT. Here's the rest of the story behind the knife trademark and our Shield.

This shield and the trademark is in honor of My Grand Pa, Peter Cooper and his father William, and his father Benjamin who were Sharecroppers in Northern Kentucky, three generations that grew tobacco and Hemp.

Northern Kentucky Farmers grew Hemp. Northern Kentucky was the #1 producer in the United States. From the early 1800's until early 1940's Hemp was used for making rope etc. and was a played a key role in every major war. In World War 2, Hemp was Crucial, for the War Effort. Northern Kentucky Hemp farmers were Patriots and Honored so. I could go on and on about my family's heritage, they were poor sharecroppers that fought in every Major War from The Battle of Blue Licks to Korea. Poor to Most, But Rich to me, in memory and heritage. Patriots to the Core. But I get it some people just don't want a Hemp leaf on their knife, so for those folks we do offer other shields.

Best regards,
Click to expand...

An eBay listing seems like an odd place to go on the defensive about the shield. It’s also interesting that he’s selling the knives himself on eBay when his dealers are out of stock, and with photos that look like they were taken with an early 2000’s flip phone. 🤣

Definitely seems like backpedaling to me. As jmgruber jmgruber points out, they used the shield on knives branded Weed & Co. so I think the implication is pretty obvious (and it isn’t hemp sharecroppers). As heavily as they like to lean on the American-knives-like-your-grandpa-used-to-carry thing, you’d think they would’ve used that story from the start to market these if that was really the intention behind it.

Personally I don’t care one way or the other about the shield. I think it’s kinda tacky, but if someone else likes it and they can sell it, more power to ‘em. I still have reservations about the company and their product (that have nothing to do with a shield). I’m curious to see what they turn out next, and I wish them luck, but so far I’m not a buyer.
 
r8shell said:
They didn't ignore the laws, exactly.

"During World War II, the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 was lifted briefly to allow for hemp fiber production to create ropes for the U.S. Navy but after the war hemp reverted to its de facto illegal status.[1]"


I remember when I was a kid, I heard people say that marijuana smelled like burning rope. That didn't make sense to me because most of the rope I encountered was made of nylon.
Click to expand...
I'd forgotten the part of  why hemp was outlawed. It grows naturally pretty much everywhere (unlike tobacco that only grows in a relatively small area) which made it extremely difficult - if not impossible - to tax it.
 
afishhunter said:
I'd forgotten the part of  why hemp was outlawed. It grows naturally pretty much everywhere (unlike tobacco that only grows in a relatively small area) which made it extremely difficult - if not impossible - to tax it.
Click to expand...
If you want to know the reason it was outlawed, look up the connection between hemp, William Randolph
Hearst and DuPont Chemical Corp......
 
JohnDF said:
At every turn, the guy sounds like a used car salesman.
Click to expand...
As reference has been made to WWII, an unpleasant person once said that the most important is the buzz, be it good or bad...
Still working!
Personally I'm not interested and would put it in a drawer next to the tee with the Che's head! 😊😊😊

Ps : Hemp does not necessarily grow for marijuana. Only one kind. It is currently cultivated in many countries for many purposes, including textile, rope, bird seeds, isolation, biofuel, etc. Trying to smoke any of these would (at least) give a good headache! 😂
 
The history of Hemp is indeed interesting, it can be argued that Du Pont wanted to expand its production/monopoly of nylon rope and thus agitated politically to suppress Hemp cultivation. Hemp, a competitor, being a valid and sustainable alternative, the political agitation was largely presented as a 'health' or 'moral' issue : Hemp is a drug it must be banned. Only it isn't.

Then in WW II the ban was lifted as rope was in critical supply. I believe that in 2018 the US Fed govt made the distinction between Hemp & Marijuana the former having a max THC content of 0.3% whereas the latter will have 5-30+ %. The leaves look very similar but the plants do not, Hemp is part of the cannabis family of plants, it grows very high up to 3.5m and has its leaves at the top, most is the stalk whereas Marijuana a cultivar cannabis species is much smaller, squatter and bushy with the all important dense flower buds containing high THC content. Hemp is used in rope, textiles, cosmetics et al. and is a biodegradable item unlike plastic rope, the US ruling in 2018 was, I believe, to clarify between the varieties of cannabis rather than blanketing them all drugs/illegal. Jolipapa Jolipapa is correct a lot of birdseed much relished by finches is Hemp seed, couple of years ago my bird feeder had weird very tall cannabis like plants growing around them. but good luck with getting high on it you'd need to smoke about 10 kg of it and kill yourself with lung damage in the process :eek::D Rather like if you were trying to kill yourself with arsenic by eating kilos of apple seeds, might happen.

Putting this leaf on a Traditional knife was bound to ATTRACT ATTENTION and this has magically worked. Making connexions to Weed & co ironmongers or to poor sharecroppers growing Hemp as a living might be true, but it might also be purposefully ambiguous...Can't really see the majority of Traditional buyers being wild with enthusiasm over this leaf but...I couldn't care less about its alleged drug connotations, take it as you will and think of the imbecilic furore GEC got into over its Beer Scout shield :rolleyes: It's an aesthetic for me, just do not think iHemp leaf works on a knife, I also dislike the folksy kitsch Guitar shields that GEC put out, but other enthuse over them.

At the end of the day are the Weed/Cooper knives genuine, are they quality, are they attractive, competitive, are they decent users, are they priced reasonably, do they hold up, do you want more of them?? Jury still well out, as it should be.

Thanks, Will
 
Alex.Y. Alex.Y. Thanks. Just my personal preference Alex :D Tango maybe, but it was also matched to some bizarre looking Acrylics too I seem to remember. I didn't much like the Boot shield either, looks contrived (like the Guitar and Hemp leaf) but a lot of people contend this. If you want an advertising slogan, stick to etching it on the scales or blade :)

Let's see what the next Cooper release brings :thumbsup: It might change our minds...particularly if the reality matches the marketing spiel.
 
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