New found respect for lower end knives!

[vwb563]

Well slap my rear and call me "spanky!" You don't have to spend a small fortune to get a decent knife these days! I recently acquired two knives, a Kershaw Tension and a CRKT "Walmart" Ripple and have found them both to be outstanding knives for the money. Fit and finish on both are pretty much perfect and compare with knives I've owned costing 3 to 4 times as much. Blades on both are well centered and blade opening and closing is smooth on both although the Ripple is super duper smooth having the ball bearing pivot system. The Ripple is a very thin, super light weight, aluminum handled, liner lock knife with a very keen sharp edged hollow ground blade. The Tension is a more robust, G10 over stainless steel, liner lock knife with a very stout blade with a high thin hollow grind which should slice very well despite its thickness. Blades on both are Chinese 8cr13mov stainless steel which from my former experiences with this steel should do fine for most daily cutting chores. This steel sharpens easily, holds its edge respectfully well, rolls rather than chip, and is very corrosion resistant. In my opinion either of these knives would be hard to beat for their retail price tags! Great job CRKT and Kershaw!

 

[Zuluninja]

there's plenty of worthy knives that go unnoticed due to a low price tag and sometimes because of the brand, but It's always good to find these quality bargains that don't leave you broke. Cheers,

 

[not2sharp]

We should keep in mind, that knife collector's aside, most of the craftmen, farmers, and other heavy everyday users of knives rely on the cheap knives found at Walmart, Home Depot and the like. These cheap knives are more than capable, they set the standard of user expectation. As one rural knife dealer put it to me when I asked him why he didn't carry a better quality of knife (this was 20 years ago and he was primarilly selling Frost Cutlery and Colonial), he said this is all that the typical farm hand can afford; he uses it for a year or two until the blade is worn away and then buys another.

n2s

 

[bladeboss]

Check out a Kershaw Crown.
Better Fit and Finish than my Benchmade.......

 

[shecky]

All said and done, knives are extremely mature technology, making the mass manufacture of solidly built, inexpensive knives an almost trivial feat. While we tend to obsess over cryptic numbers like D2 and VG-10, and assign wizard-like attributes to names like Reeve and Bos, the foundations for all this were hashed out centuries ago. We tend, as enthusiasts, to rediscover basic concepts over and over and attribute them to whatever esteemed brand du jour, forgetting how much today's stars are standing on the shoulders of giants.

 

[whetrock]

IMO the quality of the knives coming out of China are of more than serviceable quality and a great improvement of what was coming out of there several years ago. The CRKT Drifter and Kershaw half ton are two great examples.