Newbie

[L1235]

Am looking for some heirarchy of folding knife quality, without belt clips, with a decent length blade, aroung 4", without a cheap handle. Have owned Gerbers, how do they stack up? Thanks

 

[thegeek574]

first, welcome to the forum.
are you looking for a pocket knife with no clip? gerber has gone down in quality over the past few years as they have sent a lot of their production to china.
I can not recommend anything until I have a price range to work with. what is the max you are willing to spend?

 

[YardbirdUSA]

most spyderco & benchmade have pocket clips you can remove.. your first question should be , knife use.. then price range..after that people will recomend things for you..

 

[MTHall720]

I agree that if you can figure a price range that would help.

 

[DocWilly]

Gerber is at the bottom of the totem pole, IMO. All Chinese made and mystery steels on low end models. Here are some popular recommendations for 3.5-4" knives with Brands.

Kershaw Skyline ($35): Very popular edc and gentleman's folder
Buck Vantage Force line ($40-100): update to the popular Vantage line
Spyderco Resistance ($40): 4 inch version of the uber popular Tenacious
Cold Steel Recon 1 ($60): Hard Duty tactical folder
Spyderco Endura ($50-$60): quality folder with excellent VG-10 steel
Benchmade Griptilian ($80-100): very popular model with 154CM steel
Spyderco Stretch ($83): similar to the endura
Spyderco Paramilitary 2 ($110): quality tactical folder

Obviously there a ton of other choices but these are some of the most popular. Kershaw, Buck, and CRKT make some high value options. Spyderco and Benchmade tend to be higher end.

 

[res1cue]

Good list Docwilly.. not much to add to that, but 50-100 is a very good start to how much you want to spend.. there is a big diff in sub-50 dollar knives and >50 dollar knives. after you hit 100, you are paying more for increasingly less "better features"

But it won't be long before you start itching for more and higher-end blades

 

[L1235]

Spyderco Stretch FRN $75 shipped on ebay. Who's the cheapest online Knife warehouse? Imagine this knife with some fancy hardwood handles.......anyone sell such an upgrade? Thanks

 

[Talesin]

I know that there are guys on the forums here that do that kind of work, but I am relatively new myself, so I don't know them yet. You might try asking in the knifemakers area.