I think it needs to be judged on a case by case basis................. I think it takes a lot of effort to equal what factory knives can be let alone surpass it. People that assert that homebaked / handmade offerings are necessarily better I find a bit naïve. I don't think it would take long at all to find some pics of some real monstrosities that have been homegrown, and who knows how many of them test their heat treats................................ There's also a sympathetic magic type thing that infects a lot of the thinking here, as if when you hold a handmade tool it links you to something else. When I pick up a pair of forceps they do not link me to elves in Middle Earth nor the piss-poor child in Pakistan that almost certainly made them by hand. Only a cretin would think they would, well same goes for knives and that totally imagined relationship that seems to exist in the minds of so many consumers. Ideally, a knife stands or falls on its own merit, and no examination of the back story is required to prop it up..................That said, look at JK knives for example: He's wide open to knocking up designs that doesn't exist elsewhere. Mebe there's a very good reason why nobody else makes that shape. Conversely, he can make something that's a great shape for what you want that you just can't get off the shelf...................There's also the HT. Some hobby makers give me no confidence that what they produce is any better than what a big commercial outfit can do. On the flipside look at two classics like 1095 and 440C. You seldom see 440C off the shelf harder than 58 and with 1095 often even lower. Custom makers have habitually squeezed more potential from both those steels.......................Also, I think it depends on how much the user brings. Some people still marvel at knives that come sharp enough to shave arm hair and use epithets like laser sharp and scary sharp to describe them. Some are so stuck with what they get NIB that when it isn't in a NIB state any more they are helpless and have to send if off to be sharpened, or to a spa. Others of us look at knives as tools with potential and know we will re-profile an F1 immediately, so none of that means anything.................Last, and just for illustration because I don't want to imply anything negative about his work as by all accounts it is great but consider the Phil Wilson Southfork. The differences were apparent when Ankerson stuck one side by side against the Spyderco version. I think if I had them both in my possession after a while of me doing stuff with them I'd be hard pressed to tell one from the other without some very deliberate and contrived testing. For me, I don't think there's anything that would be disclosed in fine lab measurements that I'd be willing to pay a premium for a in a real world user in this instance.
These Survive Knives I think will be a great investment grade knife. Depends on what you are going to use it for as well.
