Rick Hinderer sent Cease and Desist to Youtuber for saying the steel was soft in his knife?

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nattynarwhal said:
He said that the 59-61 range on hinderers heat treat was a "garbage spec". While I personally would not have used those words myself, I definitely would consider it less than optimal. Legally speaking, is that not an opinion though? Are we not allowed to speak about the opinions we have pertaining to certain manufacturers anymore?
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Actually, no, it's probably not considered an opinion, because TK is presenting himself as knowledgeable enough to make that claim. Also, again, he hasn't stated his stance in an opinion-statement way. There very much is a difference, and if someone who didn't know any better saw TK's livestream and didn't know anything about Hinderer Knives, they might very well be inclined to believe that TK has the knowledge and expertise to make these claims, and thus Hinderer loses a sale.

Understand, I'm not defending Hinderer, or trying to slam TK here, but let's be honest. TK ranted on multiple streams, and tried to turn this situation into a huge deal, and has presented himself as an expert who is making the statements he's making from a background of expertise. TK really has only himself to blame. You poke the bull enough, no one should be surprised when you get the horns.
 
sgt1372 said:
As someone trained as a lawyer, I have to say that "words have consequences." People on the Net seem to forget this.

Every person or business has the right to defend his/its reputation as a consequence of any false statements (written or verbal) made against them, especially, in the case of a business, when such statements result in any loss of business and/or income.

A "cease and desist" letter is NOT a legal action. It's a "warning" and it's up to the recipient whether s/he wants to take heed of it or not.
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His best "defense" was to simply say "sorry, my bad and we'll fix the issue". The wordy litigious-pending defense he chose makes it look suspicious and less than truthful. IMO.
 
shane45-1911 said:
His best "defense" was to simply say "sorry, my bad and we'll fix the issue". The defense he chose makes it look suspicious and less than truthful. IMO.
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The issue here is that TK made a bunch of statements, and multiple livestreams wherein he completely trashed Hinderer's knives, and then a bunch of his followers went and did the same thing. A lot of comments of "Well, I'll never buy another Hinderer AGAIN!" were made by followers of several IG guys. It's my understanding that RHK wasn't immediately combative (but it became that way after repeated statements made), and candidly, the way TK was comporting himself on his videos wasn't any better.

Perhaps if they both took a step back, and discussed this calmly, some other outcome might be in effect.

But hey, I'll admit it. If I was RH (an industry icon) and some nobody knife modder from Instaspam was trash-talking my product, saying it's crap because HE says so, I'd be pissed too.
 
shane45-1911 said:
His best "defense" was to simply say "sorry, my bad and we'll fix the issue". The wordy litigious-pending defense he chose makes it look suspicious and less than truthful. IMO.
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Is the letter accurate when it states that the knife TK used to come to his conclusion was a second hand knife that was altered by having the flipper tab ground off?
 
Quiet said:
The issue here is that TK made a bunch of statements, and multiple livestreams wherein he completely trashed Hinderer's knives, and then a bunch of his followers went and did the same thing. A lot of comments of "Well, I'll never buy another Hinderer AGAIN!" were made. It's my understanding that RHK wasn't immediately combative, and candidly, the way TK was comporting himself on his videos wasn't any better.

Perhaps if they both took a step back, and discussed this calmly, some other outcome might be in effect.

But hey, I'll admit it. If I was RH (an industry icon) and some nobody knife modder from Instaspam was trash-talking my product, saying it's crap because HE says so, I'd be pissed too.
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The trash talk, just to put things in perspective comes from TK's love of optimal performance. He's said multiple times that he owns hinderer knives himself, and that he wishes the heat treat and geometry on them were more optimized for what the primary function of a knife should be. He may well have bitten off more than he can chew here, but that doesn't;t make his criticism any less valid of the actual product.

Whatever the outcome, RH is definitely not getting the best PR out of this fiasco.
 
Quiet said:
Yeah, no. The issue here is that many of those 7,000 subs are a "who's who" of the IG knife guys/pages, so a bunch of them were reposting and discussing this situation, which has gotten it far greater exposure than it might have otherwise.
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Read the comment section on his IG page. The vast, overwhelming majority of comments is in support of transparentknives. I'm not saying the court of public opinion is right here, or in any case, I'm just making the point that this could be a case of the Streisand Effect. Most of us would have never heard of this issue, but now that legal action is threatened in the way that it has, I'm certain this story is going to spread much further now than would have had Hinderer would have just ignored it. The "far greater exposure" is now going to be directly because of his threats of legal action.
 
benchwarmer380 said:
Is the letter accurate when it states that the knife TK used to come to his conclusion was a second hand knife that was altered by having the flipper tab ground off?
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My understanding is that is correct. Not only was the flipper tab ground off, but some modification to the blade itself might have been done which transparent readily admitted in his own video.
 
3D Anvil said:
for the Bugouts, he custom fits them for each knife, because the BM tolerances are too wide to mass produce them.
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Wait, then how can Benchmade mass produce them?

Transparent knives is just a guy doing reblades in his parents' garage. He tested one Hinderer blade on his HRC tester, and it was .4 lower than spec. Hinderer asked him to send in the blade so they could test it, but as far as I know, Transparent knives never sent it in to them or Peters for testing. Since then he hasn't stopped talking about Hinderer based on that one test.

Is this an overreaction from Hinderer? Maybe, but it seems that they have asked this guy to cooperate with them, provide the defective blade to them, and come up with a solution, but this guy hasn't done that. I'm sure this letter isn't the first time someone at Hinderer has asked him to cool it off.

Edit: grammar
 
Quiet said:
The issue here is that TK made a bunch of statements, and multiple livestreams wherein he completely trashed Hinderer's knives, and then a bunch of his followers went and did the same thing. A lot of comments of "Well, I'll never buy another Hinderer AGAIN!" were made by followers of several IG guys. It's my understanding that RHK wasn't immediately combative (but it became that way after repeated statements made), and candidly, the way TK was comporting himself on his videos wasn't any better.

Perhaps if they both took a step back, and discussed this calmly, some other outcome might be in effect.

But hey, I'll admit it. If I was RH (an industry icon) and some nobody knife modder from Instaspam was trash-talking my product, saying it's crap because HE says so, I'd be pissed too.
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Fair enough. There are always two sides to every story, and I will wait for the truths to unravel themselves. I will be the first to admit that a lot of my statements are based solely upon reading Rick's response. There is perhaps, warranted reason for that response, even if it does appear to be going from 0-100 a bit prematurely, IMO.
 
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Quiet said:
The issue here is that TK made a bunch of statements, and multiple livestreams wherein he completely trashed Hinderer's knives, and then a bunch of his followers went and did the same thing. A lot of comments of "Well, I'll never buy another Hinderer AGAIN!" were made by followers of several IG guys. It's my understanding that RHK wasn't immediately combative (but it became that way after repeated statements made), and candidly, the way TK was comporting himself on his videos wasn't any better.

Perhaps if they both took a step back, and discussed this calmly, some other outcome might be in effect.

But hey, I'll admit it. If I was RH (an industry icon) and some nobody knife modder from Instaspam was trash-talking my product, saying it's crap because HE says so, I'd be pissed too.
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This isn’t wrong. Haha.

However, I think it’s just publicity grab on both sides of the fence.
I could most definitely be wrong…I have been wrong before. Haha
 
It seems to me that the "collectors" segment of the knife consumers collective is a two edged sword (yes, an intended pun!) for knife manufacturers. On one hand, they are a dominant influence that drives demand, yet are also often situated to crap all over a chosen manufacturer with little to no accountability. I guess you take the good with the bad.
 
DayofReckoning said:
Read the comment section on his IG page. The vast, overwhelming majority of comments is in support of transparentknives. I'm not saying the court of public opinion is right here, or in any case, I'm just making the point that this could be a case of the Streisand Effect. Most of us would have never heard of this issue, but now that legal action is threatened in the way that it has, I'm certain this story is going to spread much further now than would have had Hinderer would have just ignored it. The "far greater exposure" is now going to be directly because of his threats of legal action.
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I read all the comments going on back when he first posted up excerpts from his livestream.

Also, the fact that it's going to get much greater exposure hurts TK as much as it hurts RHK.
 
nattynarwhal said:
The trash talk, just to put things in perspective comes from TK's love of optimal performance. He's said multiple times that he owns hinderer knives himself, and that he wishes the heat treat and geometry on them were more optimized for what the primary function of a knife should be. He may well have bitten off more than he can chew here, but that doesn't;t make his criticism any less valid of the actual product.

Whatever the outcome, RH is definitely not getting the best PR out of this fiasco.
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I don't care about TK's "love of optimal performance". He decided that he was in a place where he could talk trash about a classic product from one of the icons of the modern folding knife design, because he's a smalltime IG knife modder. The fact is, whatever TK wants or believes doesn't matter, nor is it an objective measure of...well, anything.

RHK has sold thousands of XM-18s, and they've been beaten to death and back, should people be like "Oh man, this one dude on IG said these are crap, I'll never buy one again!"? What was TK's goal? Oh, right, for RHK to change their methods and objectives to suit what TK believes is the right way.
 
nattynarwhal said:
My understanding is that is correct. Not only was the flipper tab ground off, but some modification to the blade itself might have been done which transparent readily admitted in his own video.
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If that is the case, then whatever testing he did does not show that the issue stemmed from RHK.

Of course it is possible, but impossible to verify.

I'd be upset too if that was what was used to bash my name and product.

shane45-1911 said:
I will not speculate. ;)
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Then why are you speculating that RHK is at fault?
 
Quiet said:
I don't care about TK's "love of optimal performance". He decided that he was in a place where he could talk trash about a classic product from one of the icons of the modern folding knife design, because he's a smalltime IG knife modder. The fact is, whatever TK wants or believes doesn't have any basis in reality, nor is it an objective measure of...well, anything.

RHK has sold thousands of XM-18s, and they've been beaten to death and back, should people be like "Oh man, this one dude on IG said these are crap, I'll never buy one again!"? What was TK's goal? Oh, right, for RHK to change their methods and objectives to suit what TK believes is the right way.
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I'm glad your benchmark for knife performance is how many times it can be beaten to death. Not every maker has that objective in mind though, and they should have the right to speak freely about how they define performance. Now that may cost him, but he'll always have consumers who fill up his books because they agree.
 
shane45-1911 said:
Fair enough. There are always two sides to every story, and I will wait for the truths to unravel themselves. I will be the first to admit that a lot of my statements are based solely upon reading Rick's response. There is perhaps, warranted reason for that response.
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I'd recommend going back and viewing his videos. He definitely tried to rouse the court of public opinion against Hinderer, when Hinderer didn't bow down and kiss his shoes. That's my take from his videos.
 
benchwarmer380 said:
If that is the case, then whatever testing he did does not show that the issue stemmed from RHK.

Of course it is possible, but impossible to verify.

I'd be upset too if that was what was used to bash my name and product.



Then why are you speculating that RHK is at fault?
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His main issue was not that the knife was slightly out of spec, but that the 59-61 spec is in itself sub optimal for a steel like cpm 20CV. He did put that rather harshly though, calling the product garbage, which I would not have done myself. But to me that sounds like an opinion on the steel and heat treat and not defamation or anti competitiveness.
 
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