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

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From the letter it sounds like Rick tried at least twice to contact the guy and explain the errors he was making.

Error #1: Using a modified and possibly second-hand knife that had the flipper tab GROUND OFF. This could easily have affected (lowered) hardness.

Error #2: The knife was STILL IN SPEC based on the margin of error of the testing method.

According to the letter, both of these were pointed out to the individual, and AFTER THAT he continued to make his misleading claims.

If all of that is accurate:

Screw that guy.

Sue the pants off him.
 
3D Anvil said:
It's a good question, but I'm not sure that they do mass produce them exactly the same, since they have many different scales, steels, and finishes. Brian found that he couldn't just use the same pattern and guarantee perfect action/lockup.

Well no, he also makes custom knives, or has in the past. FWIW, Ray Laconico is just a guy making custom knives in his garage. And if you want to play that game, Rick Hinderer is just a water jet guy who outsources his heat treats and grinds.

He actually tested a dozen Hinderer knives and this was the only one below spec. Why Rick Hinderer is so bent out of shape about it is beyond me.

I'm sure he would have been much more cooperative if Hinderer's reaction hadn't been to sh*t-talked him and claim he didn't know what he was talking about. I wouldn't have sent him the blade either!
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It's a shame that Hinderer didn't make their knives in such a way that would allow TK to profit from it. Just a shame.

Also, it was one knife out of spec? Can you explain TK's extreme overreaction to that?
 
POCEH KOCEB said:
He got few projects, I’m not sue if he ever completed those. He got his own blades that he puts mostly on Benchmades. Not all of them turns good, you’ll know it if you follow his IG stream. He is a knife modder, nowhere near close to knife maker as Laconico, your comparing is just un-realistic.

I’m not sure if you structure your statement this way intentionally, but he engaged his followers to trash Hinderer knives long before Hinderer sent him S&D letter.
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Exactly. One guy is an icon of the industry who at one time was one of the "Big Three". The other is a smalltime IG knife modder, and certainly not anyone of any weight or authority to be calling out one of the big guys, especially over what sounds to me like a faulty conclusion over a ridiculously small sample size.
 
POCEH KOCEB said:
He got few projects, I’m not sue if he ever completed those. He got his own blades that he puts mostly on Benchmades. Not all of them turns good, you’ll know it if you follow his IG stream. He is a knife modder, nowhere near close to knife maker as Laconico, your comparing is just un-realistic.

I’m not sure if you structure your statement this way intentionally, but he engaged his followers to trash Hinderer knives long before Hinderer sent him S&D letter.
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Dude, he wasn't "trashing" Hinderer knives. He said that he personally has bought multiple Hinderer knives and that he likes them. What he doesn't like is that Hinderer, and almost every other mass producer, uses a 59-61 hrc range for M390/20cv. He has a right to his opinion and he has a right to test the hardness of a blade that he payed for.
 
3D Anvil said:
Dude, he wasn't "trashing" Hinderer knives. He said that he personally has bought multiple Hinderer knives and that he likes them. What he doesn't like is that Hinderer, and almost every other mass producer, uses a 59-61 hrc range for M390/20cv. He has a right to his opinion and he has a right to test the hardness of a blade that he payed for.
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He has a right to his attempt to call out a maker, and get whatever he gets, is what I think you meant to say.
 
3D Anvil said:
Can you show me where he had an extreme overreaction? Because it looks to me like the only one who's overreacting here is Rick Hinderer.
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I can, because I watched it all unfold on IG, "dude". How about you? Did you see the whole drama, or nah? A smalltime IG nobody has whipped his fanbase into outrage over something that Hinderer has done for years, because his fans think his opinion is fact, when it isn't.
 
Blues said:
The one thing missing in this thread is Hoback's perspective as to which path would constitute the high road in this matter.



Too soon?

🤣
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Yes, because you beat me to it. Interesting that a certain "lawyer" would expend considerable energy defending a known fraud, and now he's here defending someone who's merely seeing the consequences of their actions.
 
Danke42 said:
Objection! Relevance!
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Blues said:
The one thing missing from this thread is Hoback's perspective as to which path would constitute the high road in this matter.



Too soon?

🤣
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Perhaps literally. I don't believe enough time has elapsed to see the effect on his business.
 
Both parties are at fault here.

My impression is this:

1. TK is a passionate dude who has dedicated a significant portion of his life to this stuff.
2. TK gets an apparently* soft-ish sample of an RH and goes on a bit of a rant. Rant might be the wrong word. The discussion is kind of all over the place. On the one hand, its about the specific sample. This component is supported by the actual Rockwell test, but I felt went too far given that the sample was only barely out of spec (if at all, especially considering standard test margins of error). On the other, the discussion is about the spec itself, which is probably right, but doesn't really recognize that this isn't really a RH-specific issue. There is also some reasonable but unflattering supposition going on.

*The mod was a flipper delete, which seems unlikely to affect the Rockwell on the flat.

I think it's important to recognize where this is coming from (in my opinion). TK is a knife "nerd" in the best way. His business "lives" in the gap between how production knife makers do things and how they *should* be done (in his view). I suspect some of this was partially fueled by some braggadocio, but it isn't wrong (again, IMO).

3. RH responds by, essentially, calling TK a clown who doesn't know what he is talking about (I am paraphrasing).

This, combined with some anti-asian sentiment (from onlookers, not from RH) is the worst kind of fuel for the fire.

Now, I get why RH might be pissed: he's got 1 knife out of many that is barely below spec (if at all) and entirely consistent with industry standards.

4. TK can't back down now, because saying he doesn't know what he is talking about essentially undermines TK's entire legitimacy as a business. And he wasn't really "wrong," just overzealous.

5. Because TK doubled down, RH serves a cease and desist. While I understand it, it seems like a pretty awful thing to do and significantly raises the possibility that everybody here loses. I can think of a bunch of different ways to have handled this better.

I tried to be even-handed in this summary, but it is probably clear where my sympathies are. You all can decide for yourselves, but I would encourage people to go look at the actual exchanges before forming any conclusions.
 
Rick's a tool and Hinderer tolerance are dog crap.

Imagine spending $100 on a full set of titanium hardware from Hinderer and the threaded inserts don't even fit through the scales. Not to mention the fact that a $50 Chinese made Civivi has better action than any Hinderer that I've ever handled... Or the fact that my ~$500 knife was shipped with an edge that couldn't even cleanly slice paper.
 
3D Anvil said:
Dude, he wasn't "trashing" Hinderer knives. He said that he personally has bought multiple Hinderer knives and that he likes them. What he doesn't like is that Hinderer, and almost every other mass producer, uses a 59-61 hrc range for M390/20cv. He has a right to his opinion and he has a right to test the hardness of a blade that he payed for.
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Nobody denies his right to test whoever knife he like, nor to have opinion.
‘But his opinion about what hardness Hinderers blades should be doesn’t worth jack $#!t.

Hinderer is the one to decide how hard his blades should be, this was already mentioned few times in the thread.

‘This modder, good or bad, have no business to go further than stating his opinion based on one hardness result, within the specs he found, IMO.
Hinderer would not send the S&D letter if it wasn’t the internet noise initiated and prolonged by TK, don’t you think ?
I seriously doubt RH knew who TK was before the fake social media criticism grew up enough so Hinderer paid attention to it.
 
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