Spyderco is JUNK

I dropped my Spyderench and broke the tip off the blade. Spyderco CS "Reground" the blade so well, it looks new to me. It also seems to not be any shorter. Dunno what else to say, other than the Mariner has been discontinued and may have had something to do with replacing parts or not.
 
Gunnerguy, since you are asking for responses --esp. by the belligerent nature of your topic title--I will gladly oblige and take you to task.

You'd have to be a near-idiot in the first place to break the blade in such a way as you described. Further, when Spyderco tells you "No" to your request for THEM :eek: to pay for YOUR boo-boo, you need to fess up and just take full responsibility for it and quit slandering a reputable company in a public forum based on such rediculously spurious evidence.

This thread is your best case against Spyderco products & services?
Hell no, this is obscene!

I call it like I see it.... :o

BTW, I don't give **** if you collect and sell Spydies--it's irrelevant.
:barf:

:rolleyes:
 
I'm always amazed at the number of people that will call someone a liar just because their experience with a company differs from someone else's.

I'm also amazed at the number of people who will state that Spyderco will ALWAYS do this, or Spyderco NEVER does that, or Spyderco NEVER said that, etc...
How the hell would you know what Spyderco will do, won't do, never does, or always does? Do you run the company? Are you personal friends will Sal, and have the inside track?

I'm also amazed at the lack of reading comprehension that quite a few people seem to be afflicted with. Or maybe it's just a case of being too eager to take the time to understand what someone actually wrote, as opposed to what you feel like claiming they wrote.

Being passionate about something does not excuse or validate such behavior, and is most certainly not a credit to a company or product line, and it also reflects badly on the person doing it.
 
Gunnerguy,

Since you seem to believe that Spyderco knives are junk, go-ahead and send all of your junk Spyderco knives to me, and I'll see that they are disposed-of properly...(In my knife-drawer!.:D.).

Thank-You!
 
Y'know, I'm prepared to defend Spyderco on this one, too, but let's not put words in the guy's mouth.
It seems to me that Gunnerguy had four real problems with the situation:

First, that the knife broke. Hey, it happens. I ain't sayin' one way or the other whether the blade was abused, 'cause I don't know. But it sounds like a reasonably old knife was subjected to some reasonably hard work. Blades break.

Second, that the break wasn't covered by warrantee. Spyderco recieved a knife that was broken in a suspicious way. A way that is consistent with prying. They looked at his story and the physical evidence, while <i>we</i> only have his story ;)
They made the best decision they could.

Third, that Spyderco wouldn't replace the blade. Well... The knife is discontinued, so they may don't have spare parts lying around. The knife is rivited together, so they may not be able to disassemble it cleanly. And finally, blade replacement is neither covered in the warrantee nor offered as a paid service, so they certainly had no obligation to do it.

Fourth and most important, he feels like he was "spit in the face by them" and "treated like yesterday's garbage". Now, if this is based on the fact that they wouldn't do any of the above, then the claims are ridiculous. But there may be more.

So, Gunnerguy, was the tone of conversation with Spyderco abusive in any way? Or anything else?
 
I'm inclined to be skeptical about this incident too, but we should all try to remember that everyone makes mistakes. Spyderco has a great track record for both quality control and customer service, which makes an incident like this highly unusual, but not impossible.

The knife may have snapped because of a manufacturing flaw. The customer service rep may have been having a bad day and jumped to some conclusions. We all have bad days.

--Bob Q
 
Ray,
Do I understand properly that you have felt yourself treated inadequately because SPYDERCO refused to replace broken blade on your Mariner knife?
Response me here, please, if I’m wrong

Well, but how could you replace the blade if entire knife construction do not provide knife taking apart at all? Or, maybe, you are going to suppose that SPYDERCO could do something anyone else couldn’t do, say wonders? Are you any conscious of Mariner construction and engineering? Don’t you think that to replace your broken blade is the same that to replace entire your knife?

Next, a lot (believe me please, really a lot, few hundreds at least) of knives went through my hands and I have broken only one knife in my life. So I do know that to break knife blade you should be totally unconscious what are you doing or to do it intentionally...

I also would like to see intelligent knife discussion at this Forum instead of some kind of shower slandering saying “this is junk” or “someone is Troll” with more than disputable justification. But this is my problem, you don’t have to share such thoughts...

Last but not least, are you going to go with BENCHMADE now? Nice, BM is very respectable manufacturer, they offer more than decent knives. I have pretty good deal of them and I’m happy with them.
But tell me please what are you going to say if you will break the blade of non-taking-apart BM knife, say Accent, and BM will refuse to replace your blade only?
Or maybe you are sure that such things as blade breakage are covered with BM or any other company’s warranty?

Please, make me this pleasure and answer my questions point-by-point, if possible.
 
Originally posted by F150
Do I smell a TROLL?


Blades don't just magicly snap in half without being used in a capacity beyond what the blade was designed for. I am having serious doubts about just how factual your account of what happened is. Either your exagerating or not telling us the whole story.
Click to expand...

Uh, well, F150, yeah, blades DO sometimes snap in half without being abused. There are a number of things that can happen, including a bad heat treat, but the higher probability is that there may have been some impurities or inclusions in that particular piece of stock. Impurities and inclusions can induce substantial stress risers and cause a very small bending load to result in a clean, across-the-blade fracture... a quick brittle "snap" and it's over with.

This happened to me with an 8" Henckels chef's knife. About 1" of the tip snapped off WITHOUT any incursion of a side or bending load. It snapped like it was at Rc65 and hadn't been tempered. Clean break, no evidence of any bending load (since I didn't do any bending or prying.)

There was probably a stress riser from some aspect of their process... probably impurities in the steel.

I sent it back... wrote a note, suggested their metallurgists look at it under the scope, and Henckels sent me a new knife after about 4 weeks (which I thought was a long time). I don't know if they actually analyzed it or just sent me a knife.

On the subject of Spyderco's response: if they had a metallurgist or materials guy look at the blade under a scope, and then decided not to warranty, I would take that as acceptable, and that the knife had been abused based on analytical evidence of a bending fracture. If they didn't bother to do any kind of root cause analysis (bending damage at the break site looks very different than brittle fracture) and just proclaimed "it was abused", that would be a pretty poor response. If they were not going to warranty the knife, I would expect some kind of specific, analytical response as to why not, and would have asked for as much myself.

Bad steel can and does make it well past QA/QC sometimes. That kind of stuff should be warrantied.

And finally, I'm with "mikemck"... a bunch of you guys have jumped waaaay into conclusions, and into taking this guy to task without enough info.
 
Rdangerer,
Probably you are right in theory, but...
It is well known that production knife manufacturers do not heat treat their blades individually. So where are other similarly self-snapping blades from this production bunch?
We could know about them or we couldn’t but SPYDERCO probably should have back them all, so no needs to search each individually.

Another interesting point – no justification is required if the knife is warranted and replaced but a lots, lots justifications would be asked if it isn’t, right?
 
Gunnerguy, you are way out of line with your title "Spyderco is JUNK". If they are junk then why in hell have you been carrying that Mariner for so many years? Spyderco no longer makes that model and you can't even replace the blade on one if you had one. You might have damaged it a long time ago or you might have just gotten a blade with a weak spot. How many years have you used that knife? I imagine you have gotten every pennies worth out of it by now so just buy a new knife. I have a Spyderco Military that is cracked across the opening hole because someone dropped it. Did I send it back to Spyderco, no, it wasn't their fault somebody dropped it. Yes, I do consider Sal a friend and yes I am taking his side. I have owned over 150 Spydercos and never had a problem with a blade just snapping in half from normal use. Rant mode off :)
michael
 
Serg,

Re-read my post.

I think you'll see my emphasis on some kind of inclusion or impurity in the blade stock material as being the most likely root cause of a blade that snaps without undue bending force. Heat treat can't heal these types of problems.

Production houses surely heat treat in big batches, in big ovens. Some would argue this leads to consistency (all blades saw same treatment), some would argue that big ovens have hot and cold spots. They are both probably right depending on company and technique.

Some would argue that heat treating and careful testing by custom makers in small ovens leads to more consistent blades, due to attention to detail. Others would argue that custom makers who don't use great care are more likely to foul up a batch than are big, computerized commercial heat treaters.

The major point is that flaws in the original steel stock can't be healed by a good heat treat.

I will say that a blanket statement "Spyderco is Junk" is pretty reactionary and extreme. Spyderco is one of the best production vendors out there IMHO, along with BM and Microtech, among others.

In any case, here in this thread we have few details and lots of jumping to conclusions.

I think Gunnerguy should have asked Spyderco for more justification of their policy to not replace or repair his knife in some semi-equivalent manner.

I'm pretty much done here and have no interest in further debate.
 
As always, your level headed posts outlining 'just the facts' are greatly appreciated...I could learn a lot from you two.

Thanks again. (Ignore the sig line, it doesn't apply here...)

Mel
 
Originally posted by mikemck
I'm always amazed at the number of people that will call someone a liar just because their experience with a company differs from someone else's.

I'm also amazed at the number of people who will state that Spyderco will ALWAYS do this, or Spyderco NEVER does that, or Spyderco NEVER said that, etc...
How the hell would you know what Spyderco will do, won't do, never does, or always does? Do you run the company? Are you personal friends will Sal, and have the inside track?
Click to expand...

I believe this was posted in response to Carlos's post. FYI, Carlos is a Spyderco distributor, and yes, is a personal friend of Sal Glesser.

As to the issue at hand. Spyderco doesn't replace just the blade because, on most of their models, it's simply impossible to make sure the replacement blade is fitted as securely as the original. FRN handles have the pivot press-fit into them and secured with press-fit washers. Contrary to how it may sound, it's very secure, but the pivot would have to be drilled out to remove and replace the blade, nearly impossible to do without also causing significant damage to the handles. SS knives are much the same, being press-fit, then ground smooth and finely polished, or if the handle has liners, the pins don't even show through to the surface of the handle scales. Again, replacing the blade means a massive drill-out job that would damage the handle. Even if they could replace the blade, Spyderco makes their knives on a "limited spare parts" basis, with only enough of the major components made to build the batch of knives, with very few parts of any kind to do warranty repairs/replacements. Screws and clips, though, are produced in larger quantities, since they're relatively inexpensive and people do tend to lose them over time. Besides, most clips will fit more than one model, so you don't have to have an extensive stock of spares laying around anyway.

If you talked to someone on the phone and got an impolite runaround from them, it's perfectly understandable that you're angry, and also understandable that you would want to support brands that you fully believe in, but don't throw away years of good experience with the brand because of one bad experience. It would be like giving up a sport you enjoy playing because you had an off day and didn't play well. If the knife has given you many good years, it's time to retire it and buy a new one. Hopefully, the quality of the knife (and the fact that your old one served for so long before you even had to deal with CS) will outweigh that bad experience. Hopefully, if you ever have to call CS again, you'll get a better result.
 
Gunnerguy, if after all this attention and advice you're still convinced that Spyderco is "Junk" go ahead and list the Spyderco knives that you want to sell in the appropriate "For Sale" section. I think some of us may be interested if you have some models that are no longer available in the market. Further, since you deem them to be "junk," your asking prices should be very attractive to buyers.
 
rdangerer,

I appreciate your candor in this thread and you certainly bring up food for thought. Let me say that I'm not trying to argue with you, just trying to question the possibilities here.

If the Mariner did in fact have impurities in its stock, as could have been the case, wouldn't the snap have ocurred much earlier in the life of the knife? Gunneryguy claims to have carried it for many years and he says he was only cutting thin wood planks. It seems that if there had been a serious flaw in the manufacturing process, the knife would have broken way before a few years. I don't imagine that he carried it all that time and never used it before. I'm not being sarcastic, I'm genuinely wondering.

I don't know. You know more about the metallurgic process than I do. I understand that you don't want to get sucked in to anything here, so I respect it if you don't want to post anymore.
 
Originally posted by Liko
I believe this was posted in response to Carlos's post. FYI, Carlos is a Spyderco distributor, and yes, is a personal friend of Sal Glesser.
Click to expand...


You are correct in that part of my post was in response to what Carlos posted.

Specifically, he said

"AFAIK Spyderco never replaces blades on knives, and has never offered this as a service"

Which is obviously not correct, as Spyderco did in fact replace a blade for TOTC, as he clearly stated earlier in the thread.

The point being, there are exceptions to every rule, there are extenuating circumstances, and blanket statements are pretty pointless, overall, as they are always false.
 
Guys, I normally think of myself as a pretty good judge of character, but this time I think I was way off the mark. Judge for yourself... :rolleyes:

The following is an excerpt of an email I received from Gunnerguy on an unrelated pending knife transaction...I don't normally post private emails, but this is so rich I'll break my golden rule just this once...

--Caveats-- The original contact was made by Ray aka Gunnerguy, in response to a 'Knives wanted' ad I ran here...this before I realized Ray was the same knucklehead that had posted here about the bad Spyderco CS.

This is his third, and hopefully last email to me. The 'Paul' he refers to here is Mr. Paul Basch, of A.G. Russell Knives...two of the nicest folks I've ever met, two of the most respected people in the knife industry.

This loser is a real whack! Run, don't walk, if this guy looks you up. Enjoy! ;)

--------------------

My email...

Ray,

An item, any item, is only worth what someone will pay for it.

At the Eugene knife show a few weeks back, we paid $275 for a NIB Gerber fFH...we later saw a guy pay $575 for a similar knife...that's what he willing to pay.

Also, people will tell you that an item has a certain, usually high, value...especially if they don't have one, or have the money.

So, I've just got to ask, "did anyone actually offer you that much for it, or did they just say they thought it was worth that much?" There is a difference.

That being said, we collect Applegate/Fairbairn knives, and would like to add yours to our collection...the collection is for show, at knife shows, on the west coast.

Also, I'm not trying to lowball you...check my feedback on bladeforums.com or ebay...we're legit folks, and we'll offer you what you think is fair for the knife...within reason.

Sale or trade, either way works well for us. Are you interested in a trade?

We have a pretty extensive knife collection, mostly Randall's...is there something you'd like to trade for?

Also, please remember...the knife without the sheath is a serious liability, and the guys that told you it was worth more were stroking you.

Hell, don't take my word for it...contact Bruce Voyles or Paul Basch and ask what they'd give you for it...or list it on ebay.

Anyhoo, I'd love to hear back from you on what you decide to do with it, or what it sells for.

Let me know what you want for the knife in cash or trade, and maybe we can work something out.

v/r

Sheldon
--------------------------------

His response.....

Melvin/Sheldon/Whatever the **** your name is,

**** YOU *******, and I sincerly mean that. You're a little man who got caught trying to steal a very nice knife from someone who needed help. I understand you need to make money off of this knife but did you need to make 100%????

You're the type of **** who steals money from a blind mans cup and you wouldn't pay $10 for a $20 bill. Instead of making me a fair offer for a pretty rare & early knife, you tried to take advantage of my limited knowledge.

As far as Paul goes, he also tried to steal my knives rather than be honest with me. Until now I didn't dislike him but I don't make a living by taking advantage & ripping off people who don't know what they have.

I've been a gun dealer for 25+ years, so while I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed, I'm also not going to let some 3rd rate lowlife punk like you try to rip me off.

No hard feelings.

Ray
----------------------------

By the way, I offered him $200 on a knife worth $200 to me...but his buddy told him it was worth $450...I need friends like that.. :rolleyes:

Mel
 
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