Hi Knife Chop,
The OP certainly has a heck of a failure-of-quality-control, that is something I won't defend because it's just not defendable. That being said, I think the reason behind Koster's staying power is because he used to do solid gold work, but he got overextended by orders/stressed/life happened/etc, and his knife making enterprise began to slowly reflect those stresses.
In a post above I describe a condensed description of why I'm no longer a Koster fan - but it's based upon failure to follow through with his timelines and what is evidently a pattern of appeasement rather than straight-talk: it isn't the quality of his work, from my experience. I have 4 of his knives: Ironwood Bushmaster (perfect), Ironwood MUCK (almost perfect: the MUCK's edge grind was off by less than a millimeter toward the back and I fixed that quickly with the diamond rods on my Sharpmaker. The swedge is only just perceptually off - you really have to look to notice.), G10 Survivor (perfect, fun as hell, but not tremendously utilitarian for my purposes
), and a G10 Bushmaster, which has handle ergos that are not for me, which is what led to me contacting Dan and sending it out. I may as well mention he only asked for return shipping payment - no cost to modify.
Regarding my conversations with Dan Koster on Facebook, he was very quick to respond and very helpful about some questions I had: one being what angle to touch up the MUCK, and the others were a number of questions about the Survivor series. We had a long conversation (again, FB) about modifying the handle on my second Bushmaster, and he was very professional and thorough, asking for photos of the kind of handle I wanted for comparison, photos of the Bushmaster I wanted modified (G10 version), etc, so that we both were confident that he knew what I wanted done.
I didn't have an issue with him until deadlines began to be revised upon inquiry. Initial quote for my knife to be sent back to me was 1-2 weeks. Waited about three weeks after tracking said it had been delivered and signed for, touched base with him, he apologized and said 1-2 more weeks - and this was around the time of this year's Bladeshow, so a lot of people in the business were busy. As such, I wasn't suspicious of being blown off at this point.
The third time I talked to Koster, I explained that I minded not the waiting for the knife, but the limbo of what was going on with moving deadlines and whether an honest deadline could be reached (months from now would've been fine, as long as I knew I could count on follow through). Again, he apologized, said the knife was on the bench and next in line, and he'd get back to me on Wednesday. A week and a half later I tried to message him and either I was blocked, or there was a message system change on the Facebook page of Koster Knives - so I may have been wrong about being blocked in my message above. Either way, he never replied to me.
It's this development of less-than-trustworthy communication and lack of follow through that has me thinking about not buying the WSS knife that DLT is expecting "someday" from him, for which I am on a notification list. It isn't the quality of the knives, for me, it's the work ethic, the moving deadlines, the failed promises, the putting off, etc. I know you already know this, so I apologize for this long, somewhat repetitive post.
What I've written above is why I think we aren't seeing a more vitriolic attitude to Koster Knives. Some (most?) people have had great experiences - I did until I began to feel like I was getting the runaround. I hope Koster gets everything squared away, for his sake, because no one likes letting other people down or hearing bad things about them, and for our sake, because on balance his knives are good and worth owning.
