Its like I said. You have to take what you can use and let the rest go. Also, its not that I skipped over the practical parts of a review just to see the parts I don't like. My point is that many practical parts of testing are no longer possible once you break the knife and ruin it. This may not necessarily be the case in this test but in many others the knives have been broken too soon during testing in my opinion.
Now this isn't saying that breaking a knife is all bad. I know that some makers want to have their knives torn up and broke and its just fine when they request it, but I think that should be one of the first things mentioned in the review if thats the case. Otherwise my point is that most of us can do that ourselves and don't need a third party to test our knives to failure or to the breaking point, especially in doing things that knives are generally not used for anyway. However, if during the testing the knife breaks doing something it was designed to do then of course thats another story.
I think when someone other than the maker breaks knives and repeatedly with numerous brands at random, often times buying them on their own just to break it that it comes off, at least to me as nothing more than a guy that just likes breaking knives. But when you put that together with then writing reviews that tend to be slanted toward negative comments about that knife and/or the maker due to a failure Cliff caused himself and then blaming it on a faulty knife or a maker that doesn't use good steel, or did a faulty heat treat and on and on it adds up to one thing, a man with a bias. In other words Cliff is somewhat predictable and sets out to do just what happens in his tests, ie, break knives. Its not that I don't appreciate knowing what my knives can or can't do when I make one. I do. Its not that I don't appreciate knowing what a knife I plan to buy can or cannot do. I appreciate that also.
The abuse part of the test in my mind is not really all that relevant. I mean just because that one Howling Rat managed to nearly cut off both hinges before breaking from the abuse doesn't mean that another would even make it through one hinge at all or that another one wouldn't snap and crack like the Agent did in that same review I mentioned. You would have to repeat that many times to see that and even then you still can't predict if the one you carry will be capable of doing that or not should the one in a billion chance come up in your lifetime that you needed to know such a thing.
I can find out most of what I need to know about a knife I like from reading feedback on any forum about one, or by simply asking the maker or manufacturer at a show and get quite a bit of information that way. Cliff makes it very well known that he cannot and does not trust a salesman so he can't ask Sal or Jerry Busse, Chris Reeve, Bob Dozier, myself or anyone else anything because he doesn't believe them, and more than this he makes it quite clear that he thinks he knows more than they do anyway because as everyone knows around here Cliff is never wrong. Knowing this helps you to understand why he does what he does. It really doesn't give the tests any more credit just because Cliff has a distrust of makers and manufacturers that happen to sell knives.
STR
So, I guess I know now not to buy that one. :barf: 
