ugly duck to a swan (well almost).

[DISCO]

have you ever worked with or been given what you would regard a p.o.s or bad design knife and after use found it not to be as bad as you thought or even a lot better than you thought. this question encompasses anything from cheap chinese to the price range the knife you want to comment on.

 

[Chett]

I bought a cheap 4 dollar folder from a hardware store, and it locks up pretty well and isnt too bad at cutting stuff.

 

[Rat Finkenstein]

No
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[Esav Benyamin]

I bought an S&W F2, a stainless steel drop point framelock, designed by Darrell Ralph. Couldn't imagine it would be much of a knife, but it looked good, so I took a chance. The lock had a tendency to go pretty far over on a hard opening, and was hard to release when it did. But my brother-in-law liked it, so he got it, and it's been his EDC since. It held up to lot of use.

The first time I saw a Cold Steel Vaquero Grande, I almost laughed, it was such an ugly, awkward-looking knife. And expensive. One day, I came across an ad for it at a fairly decent price, so I went for it. It's turned out to be a real favorite, as a sort of pocket folding machete, I recently picked up a backup, even though the first has gone through some hard use years with no sign of damage.

 

[savagesicslayer]

I bought a 14.00$ bolo machete from a surplus store.The handle broke the day I bought it.I fixed it and it was my go-to bush knife for 10 years.

 

[SilverFoxKnows]

A Tramontina Bolo machete. Paid $6 for it. It's done way more than a $6 blade should be able to do. It's not pretty but it works.

Frank

 

[shappa]

Any opinel at first look strikes me as cheap.
But they will surprise the heck out of you.
Good steel...twist lock is solid...feel good in the hand.

 

[Nathan S]

This is a little further up in the price range category. A while back, I traded for a TAD version Strider SnG. I wasn't expecting to like it. Actually, I was expecting to hate it, because it had some design features which were not at all attractive to me (a G10 scale and a pronounced choil, to name two). However, I figured I'd give it a try, and if it really was as bad as all that, I'd probably be able to trade it or sell it pretty easily.

It turned out to be a great knife, though, one of my absolute favorites. It's stout, has great action and lock up, and is very comfortable in the hand.