Which Knife Has Disappointed You The Most, Which Has Pleasantly Surprised You?

disapointment .. Cold Steals Canadian Belt Knife .. too small for my hand , the edge , the blade wouldnt hold an edge , I gave up onit and gave it to an elderly lady who has had much good service from it slicing apples as her false teeth make it hard for her to just eat them .

Rat2 the handle raped my hand after a short time of medium / hard use , the blade would roll / dull so easy . I love the look of th eknife and the no nonsense way you can flick the blade out but actually to use it for more than light duty stuff .. not good on my hands , and I hate touching up an edge repeatedly during a job .

my suprises ..
Mora .. the leku and the insulation knife . light weight blades , tough as nails , take a serious beating and come back for more .

New opinels , their convex grind .. pocket lazer , a huge improvement on their old flat grind .

Svord peasant .. with the shoulder taken off , is a freaking pocket lazer ..

Izula and Izula2 , with a reprofiling , and once some of the blade coating wears down some , tough as nails little knives , take a silly sharp edge , and hold it well .
 
cutter17 said:
But the ZT0801 is everything I had wished the Sebenza to be, a beefier and heftier version. Though I carry my large folding knives I rarely have to use them so the Elmax steel controversy does not really bother me that much.
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So you just really enjoy the feeling of... having a knife? To each their own i suppose. . .

Biggest disappointment must have been the Spyderco Southard. I own and love many spydercos - pm2's, manix, Sage II (taiwan also), chaparral - and was super pumped to wade into flipper framelock offerings, so I ordered one. Receiving it I was taken aback at how unwieldy and small it felt in my hands - it just felt really awkward to deploy and hold, like it was disappearing in my hand in a bad way. Also, the deployment hole is somewhat occluded and downright unusable from the left hand side. Most of this I could've found out with some good old googling, but i guess my hopes and the hype got me too excited and i just had to learn by holding it. That said it was easy to unload, so not too disappointing in the end.

Biggest surprise must be PM2, its just so much knife, and everything wrong for me about the southard (ergos, ease of deployment, right/left hand friendliness) the pm2 got right.
Biggest surprise must have been
 
Myal said:
Rat2 the handle raped my hand after a short time of medium / hard use , the blade would roll / dull so easy
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Please be conscious that this is very much profanity - think of all the women in your life, more than likely one of them has been a victim of sexual assault at some time. Would you tell your mother that X Y or Z "raped" this or that?

Don't mean to be the police or anything but lets hold ourselves to a higher standard.
 
I was disappointed with my first Case - a Seahorse Whittler. My wife had secured me two more in different handles/scales - same result. Next came a Trapper, which made it four for four. All came with one or more dull/uneven sharpness blades and three had manufacturing grit inside making operation gritty. All Whittlers were initially thumbnail benders to open, too. While most defects were home repairable, my less expensive German-made Boker Tree Brand and Puma slipjoints sure put the much-hyped US-made slipjoints to shame, it's sad to say.

I generally am quite happy with my purchases, so it's hard to pick just one. I will say that my experience with ElMax steel differs from some posts here - in my experience, it is a highly desirable upgrade steel. I liked my ZT-0551 so much I bought a spare - and even a ZT-0561. All three are great blades - thus far not requiring 'attention'. I love my knife-perfection CRK/WC 'StarTac', a great variant of the Umnuumzaan - and my Kershaw TILT!, too. But - they were earlier acquisitions... my recently acquired favorite is my Spydie Dodo in CF. It's a useful carry knife for cutting twine/rope, opening packages, etc - miserable whittler, however. And - it's high up the scale on weirdness, too. Great material choice and fit/finish.YMMV!

Stainz
 
Biggest disappointment would be my Entrek folder. I love Entrek knives and his 440c will hang with anything out there, but the blade on the folder is WAY too heavy for the handle and the detent wont hold the blade when closed. If you wiggle the knife just a tiny bit, it opens and the pivot is either completely tight or has lock tite so I hd to drill it out and make a new pivot pin...I guess I expected more from Entrek.

Biggest surprise would be my Entrek Jag and Benchmade Nimravus in M2. The Jag is a modified tanto, but has become my main bushcrft blade. It holds an edge better than my S30V blades and is easy to touch up, and the spine throws showers of sparks off a ferro rod. The Benchmade is just amazing. Love the M2 and it's light weight.
 
SteelStickler said:
Please be conscious that this is very much profanity - think of all the women in your life, more than likely one of them has been a victim of sexual assault at some time. Would you tell your mother that X Y or Z "raped" this or that?

Don't mean to be the police or anything but lets hold ourselves to a higher standard.
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I do actually ...

Some of my women folk have indeed been subject to rape , and pretty extreme violence , including loss of people very close to them .

I dont refrain from saying I could kill a drink , or beat that when I lay my cards down , or even " thats crazy" .. and one of my women is at the moment in a mental health institution ...

Your standards are obviously seriously better than mine , sorry for violating your eyes with my words :P

please , try to keep it to the knives and lay off the people tho , if you have issue , take it to PM , Ill gladly spend time there .
 
SteelStickler said:
Please be conscious that this is very much profanity - think of all the women in your life, more than likely one of them has been a victim of sexual assault at some time. Would you tell your mother that X Y or Z "raped" this or that?

Don't mean to be the police or anything but lets hold ourselves to a higher standard.
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Maybe you should be conscious that you are not the word police. Rape, is not profanity. It is a word, nothing more or less. This is a forum, one where guys talk about knives. Also, consider that this gentleman, is from another part of the world. Lingo is different in other places. In England, "rape", is referred to in the context of crops. Uh oh, what would we do with the moral dillema of that?!?!?! Get over yourself man.
 
Most disappointed is a Mad Dog Pygmy ATAK. Sheath was great but the Pygmy had a short cutting surface and was prone to micro chips. Looked cool but not the best blade to do actually cut stuff with. Expensive and over hyped. Sold it.

Most surprising is the Mora line of knives. Inexpensive but fierce cutters. Not "super" knives but honest users that get most knife related chores done.
 
Still surprised this thread keeps popping up. I may have said that I was disappointed in my GEC Tidioute sawyer Sheepfoot Barlow... Well now I'm surprised in a good way by GEC customer service and how beautiful the knife is! I just feel like the straight edge by itself is not super utilitarian.
 
Biggest dissapointment would be my microtech ultratech, it stopped firing properly soon after i got it nib from friend and I still havent completely fixed it, but now I know the problem so once im done fixing it properly I will love it again but still thats a big dissapointment. Biggest surprise is probably my first para 2, I carried it non stop for a year (and still do sometimes) and it did and still does surprise me with what it can do, but my manix 2 and manix 2 xl are also very impressive to me, they just havent been in my possesion long enough to gain the respect I have for the para 2.
 
My biggest disappointment is a handmade knife I bought from the maker on eBay. His knives had good reviews, the price was great, the materials were nice, etc. When I got it, though, I realized that the handle was about twice as heavy as I expected. A good 80% of the weight is in the handle, which makes it sort of awkward to use. The maker didn't misrepresent it, but it taught me to always handle a knife before buying it.
 
I have to say the walmart version of the CRKT Ripple has been a great little knife I love it and whenever I see one on sale somewhere I buy it I must have 4 or 5 of them still in the clam shell packaging to use later when the one I have been using for over a year gives out or breaks or maybe to give out here and there as gifts. As far as disapointments I would have to say everything SOG I have ever bought they all have developed horrible side to side blade play, and when you try to adjust the pivot screw accordingly its either no blade play but way too tight or way to loose with a ton of play no happy medium.
 
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The Para 2 was a dissappointment for me. Don't get me wrong, it is a good knife. I like the compression lock, but the blade to handle ratio just doesn't do it for me. I prefer the Benchmade 710. Or the Spyderco Stretch ZDP-189, a great under rated edc. For fixed blade knives, I use the BK11 more than any others. And I can't complain about any of the Mora knives I have. But for the money, how could I complain. And I like the Opinel #10 in the kitchen. I wish Opinel would make fixed blade knives with the same grind.
To each his own! That's why there are so many good knives to choose from.
 
Benchmade vex is the only knife I've purchased (and solely on price as well) and returned within the few hours I owned it. It's a similar design to the spyderco tenacious.
 
SOG Flash II was a real disappointment. The blade was sharp, but the lock had a lot of "slack" and there was lots of blade play that was impossible to get off. Did not inspire confidence.

After all the criticism that Cold Steel tanto blades got when I started inquiring about them on this forum (the least usefull blade shape) I am pleasently surprised by Code 4 Tanto. Really, what's wrong with you people? :D A perfectly usefull knife and the overall guality is, for the price, beyond excellent.
 
Disappoint- Kershaw blur s30v the liner lock looks fragile in my opinion. Buck 110 came with vertical and horizontal bladeplay. I also dislike recurve blades because I have to learn a new style of sharpening I enjoy flat waterstones, and Tanto blades because they tend to chip where the flat blade of the belly meets the angled blade of the tip.

Surprised - Ontario Rat 1 folder. After passing this knife through 1000 & 6000 grit Japanese waterstones, and stropping with chrome oxide the blade is so sharp it's scary.
 
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Disappointed - PM2 - it's not a bad knife by any means, I'm just not a fan of the compression lock.

Surprised - Spyderco GB - it's a beast. Great CPM-M4 steel, stylish CF scales, and a liner lock w/ the size & strength of a frame lock.
 
HFinn said:
SOG Flash II was a real disappointment. The blade was sharp, but the lock had a lot of "slack" and there was lots of blade play that was impossible to get off. Did not inspire confidence.

After all the criticism that Cold Steel tanto blades got when I started inquiring about them on this forum (the least usefull blade shape) I am pleasently surprised by Code 4 Tanto. Really, what's wrong with you people? :D A perfectly usefull knife and the overall guality is, for the price, beyond excellent.
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Hive mind. It's not just tanto but also cold steel in general.
 
Disappointed - CRKT KO Ripple. More hot spots than a waffle iron. I just couldn't use the knife at all. In all fairness, the Acuto steel was pretty good.

Always plesantly surprised - An Opinel, any Opinel. They take a 'stupid sharp' edge and keep it for a respectable length of time. They are actually fun to use.
 
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