Why are Pakistani Blades so Cheap?

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campandtravel

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I recently saw a table of Pakistani knives at a knife show and they seemed pretty nice. I bought one super cheap and I already enjoy it for an in-town utility knife. It's too heavy for field use but otherwise it's great. Fit and finish isn't perfect but who cares? I don't know what the steel is and I'm thinking someone here will tell me it's going to degrade or rust this weekend or something. But I'm not a steel snob, and I actually prefer steels that are easy to sharpen. So a good 420 usually suits me fine.
 
labour-cost-in-textile-industry.jpg
 
calm said:
Those Victorinox knives must be made really badly in
Switzerland, with extra cheap materials, to be sold at such low prices. 99% of their price must be labour.
:)
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Let's have this conversation again when Victorinox starts making big choppers and damascus steel.
 
King of the Cheese said:
If you saw how street food is made, you wouldn’t buy the knives.
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That's not necessarily true. I lived in India for three years and ate street food often, never got sick from it. I did get sick (giardia dysentery) from eating at a 5 star restaurant that will remain un-named. Same in Afghanistan, Iraq, throughout Africa and several countries in the Pacific, never got sick eating from street vendors.

As for the relative quality of the knife-like objects sold originating from Pakistan, I found the quality and origin of the steel to be questionable. Usually the heat treat is substandard, the fit and finish is usually not great (expect handle scales or guards to work loose or fall off after some use), and many of the designs are poorly executed copies of other commercially available blades.

Keep in mind this doesn't mean they won't perform as a knife for at least some time. I can make a piece of aluminum take an edge, but it won't last.

At the end of the day, if you are happy with it, great! Don't think that praising them here is going to be received well, though.
 
navman said:
That's not necessarily true. I lived in India for three years and ate street food often, never got sick from it. I did get sick (giardia dysentery) from eating at a 5 star restaurant that will remain un-named. Same in Afghanistan, Iraq, throughout Africa and several countries in the Pacific, never got sick eating from street vendors.

As for the relative quality of the knife-like objects sold originating from Pakistan, I found the quality and origin of the steel to be questionable. Usually the heat treat is substandard, the fit and finish is usually not great (expect handle scales or guards to work loose or fall off after some use), and many of the designs are poorly executed copies of other commercially available blades.

Keep in mind this doesn't mean they won't perform as a knife for at least some time. I can make a piece of aluminum take an edge, but it won't last.

At the end of the day, if you are happy with it, great! Don't think that praising them here is going to be received well, though.
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I’ve seen how it’s made.. I don’t think “well I didn’t die of botulism and salmonella” is the best metric for food quality. Some of that stuff is prepared on the floor they walk on before it makes it street-side.
 
They are made of melted down tin cans by people who work for peanuts. Seriously, stay away.

When I was new to Instagram, I got taken by a "custom knife maker" who pretended to be American and claimed to use 12C27. I was surprised when the package said "Pakistan". It was not an expensive knife or anything but holy crap was it a piece of trash. I got out the hardness testing files and scratched it with a 40! 😮

Luckily, I paid by Paypal so I got my money back. #lessonlearned
 
As long as it works for you! I’m not a steel snob either and prefer not having to sharpen until I’m mad at the thing. I have some 1980s Pakistani knives from my childhood. Flea market finds that were cheap enough to justify buying for the child (me). I haven’t seen any that I’d buy now though. I have some really decent Chinese made knives. As well as tiawanese and old Japanese knives, think Parker in probly the 1970s. I rate the quality of the old Japanese knives as very nice for myself and my uses, others probably wouldn’t look twice at them. The thing with the Pak’s I have is the workmanship is very crude. Like somebody’s dad made a knife in his garage with no guidance or much know how but still made a knife. Couple or 4 years ago I tried to sharpen a Pak Copperhead style knife just to see if the metal was any count. Very poor heart treat to say the least. IIRC it came from a cardboard gas station counter display and was all of $2.79 or so in the late 1980s. I only keep them for nostalgia. I whittled with them a lot and carried each to grade school at different times. I mean the object being cut don’t know anything about the knife, all it knows is that now it’s in multiple pieces. As long as it suits your purposes is all that matters.
 
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