The good news is that in a whole lot of ways knives have improved. The average quality of the steel, mostly stainless steel now, and other materials is much better than it has ever been. The designs are as solid and functional as they ever have been. Prices are down and the level of utility delivered per dollar is up. Functional and effective knives are available for $10. For $60 or less you can get one that is as good as any in common use by our ancestors.

The down side is that as job specialization and assembly line industrialism have been applied ever more intensively fewer and fewer workers are employed making knives. Most employees know only their individual task. Fewer have any understanding of manufacturing a knife as a functional object. Expert knife smiths, ones that know it from the structure of iron up, are few and far between. And getting scarcer every year.

Ironically as the number of experts decreases the average quality goes up and prices go down. I don't think we are in danger of not knowing how to make knives. The device is pretty easy to understand and a minimally functional knife is quite easy to make. You don't need a great understanding or mastery of knife making to make a tool to skin a squirrel with. Hard pressed and without better options you could work with aluminum torn from a beer can or a piece of glass from a broken bottle. Our very distant relatives did it with less.

It is entirely possible to kill and prepare a chicken with bare hands alone. I have done it. It wasn't as clean and neat as using a knife but it can be done without any specialized talent or skill. IMHO it is good to do it once. Just to know you can. It makes a good demonstration. But not one for young children.

Blackjack did the same thing in the early 90s. Right before the company went under. I always wondered if the money they squandered moving operations overseas and back again had anything to do with that.

A lot of knife manufacturers have shifted production overseas for many reasons. Some (but certainly not all) are

1) No unions
2) Less or no benefits for employees
3) Cheaper labor (partly the result of points one and two)
4) Less environmental restrictions
5) Less taxes
6) Cheaper to manufacture (the result of all of the above)

Combine this with adequate quality control (CRKT took the lead in this) and you can produce a $200 knife with a $50-$75 price point. The quality control is the key. Without it you have just another crappy foreign-made over-priced piece of junk. FWIW and YMMV.

There is at least one American manufacturer left who does all their work in house, Bear Cutlery. Their plant is only a few miles away from where I live and they offer a full range of knives and multi tools:

http://www.bearandsoncutlery.com/

Thanks for the info about Bear... the products look good and when I've got some money again, I'll be a customer!

I've got an old original A. G. Russell Sting from Springdale Ark. I picked up the "new" version by CRKT and it's a lot like my first one and the quality is very good too. Time (many years from now) will tell but so far I am happy with both.

I have several Bears in my collection. The quality/value was alway good, and I have noticed that the fit and finish is improving. My deer hunting knife is a Bear Power Grip with a part serrated gamehook blade. With it's tight flat leather sheath and rubberized grip, it doesn't rattle around in the stand. I slide two black 6" zip ties into the sheath and snap them and the paracord lanyard inside the retainer with the knife. It is just the right shape and size to field dress a deer quickly. The blades on all of mine are good quality and sharp out of the box. The Bear knives I have all came with excellent leather sheaths.

The majority of my knives come from Bark River Knives in Escanaba Mi. USA made semi-custom knives

Bark River, another great knife manufacturer you won't see sold at Walmart or Target.

I no longer care much where something is made. There is often little discernible quality difference between stuff made in the USA and stuff made elsewhere.

To me if a $30 knife does everything I need it to do, I would be a fool to spend $300 on a knife that does the same things for me.

If the US wants to start making things again, that may turn out to be a good idea, but it would require a huge change in the political and social structure for that to happen. In keeping with the rules of the forum, I don't believe I can further comment on this particular issue.

I do hate to see long time manufacturers go belly up but that is the way things tend to go. There are very few organizations that have survived for as many as 50 years. Its normal for them to go away and new ones take their place.

Whoa dude! Quick, duck!!!

Just the facts.

If you believe it is not possible to make a good quality product outside the USA, you are smoking something that is negatively affecting your judgment.

The overwhelming majority of electronic components (ICs, resistors, capacitors, etc.) are made offshore these days. And the quality of electronic products has never been higher. Most consumer electronics are made offshore as well, and those products are of very high quality, as are a lot of small appliances and tools.

The US market will not except pure junk, but there is no mass market for Cadillacs, and the offshore manufacturers know that. They go to a lot of trouble to make their products of a high enough quality that it more than meets the customers wishes.

If I want to buy pots made out of aluminum, that may well be of a "lower" quality than SS pots with copper bottoms, but if the aluminum pots meet my needs, how have I as the consumer been cheated? I have actually been well served by the manufacturer who made me what I wanted to buy at a price point I was willing to pay.

I am one of the guys that has helped the Chinese and the Mexicans make better products. A fair number of machines I have worked on ended up there. I have been there and seen the plants in action. I have also been in some US based plants that compete very effectively price wise against offshore plants. Its not impossible to do so. You just have to be down right good at what you are doing, and sadly, as a country, we lost the big edge we had in manufacturing long ago. We can't compete largely because we no longer want to compete, not because of some unfair advantage the Chinese have.