Notice what is happening in the knife world?

We are losing legacy cutlers at an alarming rate. Just in the last few years, we lost Marbles, Western, Schrade and Camillus. Buck is importing some of it's knives from China, as is Boker, Remington, Browning. Ericksson and Frost of Mora have merged to form Mora of Sweden. Victorinox and Wenger have merged. Boker now owns Opinel. Some Pumas are now made in China. Don't get me wrong, some Chinese knives are of first-rate quality, but I'm concerned the USA and Europe are losing the ability to manufacture quality sporting/militar blades.

Well, cutlery firms are going through the same consolidations that other manufacturers are going through. Not a surprise.

but I'm concerned the USA and Europe are losing the ability to manufacture quality products.


Fixed it for you

If you read Gibbon's "Decline and fall of the Roman Empire" you will see that Western civilization is going the way of the Romans. It's just a matter of time, non-western peoples far outnumber us and we have become dependent on their cheap labor. We will go out, not with a roar, but with a whimper.

and to the sound of applause...

It was only a matter of time until the east would develop their technology and metallurgy en masse such that they could put out a pretty good product at a greatly discounted price and take away the market share. Most people will settle for good over great if they can see a huge value for money disparity. A $50 knife nowadays will do 95% of what a $350 knife will do, and so on. There just aren't enough of us aficionados around to provide the sort of business these traditional companies once enjoyed, and so since they didn't keep up with modern manufacturing trends (for whatever reason), they, like the big three automakers, cannot stay up with new production.

Quality doesn't equal expensive. If you can get close to what your contemporaries are doing and do so while passing on a huge savings to the consumer, you will overtake your competitors. Close being relative, most people who buy knives aren't terribly critical, and will buy really sharp junk because they can buy it with the change in their pocket. Since the vast majority don't rely on knives like they used to, it is a little foolhardy to expect them to spend double for something that, in their mind, is no better than what they bought at the flea market or Walmart.

You want a great knife? Go to a limited production/custom knife maker like Busse or Ontario or Benchmade. You want good, pick one out of hundreds of bulk knife makers these days.

One of favorite knifes is a custom made buffalo skinner made by a man in Montana. I also grew up in the PNW and Gerber and SOG are both there, at least manufacturing was.

Just to correct a few facts:

While Buck moved a number of its lines overseas, in many cases offering the same models at different price points, one US made, one China-made, they have been moving the majority of that back to the U.S. this past year with a goal to move most of it back.

Victorinox and Wenger are not "merged" Victorinox's owner bought Wenger rather than allow it to be sold to a non-Swiss company. They are operated as separate companies and still compete against one another. Not saying that a common owner doesn't mean influence over some issues, but they are definitely not "merged."

Also, Benchmade has stepped back from China for their namesake brand which is now entirely U.S. made, any imports do not go under the Benchmade brand anymore, and even those have been cut back.

Gerber still manufactures some few of their products, mostly those sold into the military, in the U.S., but the majority are made in Asia.

All of SOG's knives are manufactured overseas and have been for many years. Premium lines are manufactured in Japan and now some in Taiwan, as I recall. Their lower end lines added in the past couple years to break into the mass market are all made in China.

Thanks for the information Doug. That's good information to have.

For a lot of years I have been going to a local Knife maker. There knives are made from old files and can be found in all types of blade shape. For a US maker try ANZA Knife. at www.anzaknives.com

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.

It is interesting that "made in the USA" is now taken as a symbol of good quality. I am enough of a geezer that I can remember when nearly everything available for sale was domestically produced. Some of it was junk. Marketers then spun imported goods as exotic and high quality.

Poor quality knows no borders. Thankfully, neither does high quality.

In terms of quality and utility once a nation develops beyond past a minimum level of technical competence it doesn't seem to matter where things are made.

Japan in the 50s was known for cheap trinkets. Quality has all been up since then. Italy went through the same progression but more slowly. In the 70s there were a lot of shoddy metal products from India.

From the late 80s on manufacturing facilities have been made more modular, standardized and far easier to pick up and move. The plants produce a wide variety of products and change up by simply changing the programming. As long as minimum technical standards are maintained quality is largely independent on the nationality of the hands working the controls.

Now virtually any nation can produce useless trash or high quality. Just a matter of materials and standards used. It is almost as hard to produce useless junk that is hard to unload as it is to produce a quality product that sells itself. Because of this the average standard of quality is pretty good and is constantly improving.

Present situation excluded....