The OP's point is that they're not always excellent. Maybe in WE's case, they are expensive enough to be. But another point is that in the $150+ bracket, why chance it? Even if you really do believe they won't cut corners, why not support domestic labor?
I just bought Steel Will Cutjack Mini and Modus in the past couple weeks. Build quality and fit & finish are excellent. Some folks have doubts about the steel: for example, is it equivalent to Queen's D2 as far as chemical quality and heat treat? I'm too new into ownership to know for sure yet. First impressions are excellent, but I won't be terribly surprised if it turns out that it's 8Cr marked as D2. I do know that it doesn't sharpen like 8Cr though.
A couple things.
1. I was intentional about naming a specific, reputable maker. I understand the OP’s intent very well, and chose this specific approach to highlight that specificity matters. When I buy a ZT, for example, the country of origin tells me less about what I should expect than the brand does. This is also true of Chinese companies. Handling a Kubey doesn’t tell me anything about what I should expect from a WE knife, just as handling a U.S. made Kershaw doesn’t tell me anything about what I should expect from Chris Reeve Knives.
In other words, I couldn’t possibly give less of a $#!+ about opinions he has made about “Chinese knives”, based on his experience with Kubey, because “Chinese knives” is a strictly worthless descriptor when we talk about quality.
2. Why “risk it” over $150?
Let’s talk for a moment about risk assessment. Risk is determined by examining available information, and calculating a probabilistic model for likelihood of positive and negative outcomes. The better the data, and the larger the sample size, the more accurate our model becomes.
“Chinese maker” = $#!+ data.
“WE knives”, “Reate knives”, “Rike knives”, “Bestech knives”, “Real Steel”, “Ruike”, “SanRenMu”, etc are vastly better starting points.
Using WE as an example, we have huge data pools to draw from. They’re churning out tons of knives from their brand, as well as being known OEMs for Massdrop, Begg Steelcraft (at least one model), and others. Given that, you’d expect a reasonable number of hits when you search “we knife problem” on google or YouTube. But... those searches come up very dry.
Point of
fact (not opinion): WE is one of the safest bets in terms of quality in the industry.
This is a well known reality.
So, when a person says to me, “why risk it?”, I have to conclude that they aren’t using the word “risk” because of analysis, and are instead using it because “Chinese” means more to them than data.
