Bear and son

Earl1

Earl1

Joined
May 11, 2016
Messages
459
I was wondering what everyone's experience and opinion of this brand is. I've got a stockman from them. Carried it quite a bit. The dye has faded from the bone . It seems to be a decent built knife,considering a couple more .just curious to see what everyone thinks
 
I've never owned one, but i worked in a place that sold them once. I've handled a few. Some look nice to me in the case but I've never liked one in hand enough to buy it. I'm sure they cut stuff fine and all but i think I'd go for a utica over a bear any day.
 
If you have one of their knives, you know more about them than I do. There have been a few threads about Bear and Sons; they don't seem to generate much excitement around here.
 
I bought one of their Barlows, carbon steel. It looked nice, and the fit was pretty good. The opening and closing of the blades was pretty tough, probably a 7 or so on the "fingernail scale". There are also a couple of "semi-stops" when opening the secondary blade.
The jigged bone scales were nice looking, but the edges were too square... almost sharp feeling. I took a file to them and rounded them down some, and drastically improved the feel.
It has taken a pretty good edge, and seems to hold it about as well as any other carbon blade.

All in all, I would choose a Case knife over this one. The price was almost the same, probably less than than $10 difference, and the walk and talk of the Case is much better than the Bear.
 
They have a couple I've been interested in at the local hardware, but I have handled them and they were too rough for me to buy.
Seeing these I'm not going to gamble with an online order.
 
I have been to a couple places that carry a large stock of Bear & Sons knives. I've even bought some of them. But the QC on their product is terrible.

I like Congress patterns. They make a nice large (3 7/8") two blade Congress. The one I bought was picked out from over 20 knives, and while it's pretty good, it's not perfect. But some of the ones I left were just awful, weak pull, bad grinds, gaps, etc. And the worst thing was it wasn't just one problem; if they all had bad grinds then you can fix that. Likewise if the pulls were all wonky. But these knives were all over the place. And until B&S can fix that there's no way I'd ever buy one just based on a picture.

The truly sad part of this is these are an American Made company that looks flat out bad in comparison with cheap Chinese competition. And every bad knife they sell just digs them deeper into a hole that they may never climb out of.
 
I have a Swing guard made by them that is actually pretty good. No QC problems at all, very nice bone handles and good grind lines. I would like to check out some of their contracted Remington Bullet knives as they sometimes go cheap.
 
I have a stockman and a trapper. The stockman has nice wood and decent finishing on the bolsters. The main blade is ok, but the other two are wavy. The trapper has decent delrin but the blade grinds are not good.

Both have gritty walk and talk.

Case is a much better option.
 
I bought these two a long time ago. Twenty years ago maybe? I don't know how pertinent they are to current production. Technically these are Bear MGC's and not Bear and Son. Anyway the stockman (3.25" closed) was my daily carry for many years. Its been used a lot. Its still a good knife. The sheepsfoot has developed some blade play, but the main blade and pen are still pretty tight.
The liner lock is ok. Nothing wrong with it, but I just never bonded with it so its mostly been a drawer queen. FWIW.
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