Bear and Sons??? Quality???

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bgremill

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I just started looking for a traditional slipjoint knife to carry. After browsing through all of the Case styles, I decided on starting with a mid Stockman with carbon steel blades. While looking for said knife I ran upon a Bear and Sons, made in AL, that met my criteria and had 1095 steel and real Stag scales for the same price a Case with bone. So I went for it. Good move, bad move, terrible move?

thanks
 
I will relate my dealings with the BEAR&SON cutlery company. I collect 4-blade stockman and 4-blade congress knives along with any other pattern that may grab my fancy. Some years back I get a new SMKW catalog and there in all it's ferrous glory was a 4-bladed knife from a company I'd never heard of before, BEAR&SONS. And lo and behold, it was a new-to-me American cutlery company; YYEEEHHAAA !! Off goes my order and in the by'n'by there arrives at the ranchita a box with a new pocketknife, 4-blades and all. I sat there looking it over and it seems pretty nice to me, nothing extraordinary but still okay to me. So, I opened the first blade, looked it over carefully, and snapped it shut to open the next one. That blade closed directly upon a liner and chopped the dickens out of it in the process. I had a devil of a time digging it up and out of the liner but finally got it accomplished. The rest of the blades seemed okay to me. After due gogitation I decided that the new BEAR&SONS cutlery folks should know about this so I filled out their warranty card and wrote them a most pleasant letter explaining the situation and asking that they fix or replace the knife. Off it goes in the Pony Express to the warm confines of the BEAR&SONS plant in the fine old southern state of Alabama [ if memory serves ]. To the very minute I write these words I have yet to have heard from them. No answer to my letter, no replacement knife , no nothing , been years now !!!
There are NO circumstances I can think where I would ever spend a single red cent on a BEAR&SONS pocketknife of any kind, size, or style. The day I hear they finally go out of business I will go and buy a REAL AMERICAN pocketknife from the many other American pocketknife companies, in a raucus celebration.
 
Personally, I would have gone with Case. Bear & Sons are not known for making the best quality knives. You don't hear too much about them here on this forum. Please let us know what you think of the knife when it comes in!
 
There are probably at least a dozen threads here asking about Bear & Sons' knives. Out of all that discussion, I can't honestly remember seeing one person say anything positive about them. Myself included.
 
Personally, I really hate their designs, none of them look quite right to me. Sorry.

Regards

Robin
 
damn, should have posted first. I should be able to return the knife to the seller and get a Case. Thanks for your replies.
 
I just purchased three bear & sons knives. A yellow 4th gen barlow, a yellow toothpick and a green small stockman. They were cheap enough but I don't really care for the quality of any of them. The small stockman I will keep as a user as I actually like it but the other two I am going to give to relatives for Christmas presents. They were my first and last bear & son knives!
 
I have about six or seven Bear MGC, pre Bear & sons, stag and demascus folders, real nice stag and demascus, but their other offerings are not up to par with case, and their retail prices aren't to far from GEC which is a thousand times better then any bear.
 
I haven't seen one yet I would buy. A local hardware store here has them, and they don't sell, unless they get marked way down. One guy calls them 'losers', as in, if you lose one, you don't feel bad.

Stick with Case. You won't be disappointed.

thx - cpr
 
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I have a little oak stockman that is so cute because it looks like a high school project.
It has really grown on me, and I am quite fond of it!
It actually could be a wonderful example of a knife that you wave in the air and say: "I told you so, never buy XXXX"

I do realize that calling the knife a high school project is not PC and an insult to High school projects........


On the other hand:
Mike Latham in Collectorknives carries some MooreMaker Economy line (Bear)
And Mike is one of the good guys......
 
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This is the only one I have. Bear MGC. Works well, F & f are as good as any Case I own and so far the materials haven't let it down either.

DSC00217.jpg


What's happened since MGC became & Sons I don't know.

David

PS Apologies for the poor pic. The scales are zebra wood.
 
I must have gotten a good one, got it a year ago and have carried it up till last week. Mine is a muskrat and has skinned and cut everything well, needs touched up a little to often, but....
 
Some questions about Bear + Son knives:

As is evident in the photo, the scales on most of their knives are held on by one pin. Is this ok? Every other manufacturer I have seen uses 3 pins. Bear, only one. Will the scales stay on their knives? If this is ok, why don't other companies just use one pin instead of three?

Bear + Son has some nice looking bone and stag handles out now, would one pin in a Bear +Son bone or stag handle be better than using three? I mean, as far as cracking which seems to happen with bone or stag near the pins.

As I understand it, Bear is now the manufacturer for the working line of knives that Mooremaker sells. Is the quality of this line any better than the normal Bear + Son knife? They could be made to a different specification than the normal Bear + Son line. I was planning on buying a Mooremaker working line knife, now I don't know after reading all the bad reviews about Bear + Son.

Thanks for the help.
 
Bear MGC is better in my opinion then bear & sons, I was told by the GM that they only use one pin for looks, the scales are glued and three pins are not needed, now I have several stag handled demascus folders and the scales do look better with only one pin, however I don't use them so I can't attest to their duribilty.
 
I'm waiting on the mail man. The knife should arrive today. I ordered the 4th Gen. 1095 carbon steel, Stag, Mid Stockman model. I'll post pics when it arrives. These reviews have drastically lowered my expectations.
 
Well, the knife arrived and I quickly called to get an RA# for its return. I'll do my best to give my impressions good and bad.
When I took the knife out of the box and unwrapped it, a huge smile consumed my face and I was thinking all of the bad press I'd been reading was a bunch of BS. The stag was absolutely stunning! It had a really rich color in the center, lots of natural looking character, got light colored and natural looking at the bolsters. The bolsters are nicely polished, no blems, and the scales met with the bolsters perfectly. I'm pretty excited at this point. I could not believe that a knife this nice is being sold for less than $40!
I check the blade alignment and I'm surprised to see that it is perfect! Too good to be true?, I ask myself. I then roll the knife over and check the how the sleeves are fit. One end is perfect, on the other end I could feel the sharp edge of the brass on my thumb in the center of the knife. I inspect it and yes, one or two more passes on a buffer would have really nice to smooth that out; but, "it's a carry knife", I tell myself. Still well worth the money at this point.
I then open the main clip point blade. whawhawhaaaaa This is when the wheels come off of my dreamy story. To my dismay, I find one of the worst blade shapes I've ever witnessed. The heel of the blade is really narrow, then a belly that made it look like they are trying to imitate a Rambo survival ninja, fantasy blade. Then I open the sheep foot blade. I almost tossed my breakfast! The blade is made almost like a propeller! It was made offset and at a slightly twisted angle to fit flush. The nightmares that I envisioned trying to sharpen that thing were immediately overwhelming, so I quickly closed the sheep foot blade and moved onto the pen blade. Finally, no major hiccups! The small pen blade actually looked like it would have been a really nice little blade. Too bad it's two bigger siblings were total disasters.
Sorry I did not take pics to show what I'm talking about. I put the knife back in the box, called for the RA # and put it back in the mail pronto.
Best news of the whole story...I ordered a Case Sway Back Jack in CV as a replacement!
Hope this helps someone.

Brent
 
Case = quality. They actually have a line of CV steel other than the yellow handles. I was reading the new SMKW catalog in the porcalain library the other day.
If anyone buys a Case in the Plaid bone I'm putting them on my ignore list.
 
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