Case vs Rough Ryder personal experience. Is this the norm or was it a fluke

N

NCknifefan

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Feb 8, 2018
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I recently had an issue with the backlock failing on a Case Tribal Lock. I sent it in and Customer Service offered to give me $100 in store credit on the Case website, and I think this was very generous on their part. I ordered two knives from the Case website, both of which had serious issues, aesthetically and functionally. So, I returned them and got two different knives, one of which was very nice and the other had to be returned. After that they just refunded the Credit Card portion of my order even though I wanted an exchange. I switched to SMKW and bought one more Case Knife and 5 Rough Ryders.
This is how the 5 Case and 5 Rough Ryders turned out:
Case:
Mini Trapper - Largest gap I have ever seen on a knife. It was big enough to look through, not just see light through but actually look through like a peep sight on a rifle.
Mini Copperhead - Secondary blade would not snap all the way closed, had to be forced closed. The shield was missing entirely, there was not even a spot milled on the scale. Proud springs as well.
Peanut - Very nice, slightly proud springs but a very nice knife.
Copperhead Wharncliffe - Had a significant recurve sharpened into the wharncliffe blade, correcting would have removed much of the blade. Tip was damaged and about even with the scales/liners so it was pretty easy to catch a finger on the tip.
Mini Trapper (SMKW Blue Bone) - Pretty Nice but a decent amount of side to side play in both blades. Without the Rough Ryder's I may have kept it.

Rough Ryder:
Micarta Wharncliffe Work Knife - Very Good, The tip was easy to catch a finger on but if I was going to keep it, that could be corrected.
Black and Blue Trapper - No issues worth mentioning
Amber Bone Copperhead - Slightly proud spring on one blade but very close to perfect.
Upswept Bow Trapper - No issues worth mentioning
Mini Trapper Blue Mule - Somewhat uneven sharpening and one of the springs was a little weak, but overall pretty nice.

I ended up keeping 4 knives. The Case Peanut, and the Trapper, Copperhead, and Bow Trapper from Rough Ryder.

If I was going to keep more, it would have been the other Rough Ryders. 4 out of the 5 Case knives had pretty serious Functional flaws and 2 had major aesthetic flaws.
Of the Rough Ryder knives 2 had flaws, one knife could have been corrected and the other only had minor issues. The best overall knife was the Black and Blue Trapper from Rough Ryder.

Is this the norm now that Rough Ryder's are superior in terms of function to Case Knives or was my experience just a series of unfortunate events? I may still buy a Case knife in person after handling it, but even that is difficult considering how good the Rough Ryders are.

I am not a Case hater. I have always liked their knives and my first nice knife was a Case Russlock that I have used and loved for years, but this was an odd experience. I prefer to buy American and really want to keep Case as a part of my collection but not when the quality is poor.
 
My experience has been the complete opposite of yours.
Most of my case knives are excellent, while most of my Rough Ryder knives have been junk.
I've documented several of my Rough Ryder purchases with pictures in the Rough Ryder thread... very, very bad.
 
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The swayback gent is appealing but I handled one and it just didn’t work for my hands. I have had good experiences with some case knives purchased in person but I also had two in person purchases that had fit and finish issues. I thought it may be a recent development with case quality control, like maybe the pandemic somehow affected their ability to catch the lemons.
I agree on GEC. If they had better availability and more stainless (humid environment), I wouldn’t need to look elsewhere.
 
JohnDF said:
My experience has been the complete opposite of yours.
Most of my case knives are excellent, while most of my Rough Ryder knives have been junk.
I've documented several of my Rough Ryder purchases with pictures in the Rough Ryder thread... very, very bad.
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My experience as well.

I won't tell anyone not to buy RR or that Case is perfect but based on my experience I would recommend Case over RR.
Being American made may be the ultimate factor for me, but the American made preference has worked out pretty well for me.
 
it’s good to hear that I was just unlucky. I have always liked Case and found getting a few rough ones to be odd.
 
N NCknifefan reported on his bad experiences with Case purchases and good good experiences with RR, while JohnDF JohnDF reported that his experiences were exactly the opposite (Case good, RR bad). I'll go on record as a representative of a third class of people, those who have had good experiences with both brands.

I have 30 Case knives, I think, and they're mostly very good. Many of them are gifts from, or purchase from, BF members, so there may be a natural "weeding out" process of defective knives in that kind of situation. A few of my Case knives have a dye job that I think lacks uniformity, and I have one Case knife I ordered that arrived NIB with blade rub that I think is unacceptable (and I regret not returning it when I got it).

I have over 80 Rough Riders, and they're also mostly very good. Some of my smooth bone RRs have uneven dye jobs, and most of my Case jigged bone knives have more attractive jigging than most of my RRs with jigged bone covers. Almost all of my RR knives are stainless, while quite a few of my Case knives are carbon steel. My RR knives typically cost a third or a fourth of the typical price of my Case knives.

I think the OP and John have had very bad luck with their Case and RR purchases, respectively, while I've had very good luck with my purchases of both brands!

- GT
 
5K Qs said:
I think... John... had very bad luck with... RR purchases
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I think you're right, GT.
I see a lot of good reports about the RR brand, so it's unlucky on my part.
I wish the home company was more responsible though, they pretty much just blew me off with my complaints.
I think that, more than anything, has really turned me sour on that brand of knife.
 
Case knives: (all were gfted to me)
9 dot 1974?) 11031SH
Used but not abused condition. The Sheepsfoot edge was concave, but I was able to fix that. No way to know if the edge was concave from the factory, or from improper sharpening by previous owners. I suspect pror owners, but not the gentleman who gave it to me.
The knife was misplaced when I moved.

62131 CV Jigged Amber Bone Canoe.
NIB. No issues. 5 x's, all the *'s are gone.

2137 SS Sodbuster Jr.
No issues. Same date code as the Canoe.

Rough Rider/Rough Ryder:
I only have around 60. All but one or two is a multi blade. Three were gifted to me.
All but 1 of the rest were purchaded online.
One was purchased at a truck stop (in SC?) that actually carried SMKW brands on a rack. (I bought my first M1212 faux West German Cold War Era Bundeswehr GAK at that truck stop, along with a back up smooth tobacco bone outdoorsman large Sunfish with Acorn shield.)

Worst issues:
Smooth White Bone Coke Bottle Copperhead (5 inch closed, single clip point blade) Pile side cover had a small crack by the center pin.
I fixed it with a little super glue.

Small Sunfish/Toenail The Secondary blade required the main blade to be open, and pliers to open it.
I traded it at a small town pawnshop, somewhere in he bckoods, of New England, I think i was, for a "Made in USA" brand medium jacknife, and a leather cellphone belt case/pouch that fit the phone I was using then.

Twisted Bone series Canoe: The shield stayed in the box when I took the knife out. A couple drops of Super Glue fixed it.

Of the rest, a minority may have a blade slightly un-centered, but not enough to hit a liner. No blade rub, not even on the two spring stockmans. (which Case alleges "goes with the pattern," and "we won't correct that under warranty.")

With that one exception, The blade pull across the board is a consistant "5" on all the blades, regardless of pattern or number of blades.

All the blades were sharp enough to remove arm hair out of the box. None have any noticable to the nude eye without a bright light while intentionally seeking them gaps.

i don't know if my luck with Rough Rider/Rough Ryder is a fluke. Taking the number of knives into account, I do not think it is. However, I may be mistaken.
.
 
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I have had good luck with both Case and Rough Rider.
Depending on the pattern RR does a better job on some knives and Case does better on others.

Any RR liner lock don’t count on it locking but their backlocks are better than even GEC’s in my small sample size.
I have 3 Case Peanuts and 2 Mini Docs and they are close to perfect.

Now my Sodbusters by Case are not very perfect.
I like both companies and buy knives that I like from both.
 
Living in Europe; the distance and now the increased import duties- 24% on the knife cost AND shipping costs; will cause extreme caution when buying any knives. Returning items would be nightmarish. That said, my 'luck' with both companies has been good to excellent. No idea how many CASE or RR I own, never catalogue my knives but it must be around 20 CASE slightly less RR. Couple of CASE knives have had finish problems that have annoyed me but nothing dreadful, on a side note, years ago I contacted CASE about a knife I was unhappy with and they simply sent me a replacement telling me to keep the original! That's astounding, but these days with the draconian import tax (even gifts!) it would be complicated...Never been very impressed with GEC's attitude to fixing problems, offhand in the extreme once they bothered to respond. Conversely, RR used to be very cheap to buy and import and if there were problems it didn't seem worth complaining about, in those days.

Overall, I use and like my CASE knives far more than the RR knives, it's just matter of taste actually. Sodbuster, Swayback Gent, Medium Stockman are all regulars. I feel that RR is vey good at smaller patterns though, not so much with bigger ones and rubbish with liner locks :eek: Some of the small RR patterns are really well finished and it's been my experience that ALL RR knives arrive ferociously sharp and stay that way, certainly superior to CASE cv or stainless. CASE has one trump card- pedigree and you can't fake that one. They must however, maintain good service and quality control as over relying on reputation-mystique has been the undoing of many a once distinguished firm.

Thanks, Will
 
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My experience is a little different to most here, Case knives aren't commonly available here in the UK. The first one I bought was a Texas Jack, and I was really pleased with it in every way. I have a number of Case knives, which were kindly gifted to me by friends here on The Porch, and again, they're all great examples, but I guess if they'd had obvious faults, my friends wouldn't have sent them. RR knives are 3-4 times more expensive here than in the US, but most are still fairly inexpensive. I've had a few that had faults, but generally they've been fine, as have the Chinese-made Marbles and Colt knives. I have a lot more Sheffield-made knives, and have certainly seen a lot of faults with those. In terms of American-made knives though, I've had more faults with GEC knives than with Case, but I'm certainly not a representative example I don't think :thumbsup:
 
In my experience, in daily use, Case will outlast the RR. You get what you pay for with Case. Many today nitpick every little minor thing, most of which will not affect what they were made to do, cut. In my own experience, the Case will still be a useful tool when the RR is broke and in the trash.
 
Some people seem to have bad luck with newer case’s and that’s unfortunate. I have had very few issues with them that I would consider defects. I wouldn’t be too picky about a factory edge either, frankly none of them are particularly great and it will be sharpened anyways so it doesn’t really matter. Factory edges are sometimes pretty janky and those are not good, but don’t expect perfection from them because it’s the norm for the edge to be kind of slapped on even with a very nice and/or expensive knife.

On the other hand the bad rough riders I’ve seen were ridiculously bad. Good ones are fine for the money but I don’t think they’re as good as case. They have a lot more sharp edges where they shouldn’t and other little details that case does better. Frankly I don’t trust RR’s to hold up as well as a case over time. I’m not saying RR is bad, but there are reasons why they are cheaper.
 
The OP’s experience with Case does not strike me as typical, but neither does it come as a surprise. Out of a dozen or so Case knives, I have never been moved to send one back. On a couple of occasions where I was buying in person, I have gone through the seller’s available supply of a knife I was looking at to find the best example, and come across knives that I would have sent back for badly gapped springs or off-center blades.

With RR, I have seen a general improvement in fit and finish over the six or seven years I have been buying them.over the last two or three years, some of their releases have been stellar, in both design and execution.

As regards durability in use, I think the jury is still out. I have seen Cases that have worn quite well over the years, others that are completely clapped out with wobbly blades and limp springs. I have never seen a worn out RR, but they have not been around long enough to develop a track record. My own knives are not going to tell me much because no one of them has had enough use.
 
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