Frost 740--Wow!!!

[V44]

All I can say is this is one beautiful knife. The quality control is tops, better than anything I've seen in 50 years of buying knives. 8 and 11/16 overall, with a 4 and 3/16 inch high carbon steel clip point blade that is shaving sharp. The red handle is perfectly shaped from the integral guard to the downswept butt. The lanyard hole and cutouts are well sized. Even the Frosts logo on the blade is classy. Along the spine you can see the hand-forged (?) carbon steel lamination. The bevel grind is perfection itself.

All it needs is for me to make a nice leather sheath.

I couldn't be more pleased, and pleasantly surprised.

The best utility knife going I'd say. And at $10 with a crisp one dollar bill enclosed in the packing envelop to sweeten the pot, a terrific bargain.

Lucky thing most people turn up their noses at "cheap" knives, and continue to fall for the price-equals-quality equation, otherwise you'd probably go broke selling Frosts.

Thanks for all the trouble getting this to me Mr. Mattis.

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Dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

 

[James Mattis]

The $1 bill (crisp?) was a penalty for me being slow and distracted.

The 740 is plain carbon steel, not laminated. For laminated carbon steel, you get the Frosts #1 with the red painted birch handle and the ill-fitting plastic sheath, or pay umpteen $ more for the #137 with an unpainted birch handle and a leather sheath that fits.

These knives are made by robots. As far as I know, there are no hand operations at the Frosts and Eriksson plants in Mora, Sweden, other than maybe putting the knives into their sheaths, and putting them in boxes to ship out.


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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001

 

[V44]

Originally posted by James Mattis:
These knives are made by robots.

Hooray for Swedish robots.

Do you know if they have blond hair and blue eyes and answer to the name Asa?

Look along the spine, if you have another one of these. It looks laminated to me; I know the description on your site says otherwise and I am an old fool who's been fooled before.



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Dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

 

[James Mattis]

Hmmm . . . "Ragnar" of Ragweed Forge, from whom I buy my Eriksson and Helle knives, didn't mention seeing any robots like that when he toured the Eriksson plant. He did say the place was so clean and polution-free that you could picnic on the factory floor.

The spine of the 740 I just looked at just looks like nobody cleaned it up after stamping, which would have added another dollar to the price maybe. On the Frosts and Helle laminated blades, you can look along the edge bevel and see the boundary between the two alloys.


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- JKM
www.chaicutlery.com
AKTI Member # SA00001

 

[V44]

Originally posted by James Mattis:
looks like nobody cleaned it up after stamping

Ja, that.

What's your take on Tommi's reply on the Puukko thread that you've posted on. He takes the custom makers to task while extolling the production folks. And being a Finn, he probably has more experience with Puukkos than I certainly have, the Frosts being my first one.

I try not to put my foot where my mouth is, not having ever purchased a single custom knife, I can't join in the argument that's always bubbling over the expected quality of production vs custom, and therefore can't say Robots Rule. I realize that a disappointed buyer of a custom is more likely to voice concern than a happy one is to voice praise, yet such disgruntlement sends a certain message that reverberates through the knife buying community that raises legitimate questions, especially when one is putting several hundreds of dollars on the line sight unseen.

The purchasing of customs over the internet has raised the bar. When all a buyer has to go on is reputation and the postings of others, rather than the hands-on experience of fondling the knife at a show or at a dealer's shop, then the chance of the reality falling short of expectations becomes magnified.

Integrity, community, agreement, finding solutions to problems, all are emerging as better policy than "buyer beware" among forumites. But in the end, quality will win out--quality of product and quality of moral values--and those who fail to honor their product and themselves will fall to the wayside.

The battle being waged is also a battle between robots (and CAD machinery) vs an honest man at a hot forge doing an honest day's work. These issues are larger than knives and knife-buyers. So is the issue of art vs utility. It is all too easy to confuse these issues in a quest for the perfect knife.

The above is not the Truth, just my opinion.



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Dogs bark, but the caravan moves on.

[This message has been edited by V44 (edited 04-12-2000).]

 

[James Mattis]

I don't recall what Tommi may have said about custom puukkos. He did criticize the Isaaki Jarvenpaa puukkos he had met, but those are fairly inexpensive factory knives in a lot of traditional patterns. I have a sampling of them in the office here, waiting for me to write up a web page for them. Mostly I bought them in carbon steel. I trust mystery carbon steel more than I trust mystery stainless - simpler stuff.

 

[il Coltello]

Hi there!

We have heaps of these knives here and there around the house and in the backyard, both the stainless and the carbon steel ones. The plastic handled Mora, or Frost-knives are very seldom sharpened, when they get dull, we buy new ones.
I have never been thinking very higly about these knives, but now when I see so many knifeknuts writing positive things about them, I might have to reconsider.
Perhaps I should sharpen up a bunch of them

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Tea drinker and hellraiser from Northern Sweden, above the arctic circle.

 

[Alberta Ed]

I bought a little Ericksson a couple of years ago for a price so cheap it was ridiculous. The dealer told me the blade was laminated and it does appear that way, a dark line between two brighter outside lines, but it's not laminated. Darn good steel, though. I have several of Frost's laminated blades, the nice woodcarving ones, and set one 4 1/2" blade from Lee Valley Tools in a section of moose antler I'd saved from a hunting trip. Made another for a trapper friend who swears by it. These blades are definitely worth sharpening; they're one of the best deals going, if you're interested in pure cutting tools without any glamor.