I used to carry a Sogwinder, (same construction different blade shape) and ended up selling it simply because I was having trouble carrying it onto planes, and travel was becoming a larger part of my job. Without question, these are about the toughest lockbacks made. Further, the fit and finish on them is in general exceptional.
When evaluating the quality of such a knife, there are a couple of things in particular I look at:
1) How secure is locking bar to blade connection when it is open? In these knives, the cut out is deep, precise and the two pieces fit together exceptionally.
2) How rigid are the scales, can they be flexed? (This is actually a common mode of failure, the handle flexs changing the geometry of the lock to the blade) Again, particularly on the big ones the answer is virtually nothing.
3) How durable is the pivot, is there any play in the blade? (ie, the walk and talk business) I carried the Sogwinder for a number of years, with many flick openings and no problems.
In general, I would say that the quality you get for the money is easily among the top factory companies. I will say three things
though as cautions. It has now been nearly ten years since I had my Sogwinder, and I haven't looked at them much since. I don't know if any of the manufacturing has changed in that time. Also, At the time I believe the blade steel was 440A. This is actually a better steel than many give it credit for when properly heat treated, but it isn't 440C or ATS 34. Finally, I'm not quite sure about the edge profile of the Tomcat, but the Sogwinder was flat ground with a very thick edge profile. Combining it with an extremely thick blade did not make that efficient a cutter. Not a criticism, as it was not really designed to be a slicing sort of knife. The Tomcat is probably better, but the thick blade steel will definately not cut as well as thinner stock in a quality knife. That is part of the tradeoff for the strength. - Good Luck
