Having read through this tread in its entirety, I decided to take the plunge on a RR403, 3 3/4" red bone congress. I've been itching for a congress after going through my maternal Grandfather's knife collection and finding 7-8 full size Boker and Hen & Rooster congress knives therein...
Short of dropping the cash on the Boker, I went the Rough Rider route to see how one felt in use. it arrived in the mail today and I thought I'd post my initial impressions on the knife. Despite the glowing reviews, I went in with pretty low expectations of it.... after all, it was $6.95 shipped to my door. I think it's better to be pleasantly surprised than majorly disappointed.
Chassis: bone, bolsters and backsprings
The bone is nicely cut and fitted to the slant bolsters. The jigging pattern is nice, grippy and well cut. The bolster to bone fit is almost as nice as on my Case knives, and significantly better than my GECs. The bolsters look good (although with more of a yellow-tint to the nickel silver than my Case/Queen/GEC knives, which looks a little bit cheap, but not bad)... The bone is PINK. Like, all the way pink ~ think Strawberry Milkshake or Grandma's sitting room drapes kind of pink. I'm OK with that though, because I had panned to experiment with dying the bone, even when I thought it was going to be red. One of the bolsters is raised up above the liner by about 1/64" on two of three sides. The backsprings are flush to the liners when looking at it from behind, although there is some visible light peeking through the entire length of both springs. The backsprings ride low compared to the liners and bolsters on both ends, both open and closed. I could easily remedy this with some sandpaper, and I probably will. The knife is very blocky, with the edges of the bolsters and bone being more squared off than any of my other traditional knives. I don't really consider this good or bad, but it's worth noting.
Blades:
I just took it out of the box, so I have no comments on edge retention, but that seems pretty well documented elsewhere. The blade fit is not bad for 4 blades in such a slim chassis. The two small blades do not appear to have any rub. The two larger blades do rub together a bit, but not badly. The blades are surprisingly thick behind the cutting bevel on all four... I recall reading somewhere in this thread that another congress reviewer said the blades on his were reminiscent of old Case grinds... These remind me more of an "overbuilt" tactical folder... it's nothing some 400grit wet/dry sand paper and some time over a piece of glass can't cure, but this was definitely my biggest disappointment with the knife as I bought it for whittling... The kicks on the small pen blades are not even ~ one pen blade rides so low that it's extremely difficult to open, forcing me to stick my thumbnail below the liner to wedge it in well enough to pop the blade open, while the other rides high enough that the point of the blade sits about 1/16" above the handle of the knife, when closed. Not much danger of it catching a finger with the other blades down. The kicks are hidden behind the bolsters, so it'll be a challenge to lower the blade. I will chop the tip off and turn it into a coping blade to resolve this issue. None of the blades will even scrape arm hair off, but the edges are well formed enough that a quick stropping should tune them up nicely, however as I'm going to be re-grinding all four blades, this is again not a big concern. The pull on thee of the blades is very nice, 5-6 on my personal pull scale, while the one low riding pen is more like an 8. Pull is very smooth with nice walk and talk on all of them. There is no play in any direction on any of the blades.
Summary
Overall, it's about what I expected ~ pretty nice for the money, but probably not what I'm going to base my collection, or even users, on, but it's a fun, low impact way to try a new pattern. I think happiness with this knife is all about the mindset and price. If I'd paid $100, or even $50 for this knife, I'd be livid with the F&F issues, however for less than I paid for lunch, I have a very serviceable, bone handled knife that with a couple of hours of tinkering will be a really good knife that will be pretty close in quality to some of my less expensive USA made knives.