What are the worst quality knives you had priviledge to experience?

Mtech.....fury....anything made of low quality 440. Anything with cheap paper thin liner locks that wiggle like no tomorrow.....and all the junk you see on home shopping network.

I showed my foreman at an old job my spyderco paramilitary 2, and he asks the price.
His response: "dude you gotta watch KNIFE NIGHT on HSN! You can buy their special pack for 100 bucks that comes with 250 knives and katana!"
Sorry but I wouldn't trade one of my paramilitary 2s for 300 of those trash knives

Heck even my best friend and his ex gf. We used to go to fleamarkets on sundays after waking up hungover from partying all night.
Or sometimes take a walk through town and usually stop in the "army barracks store".
Him and his gf would many times end up with new MTECHS at the end of the trip.
No matter what Id say to try and convince him to Just buy a quality blade, he'd just laugh it off and buy his wiggly mtech.

One time he was using one and FINALLY it failed. Ended up cutting himself, but since the steel quality is such rubbish and the edge dull, it didnt do too deep of a cut..

Oh....and last 4th of July at a family cookout, my 16 year old cousin gifts me a new fury knife(absolute trash). He shows me the pne he bought.
I tell him "dude, BE CAREFUL with that knife because it isnt very safe. You'll cut yourself...."
15 minutes later the kids running to the bathroom holding a bloody hand xD

Good times
 
Looks like I ain't the only one to recall Frost Culery with unfondness.
I'll fourth or fifth (or whatever it is) their nomination as worst.

All the Frost Knives I feceived as a kid were tossed into the Mississippi River, as far as I could toss them from the center span of the US HWY 136 toll bridge.
(since I used the pedestrian walk, they did not charge the toll for my bicycle.)
 
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Quiet said:
I just bought a Buck 110 LW this weekend and it's complete trash. As in, brand new, out of the package, the sharpening job was so poor, the tip is actually rounded. LOL
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I feel your pain...
At least, as in my case, it wasn't a pair of elk 110s from the custom shop @$190 apiece that had nearly the worst edge grinds I've seen on a factory knife.
Way uneven, burnt, dull, and one of them was ground to a recurve!
Ridiculous.
I sent them all, including a matching elk 124 to REK, straightened them right out.
Beautiful now.
 
The Cold Steel Spartan. It’s so huge there’s no way I can find a decent grip. It’s also too large to fit into a pocket.

It takes two hands and a lot of tugging to open the knife. Although I appreciate the strength of the lock it’s REALLY hard to un-engage the mechanism and when you finally release it the blade guillotines down on your fingers.

The blade has an overblown recurve that limits usability.

Basically I find the knife unusable.
 
JDRanger said:
The Cold Steel Spartan. It’s so huge there’s no way I can find a decent grip. It’s also too large to fit into a pocket.

It takes two hands and a lot of tugging to open the knife. Although I appreciate the strength of the lock it’s REALLY hard to un-engage the mechanism and when you finally release it the blade guillotines down on your fingers.

The blade has an overblown recurve that limits usability.

Basically I find the knife unusable.
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Lol. I've never handled one, but from videos it looks absurd.
The idea of a pocket folding kukri is completely absurd
 
This one. Known as the Hay Stack Reject.
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Quiet said:
I just bought a Buck 110 LW this weekend and it's complete trash. As in, brand new, out of the package, the sharpening job was so poor, the tip is actually rounded. LOL
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You can send it in to Buck and they will fix it under warranty at no cost to you.
 
afishhunter said:
You can send it in to Buck and they will fix it under warranty at no cost to you.
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I'm well aware of that, but at the same time, it is not something that you should need to do on a brand new knife. Plus, it was $25. It just wouldn't be worth my time to bother with it. I will say that the most irritating part of it was that I bought this knife at the same time as I picked up a cheap Gerber (made in China) as these were both knives that I was going to gift at a White Elephant gift exchange party I was attending. I was irritated that the Chinese made Gerber was superior in fit and finish to this American made Buck.

Also, I misspoke earlier, it's a 112 LW, not a 110.
 
A couple Browning knivess I got because I liked the design.

A Myerco Kirby Lambert that is A. a brick, B. Poorly centered, C. Constantly makes me think it's just going to pop open on it's own

A CRKT I got for my brother where the scales had already warped and eventually cracked around the screws.

All cheap(er) stuff, so not really surprised.
 
Sadly my worst experience was also with buck, out of the “custom” shop. The scales were of uneven thickness and had a gap where it should’ve met the bolster, space between the back spring which stuck out unevenly, and the blade grind was atrocious. The grind was burnt and uneven, along with a recurve on the drop point. I sent it back, took like 2 months to return, what came back was almost acceptable so it was gifted and I washed my hands of buck.
 
Well, by experiencing terrible knives we learn to appreciate high quality knives.

That said, Buck is extremley expensive here, I didn't expect to read that much about them on this thread.
 
This is the infamous $1 knife (Ozark Trails) from Walmart. Guaranteed for about 2 days, or one box. I've had one break right out of the package. I think they are discontinued now.

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mwhich50 said:
This is the infamous $1 knife (Ozark Trails) from Walmart. Guaranteed for about 2 days, or one box. I've had one break right out of the package. I think they are discontinued now.

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Amazon reviews of this thing also just gave me a good laugh :D
 
My first Queen was rather dreadful. The replacement, after a custom grind job, was glorious thankfully!
 
Cold steel code 4, wanted a cold steel to have a tough lock back knife and got a knife without a working lock.

Lock would not engage so ended up returning it and getting an American lawman instead.
 
marcinek said:
Expensive does not equal good, and inexpensive does not equal bad.
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Well true.

Drop Forged Hunter (51200 High Carbon) is a beast for 44€. Compact and sturdy, well, entire knife is one chunk of steel. The thing that impresses me the most about this knife is edge retention. It just won't go dull. Due to it's weight it's decent chopper, even though it is relativley short. And blade is 5mm thick which says enough.
It's my current EDC.
 
Honestly, I think most of you are either very lucky or you don't encounter a lot of knives. Myself, I pick up 50-100 a year. Many of those I pick up are used, and I recently actually paid cash (not a lot) for a knife that makes everything listed above seem petty. But it's so unusual that I didn't even know it existed (pattern by fairly well known mfr). And yes, bad action, sharpening, poor design, those are things we hate to have to deal with. But really, is design a quality issue? If it is, it's one easily avoided.

Some of the mfr's mentioned are known for poor QA. But I have knives from Frost that are very well made, likewise Buck, Bear & Sons, Cold Steel, Northwoods, etc...And if you want to dump on an entire brand, there are lot's bigger targets. There's a whole thread on "gas station specials" and Pakistani knives are legendary.

For me, here's the worst I've run across; I hope you never see anything like this:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/how-bad-can-it-be.1608199/
 
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