Thread: A Talk of Steel.

There's many factors that contribute to the quality of a blade: carbon content, contaminants, alloy and temper. If you buy a good brand knife you can be sure that rigid quality controls were part of the manufacturing process, with unknown brands it is hit and miss really. Most cheap quality stuff for sale in the West is made in China but that does not necessarily mean the Chinese do not know how to make high quality stuff.

You need to ask yourself whether you need to spend the extra $$ for the jobs you are going to use the knife for.

//Start long rant...
Right or wrong, my prejidice & experience tells me that if you want to offshore something to China, they will build it to the specifications that you require. Price point comes into play I suppose.

If you want good, I think they can make good.
If you want cheap, I think they can make cheap.

I have had a few China knifes. The steel was fine on all of them.
But the pocket knifes fell apart (lock blade knives, screws came out and were lost).

I have never had a Pakastan knife that I liked.

I have two Old Timer fixed blade knives that are the same model, one from USA one from China - I cannot tell the difference apart from the markings (and apart from the fact my wife takes her USA knife to scrape glue off of concrete, pry staples from furniture, and what not with hers...uuuug).

Over the decades I have had cheap USA knifes, and more costly USA knifes.
My favorite brand is Case - and I have never had a problem with the edges on them.
Case have been costly, and I have not had many of them (I tend to loose small knifes every so many years).

My mother in law owns some famouse branded & expensive USA kitchen knifes that I cannot put an edge on - go figure. It is as if they are counter fits - and for all I know they are. How hard is it to put someone else's brand name on a knife....

And I have some kitchen/hunting/fishing/steak blades that I picked up for $4 US or so each, made in USA, that have first rate edges. ($4, that must have been some time back, I cannot imagine they are still $4 with the US Government diluting our money).
The wife's German knives have WAY better handles, and are much heavier - and she likes them.
The German knives are of WAY better quality for sure - and any idiot could tell that right off. But the $4 knives cut just as well. I cannot comment on edge retention, maybe I should investigate how long they stay sharp.

//end long rant
Jody

I am with Mike on this one. If you look at specs, they may list typical percentages, but the actual standard says 'A should be more than X and less than Y' and so on and so forth. And you expect that the steel you get is made up only of the specified elements. But that's not a given, nor is it required. Anything and everything could be in there, as long as the spec is met. And that is of course ignoring the fact that quality control in china can be very poor.

But that is not to say Chinese is automatically bad. I know there are several people in China making high quality katana. However, things like pocket knives are production line items (cheap), and with the default poor quality control and variance in the actual steel, the quality of the actual blade is a crap shoot.

Originally Posted by Bruno

I am with Mike on this one. If you look at specs, they may list typical percentages, but the actual standard says 'A should be more than X and less than Y' and so on and so forth. And you expect that the steel you get is made up only of the specified elements. But that's not a given, nor is it required. Anything and everything could be in there, as long as the spec is met.

A bit off topic, but this is true for meat products as well. Baloney, hamburger, meatballs, etc.
From a legel pov, certain poducts may contain more than 0% and less than 5% of heart meat. Less than 7% internal organs, etc. In the meat industry, nothing goes to waste, so a simple piece of baloney has a rather long list of specs. I once had a math tacher in college who also solved math problems for the industry.

One problem he once had to solve was for a meat processing company. They explained this topic about specifications, and then asked him: 'Of course we have to monitor the contents for quality control. However, sometimes mistakes happen. In terms of one off 'mistakes', which one would be financially most interesting to make (wink wink)?

The same will be true for your chinese steel. Even IF they care about meeting the spec, they'll do it in such a way that they observe the letter of the spec while also getting rid of whatever scrap they have lying around that week. Swedish steel mills otoh are much more concerned about their reputation so they'll target their chemical composition to the typicals values.

Originally Posted by Wullie

I wonder if that's how they made my GoldDollar LOL!

They only needed one employee to make your Gold Dollar.

Boomers will remember 'Made in Japan' was synonymous with junk, and generally their exported products were a joke. I'm not sure China has the same kind of drive for excellence built into their culture that Japan does, but it is a country that might have a win at any cost attitude. The arts and culture of China are deep and should they turn their attention to production of quality products....hang onto your hat.

Originally Posted by WW243

Boomers will remember 'Made in Japan' was synonymous with junk, and generally their exported products were a joke. I'm not sure China has the same kind of drive for excellence built into their culture that Japan does, but it is a country that might have a win at any cost attitude. The arts and culture of China are deep and should they turn their attention to production of quality products....hang onto your hat.

I agree. I am not one to say China will make inferior products forever.
It's just that at this point in time, their economy is based in shipping large quantities.
As you say, the end result will be driven partly by their culture, and partly by the economy's demands.

China supplies consumer goods at a price point and quality level demanded by outside companies that contract them to manufacture them. Well known foreign companies do this and if the product is inferior then either the foreign company is not ensuring quality standards are being met or they just want junk to be made. Boeing has parts made in China for their aircraft production so lets hope the quality is there next time you fly on a newer Boeing plane and I am pretty sure it is. China can make crap or good stuff deepening on what is demanded of them.

Bob

I have a Boker Chinese knife. From what I've read, the blade and all of the parts are all made in Germany but the final assembly takes place in China. Considering that the entire thing is held together with screws, I figured the worst that might happen is that I may need to tighten one at some point. I guess my point is that just because it states that its a Chinese version doesn't necessarily mean that it was actually made there. It could just be the assembly.