Thread: Hen and Rooster: Pakistani Steel?

From the sale (purple handle)
From the website (brown handle)- the purple one is on their site as well, but in order to differentiate the website vs. teh sale I chose different scales. The blades look exact. I would not call the one up for sale a fake Hen and Rooster. Therefore I *suspect* that the original stamp says Pakistan, and that Hen and Rooster is using Pakistani blanks, and grinding/scaling them in Solingen. Please, anyone with experience drop your thoughts. I don't want to call a "Dovo" a Pakistan razor and therefore knock legitimate razors off the market, but I do feel if they are Pakistani, it should be known.

easy to find out, I just left a message on their phone asking them to call me back and what the origin of the blades was.

If they intentionally are relabelling it they'll try and talk around the matter though.

I can't imagine a real Hen & Rooster using Paki steel. I mean that is an old company with a rep to protect?????

In theory yes. But it is not like Dovo where it's a razor company. They're a knife company, and these razors seem more of a gimmick (they're under the "collector" section of their site) than an attempt at protecting their rep. I would imagine Pakistani steel is okay for things like knives where there is no need let alone way to maintain a 16k plus edge.

Well, here's the deal with Hen and Rooster. The company that is renowned for extremely high quality blades goes back to the mid 1800s and any such piece is marked Bertrum who was the owner. They were always a very small company but one that did it all. In the 1970s they had gone out of business and in the nick of time AG Russell bought the company and continued making cutlery with the bertrum stamp for about ten years or less and they used them to make their own branded cutlery. After that they went belly up and all the workers were let go and the machinery was sold off. Mr Klaas bought the name and made Hen and Rooster branded stuff of poorer quality for several years and then they went out of business or were taken over (Klaas that is) and the Hen and Rooster brand you see today was bought by Frost Cutlery and basically there is no relationship between the real Hen and Rooster and the current in ownership or quality.

I had thought the stuff you see today was made by Dovo but maybe that has changed I don't know. Sad to see a company that was considered to be the Rolls Royce of Knife makers degrade to what it is today.

Check out the AG Russell site and they still sell some original Hen and Rooster knives Russell salted away. The prices are astronomical. I have a folder I bought several years ago. It has a hollowground blade and the workmanship is exceptional. No straights though left.

I believe Frost uses Pakistani steel right? So that would be an affirmative on the new ones being Pakistani?

If you believe it is "counterfit" contact the Solingen Knife Guild. For the trademarked name of Solingen to be used the blade has to be forged in Solingen and meet guild standards.