I bought their Arkansas Toothpick
I bought their Arkansas Toothpick - the black Battlecry one for $160, with the final cost coming in just shy of $200 with tax and shipping.
Where to start?
How's about the fact that the blade actually rattles around inside the sheath and the sheath itself is about an inch too long, thus resulting in it easily bending at the end?
Looking at the back of the sheath, I quickly discovered that the seam was fake — this wasn't a real leather sheath, instead, it was some fake material whose strength and durability I question as I have seen that sort of fake seem in other things and the things always fall apart in short order.
The bluing of the metal parts of the sheath, guard and pommel was already wearing away while the pommel has three significant silver spots where the bluing clearly either bubbled or chipped and thus left exposed metal.
While the pommel does APPEAR to be peened to the tang — the peen could be as fake as the sheath — it was done very sloppily and has raised edges that you can easily pick at with a fingernail.
Drawing the blade, I saw that it was made in India...yeah...they forgot to mention that in the same way they forgot to mention that the sheath wasn't made from real leather.
There's also an uneven cut to the handle resulting in a gap between it and the pommel.
It can't even cut paper and running my finger across the edge, I'm betting it would have a hard time going through a tougher cut of beef and would likely fail most of the Forged in Fire sharpness tests.
I'm betting the blades were punched or cut from blanks and then went down an assembly line with some unskilled worker just cutting, grinding or polishing one part before passing it on to the next guy.
The only good thing I can say about the knife is that the blade feels good and tight and the whole thing has a solid feel in my hand, but in light of all of the flaws, shortcuts and flat-out lies told about it, smart money says that I need to add "for now" to that statement.
I just picked it up to give it another going over to see if there were any additional problems and noticed that the metal tip of the sheath was wobbling, so fiddling with it, much to my horror, it came off, which means that it likely would have fallen off the first time I actually wore it out somewhere.
As such, I am reassessing the value of this knife — it is clearly a $20 flea market knife as the tip of the sheath wasn't even sewn together, instead, it's just two lose pieces of material with a gap between them while what appears to be paste — not even glue gun quality glue — was used to secure the metal tip of the sheath over them.
Fortunately, I paid with PayPal so when they refuse to fully refund me, I'll just have PayPal do it and then toss this thing in the trash.
