Probably a fake?

[Muddypaws]

I added this little knife to a recent order from DealeXtreme in China.

Chinese knife by Alan Muddypaws, on Flickr

Chinese knife by Alan Muddypaws, on Flickr

Chinese knife by Alan Muddypaws, on Flickr

It has a chunky sheepsfoot blade 40mm long, is non locking and has a front flipper which doubles as a bottle opener. The handle is titanium, and the blade is allegedly S35VN. The blade centering is not great, and the action is not silky smooth like my Spyderco Dice, but is seems to be easing with use. Overall I am quite happy having paid about £17 for it, delivered from China.

But - now I realise it is too good to be true, and am feeling some guilt for having bought what is likely a fake.

There are absolutely no markings on the knife, or the box it came in. The DX website said it was the Fura brand, which I know is essentially a knock off brand (for example, they do a knock off of a Serge Panchenko Bean, a knife I hanker after, and it is such a blatant rip off that they even put Serge's SP monogram on it)

So my question to BCUK is - whose design have they ripped off with this knife? I'd like to know so that someday in future I might buy a real one, so that I might atone for my retail foolishness.

Mods - if I have infringed any rules by discussing fakes then please delete this thread.

 

[crosslandkelly]

Put me in mind of a Kershaw PUB.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?cli...ULIsAKHb6mAxMQ4lYIKygD&biw=1366&bih=635&dpr=1

 

[daveO]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vosofferyn/vosofferyn-fricbric-friction-folding-blade-bottle

I don't know the details of either but I really hate the way that China can basically get away with infringing on copywrite laws. I think something like 10% of their economy now is reliant on producing fake goods. Someone over there can watch websites like kickstarter to get free ideas for new products and have copy products built and on-sale before the campaigns even end and the legit ones are produced.

I've seen fake Fjallraven bags that are such good copies that it's hard to tell they're fake but they're a lot cheaper and that's just a small example. While that seems great it devalues company's hard work and innovation and completely kills the second hand market since you never know if you're buying real or not. I find it frustrating that our government are so keen to trade with China while this continues to go unchecked.

Rant over

 

[Janne]

I hate copies myself, but the actual companies are partly to blame themselves.

If the quest for increased profits they place the production to countries like China and Vietnam.
The quality drops and a fake (usually cheaply made) is suddenly on a quite similar quality level.

It is well known that these subcontractors sometimes run an unauthorized production run, so same people, same materials, same QC.
One quite famous case was a Turkish Automotive part maker. The only difference was that he used a part not supplied by the actual company that had the parts made by the Turkish company.
Different surface coating on ONE small part blew the whistle.

One thing I do not understand: In case of knives, why do they seem to use a substandard steel
and not a good one? The difference must be negligible per blade.

 

[Jared]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vosofferyn/vosofferyn-fricbric-friction-folding-blade-bottle

Looks like the people that backed that campaign were scammed, judging from the comments.

 

[Nice65]

Looks like the people that backed that campaign were scammed, judging from the comments.

I'll never back a Kickstarter again after the HIPP Titanium flask fiasco. Years late, leaky, poor finish. I eventually got a decent replacement, but all the joy had gone by then so I sold it.

This FricBric guy seems to be a shyster too. He'd do better to sort the QC issues with the Chinese factory and have them make them for him. Looking at his machines, it's going to be a long while before anyone gets their knife.

 

[Janne]

Kickstarter is like an arranged marriage, one of those where you only see the bride after the wedding......

 

[Jared]

I'll never back a Kickstarter again after the HIPP Titanium flask fiasco. Years late, leaky, poor finish. I eventually got a decent replacement, but all the joy had gone by then so I sold it.

This FricBric guy seems to be a shyster too. He'd do better to sort the QC issues with the Chinese factory and have them make them for him. Looking at his machines, it's going to be a long while before anyone gets their knife.

Seems so, a year overdue, but still has store selling $300 - $1000 single finger nuck/bottle opener things and crowbars.

 

[Robbi]

I would suggest that the " front flipper " is infact for grabbing shotgun cartridges to eject them.


or maybe not..........

 

[Muddypaws]

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/vosofferyn/vosofferyn-fricbric-friction-folding-blade-bottle

I don't know the details of either but I really hate the way that China can basically get away with infringing on copywrite laws. I think something like 10% of their economy now is reliant on producing fake goods. Someone over there can watch websites like kickstarter to get free ideas for new products and have copy products built and on-sale before the campaigns even end and the legit ones are produced.

That looks just like it, thanks for the ID. But the fakers have made it a bit smaller, and instead of being a friction folder, they have made it a proper flipper, with ball bearing washers, and a ball detent. Perhaps enough difference (if they even care, which I doubt) to justify it in their minds. I'm still not sure.

 

[daveO]

Kickstarter is like an arranged marriage, one of those where you only see the bride after the wedding......

More like marrying a mail order bride from Thailand and finding she comes with... hidden extras

 

[Nice65]

That looks just like it, thanks for the ID. But the fakers have made it a bit smaller, and instead of being a friction folder, they have made it a proper flipper, with ball bearing washers, and a ball detent. Perhaps enough difference (if they even care, which I doubt) to justify it in their minds. I'm still not sure.

The FricBric has ball detents and bearings too. If they guy hasn't copywritten the design, then we or he can hardly grumble about copies, I mean look at the Woodlore type knives available.

Not that the Chinese manufacturers pay too much attention to our copyright laws. If they're employed to produce a run for a big maker and want to use the tool set up for themselves they usually make a few differences to the knife, like different shaped scales. But if they want repeat business from the bigger US manufacturers like Spyderco, then they'll tend to be more careful.

 

[Robson Valley]

". . . . more careful." True a lot of the time. Not all of the time. Remington Arms (USA) worked out a deal with Baikal in Russia for shotguns which would be imported and sold as an entry-level shotgun under the Remington brand. I own both a 12 and a regular Baikal 20.
In theory, Remington said they would use their own people for quality control.
Sure, the shotgun goes "bang" like all the others. Fit and finish, abysmal.

 

[Janne]

The difference is that the Baikal will go “bang” a century after the Remington has been melted down into rebars.

It is a good thing when mechanical objects are designed to work with huge tolerances ( sloppy fit).

 

[daveO]

The FricBric has ball detents and bearings too. If they guy hasn't copywritten the design, then we or he can hardly grumble about copies, I mean look at the Woodlore type knives available.

I'm not too up on these things but I imagine knife design is hard to copywrite or patent. You only have to change a few minor things to have a technically different knife. As long as you don't use trademark logos then it's probably a very grey area. The actual blade on Woodlore knifes look very similar in many ways to some Mora blades for example. The branding is what seems to count for most people.

With the fake Fjallraven bags I've seen they use the brand name to sell the cheaper copies which is more of what I have a problem with. If you try and buy anything second hand these days you have to be very careful. I could buy a fake Fjallraven bag and sell it second hand in the members' classifieds for twice what I paid for it and it would still be a good saving on a new bag. With a good fake the buyer would never know unless they had an identical genuine bag to compare to. It used to be the case that fakes were low quality but some of them are so good now that they're a real threat to companies and will kill innovation eventually. Like Janne said though a lot of companies with good reputations have reduced quality to save money and fakes have improved so much that they're meeting in the middle now. You can hardly blame people for buying fakes when that happens.