Evil D wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 6:50 am
SpyderForLyfe wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 5:15 am
Evil D wrote: ↑Tue Aug 09, 2022 4:45 am
You lost me at "YouTube research". Even if there are 50 videos pointing this out, your sample size is tiny.
Keep in mind these knives are assembled by humans. Are you 100% perfect at your job 100% of the time? If it's just an assembly issue that you can and did fix and isn't a manufacturing defect, then I'd say it's not a big deal. Centering can be tweaked, screws can be tightened. Be happy it's not a warped blade or uneven grind or something that you can't easily fix.
Boy there's always one.
In case you missed the tone of my post, it was informative, not critical. I am aware that they are built by humans, but it seems that this particular batch has a higher rate of assembly QC issues than most spyderco products.
As for "YouTube research" that's an expression... Meaning I didn't put a ton of effort into actual research, so I was acknowledging that it wasn't extensive. That's why I put "YouTube research" and not simply "research".
I also acknowledged that all of the issues can be easily corrected. You're simply repeating what I originally wrote.
I posted it because I wanted spyderco aware of it so they can decide if it's an issue they need to investigate.
You seem very defensive over this. Your attitude of "shut up and take what they give you and be grateful for it" as if I got it for free or something is unacceptable. If I'm paying north of $250 for a knife, I'm going to have some basic expectations.
You get that one of the major points of this message board is for people to voice concerns, right?
Ya know what....to be completely blunt honest on this forum just for once...
I am so sick of reading about the most trivial issues with knives that I often think about logging out and not coming back. It's getting so ridiculous. Every other day it's some BS about blade centering or blade play and the most minute anal retentive details, people have gotten so unrealistic with their expectations and it's just well beyond being old and tired and it's getting to where this forum is just a place to complain. If I seem defense it's because I've been a blue collar worker my entire life and I understand what it feels like to work your *** off making knives only to see people complaining about the tiniest little details, and they're almost always details like this that the user can easily fix so why complain about it? If it really mattered you'd send it back to Golden and let them deal with it. If I worked for this company there's no way in **** I'd ever come to this forum because it would just crush my spirit. I honestly don't know how Sal has tolerated it for this long, he seriously is a saint and has the patience of a zen master.
Like I said, your sample size is not large enough to make claims like this. Even in a smallish ~1200 piece sprint, how many have you actually seen with this "issue"? 5? 50? Out of the total batch ran, that's not a large enough sample size to make claims about flaws when the vast majority of the rest of them don't have any issues. People see a couple videos or comments on forums that match their own and they run with it like it's the absolute fact, it just doesn't work that way. How many people have no issues at all? Are we operating by the "one apple spoils the bunch" mentality?
I highly HIGHLY doubt that posting on this forum will get the feedback to where it needs to go, and if it does make it then there is a human being working long shifts muttering to themselves "I'd like to see YOU come your *** into this factory and turn these tiny screws all day and assemble hundreds of knives a day and let's see YOU make the fit and finish and blade centering absolutely perfect on each and every one of them" and they're laughing at these complaints because they're just unrealistic.
I'm just saying, if it's an
assembly issue and not a
manufacturing issue maybe just try to have some empathy sometimes. As a person who is constantly judged by my performance at work and constantly dealing with over entitled unrealistic opinions from people who couldn't do my job better than I do it if their lives depended on it.......empathy.
And I'm sorry, I don't mean this crap towards solely you, I guess it's just been building up for a while and you're that final piece of straw.
Having also experienced QC woes with a BladeHQ shaman that I could *not* fix (vertical play, and spyderco warranty did not help me out), I can empathize with OP's point.
I'd agree with you 100% if we were talking about a simple tool to be used and eventually discarded for a new one.
... But these knives are commanding over $200.
Many of Spyderco's offerings are stemming far beyond the curve of diminishing returns in terms of their value, that they're steadily becoming 'functional art', and I think having cases like mine or OP's being brought to light are important, because even if it is a small sample size, it's still a
relevant sample size.
If over 50 people are experiencing blade play, that's not an insignificant number of bummed pivots/lockfaces/stop pins. Because you're also not accounting for the people who either
don't care about the blade play, just
don't notice, or have silently returned the knives to BladeHQ without telling anybody (The BladeHQ rep I spoke to admitted that this is a common problem they're seeing, and they've been getting a
lot of returns.)
If you think blade play/centering/aesthetic points are trivial things for a product that commands the price 60 big macs, that's your prerogative. But when we're getting companies doing these things better, at cheaper prices
(regardless of the nationality involved, before you bring up china), it's not unreasonable to at least
hope to see the same level of standards put into knives being built by our home team. It frustrates us because we love Spyderco and
know they can do better; taichung is a shining example of this. But unfortunately there's no taichung shaman.
(and yes I know, different factory, different production, but they meet and exceed Spyderco's quality standards nearly every time)
I also don't know that your painting of Spyderco's workforce as a bunch of disgruntled assembly workers going "those **** ungrateful lil shits don't know how hard I got it" is productive, because I imagine many of them would be personally disappointed if their work ended up disrupting the end user's experience with their product (and if they aren't, why haven't they looked for a new job yet?). Especially if many of these issues could be corrected with new loctite standards, new assembly machines, etc.
Tl;dr: just because you don't see these things as meaningful issues, does not mean other people are fools for feeling like they are. These are not $5 milwaukee boxcutters. We have long stretched beyond the bare idea of 'tool' and into 'functional art'.