The Street Beat has always been my favorite fixed blade design, but for a knife of this price I expected much better finish. I'm disappointed. The issues:
- Most obvious flaw: the gimping does not end evenly. It ends sort of at an angle, as if the gimping is deeper on one side, or the spine was ground not flat. See pic
- Near the back of the handle where the micarta scales meet the spine, there is about a 1.5 mm more "square" portion of micarta on one side which is completely lacking on the other scale. One side squares off while the other just curves right up until meeting the spine. Kind of hard to explain but again see pic
- Couple small scratches on the blade, and a shoddy looking sheath. Neither of these are a big deal and normally I wouldn't care, but it's the accumulation of all these little things that get to me.
The weird gimping where gets progressively more shallow where it ends. No that's not the light obscuring it, it literally ends unevenly like that.
The uneven micarta scales. As you can see, where the scales are narrowest, the RIGHT side is much more square. The left side isn't square at all, but it a smooth curve right up to the metal. It is quite asymmetrical
Am I nitpicking or having unreasonable expectations here? Or is this type of thing normal on a Street Beat? Should I bother returning or exchanging? Does this quality as a manufacturing defect, or is it acceptable variation in quality? Thanks for your feedback