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Showing 1 of 14 conversations about:
reswright
3850
Aug 4, 2019
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I'm passing on this one.
When I was younger Gerber blades had a bit of a cachet about them. There was this ad campaign -- Gerber: Legendary Blades -- with a picture of a knife stuck in stone like Excalibur. Growing up I figured they must, like, make knives for British commandos or something.
Gerber actually started out as a department store in the Pacific Northwest where the guy that owned used to give gifts at Christmas to his biggest customers. He wasn't a knife guy, he was a salesman. And the knives didn't start out as pocket knives or daggers or what have you. And he didn't sell them at first, either. They started giving out kitchen knife sets that were locally made, just as little salesy thank yous to his big spenders. And after a while it got to the point where people asked him more about the knives than the stuff he was actually selling them, and it became obvious that those were the thing he was providing that people wanted more than anything else, so he decided to get into that business instead. The rest is history. I don't know who the original dude was who made those knives for him but Gerber owes everything to that knifemaker. The irony is, nowadays almost all of their work is contracted out to third parties, mostly overseas, so they're almost back to the point where they make no knives themselves anymore.
Because of this wide range of OEMs, Gerber has a wide range of quality in the present. The top quality ones that cost a hundred, a couple hundred bucks, are usually pretty good -- but my Auto 06 wasn't even adjusted correctly when I got it, the pivot was crazy tight and the blade would stall on deploy. Not what you want on a switchblade. I was able to tune it into trim again. And that's an Auto 06. These days Gerber is releasing a lot of models of knife with comparatively weak steel and handles that scratch up if you breathe on them and selling them at the bottom end of the market, and the reviews demonstrate that pretty clearly. Drop has offered several and the community is lukewarm at best. I think Gerber has fallen fairly far from being the sort of blademaker they once were, even if they originally lucked into the role in the first place. They appear to be coasting on the strength of their reputation. I don't see innovation and I don't see leadership.
Looking through reviews, the Fastball doesn't sound like it's one of the better QCed knives Gerber makes. It looks like a nice knife, it has expensive steel, it's got a good name, so I was thinking about maybe giving this one a go... but waaaay too many people are complaining about build quality. At this time and place in history, that's pretty screwed up. If you're going to be a 'Made in America' company that waves that flag, at least act like you still think it means something. Build good stuff, build stuff that pushes the market back toward well made gear again, don't just cash in on a brand name in decline.
(Edited)
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