can’t find the link atm, will bring it later
here is the link
also /r/knifeclub, /r/edc and other subreddits talk a LOT about china knives.
the “big” forum where they talk about blades is totally biased against china knives, clones and the rest. I can understand some aspects why they behave like that. But there are customers who simply can not afford 50 bucks for one pocket knife. They may get lost, may get destroyed or may be taken away through various means.
Even the good brands manufacture their cheaper model lines in China now.
afaik there is no budget/china knife forum, building up a forum takes up a lot of time and effort and the reward for that work isn’t coming quickly. We live in an era where “IG influencers”, discount code platforms and affiliate marketers can make thousands of dollars per month. It is understandable that not many would put in the effort to build a community forum. Also, there are now alternative discussion platforms like reddit, IG, FB groups and other corners of the web that would heavily compete with your own independent forum and these larger social media platforms already have a large reach.
I believe there should be a budget knife forum, but I think many people tried building one up and failed because eventually there wasn’t any traffic. While “man’s first tool” at a lower price point deserves more attention and a forum, many types of knives are also illegal to carry in many countries/jurisdictions (EU i.e.). I have a huge knife collection and literally more than half of them are illegal to conceal-carry in many US states and completely illegal to carry across all of Europe.
Knives still face a stigma in many areas of the world and are not as friendly as flashlights
Should be the biggest knife subreddits, they have around 200K users around this topic (redundant users not excluded). I honestly am not a huge reddit fan, but building a “forum of the forums” or whatever you want to call it was a smart move.
quote:
“As of March 2019, Reddit had 542 million monthly visitors (234 million unique users) …”
wow - just wow.
I believe they are biased against counterfeits and brands like Ganzo who almost exclusively copy existing designs.
I don’t think they are biased against Chinese-manufactured knives in general.
But I have seen many discussion on “that forum” where someone suddenly suggests that a cheaper knife design or feature was “taken from US IP” or similar. It is easy to accuse a foreign manufacturer of IP issues because there are only so many ways a flashlight or a knife can look like. They are all eventually there to fulfill a certain purpose and are bound to be similar.
I just believe that BLF members are a nicer bunch of people to hang out with. And it is hard to find a comparable group of nice people for other hobbies out there.