If you are looking for a good quality 14c28n knife.
Check out Harnds, i have the assassin, wind and giant silkworm.
They are al very good quality knives
regarding “budget”, do we also consider Craig’s List, eBay, etc.?
for example, i just bought one of these on CL for $70:
What do you need a machete for?
Gonna do some Friday the 13th roleplaying?
it is a Parang.
Machete is so
F13th 80’s.
lol.
Okay, so it's a parang.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parang_(knife)
They're still pretty similar to a machete.
I am more interested in the was this knife opens, check out the video. Isti says there is a CRKT that opens the same way.
I was very happy to see the Harnds Talisman upgraded to 14C28N.
I have the older AUS-8 version. It’s a great knife for what it is but it never seemed to get the love it deserved. Some of that has to do with distribution and brand recognition in the United States. Some of it might have been the steel. At least when I discovered it, Civivi was already on the scene and AUS-8 just didn’t feel very exciting for the price. The edge retention was decent for AUS-8 but budget knives in better steels tended to push it out of my EDC rotation.
That seemed like a shame because it was otherwise a gem. It remained my go-to example for sweet action on a budget knife. I found myself wishing it was available in better steel… and now it is!
I also noticed this 
along with the Time (what i think is a new model), also in 14C28N.
so… might add these 2 to the collection :innocent:
What was wrong with it ?
here is a $2.60 (free shipping) example from from Smith & Wesson using code Groundhog….
last time, these sold out fast.
Looks like a great deal for $2.60! 
I’ve had two of them and gave the first one to my gal for cutting merchandise boxes open, but she promptly lost it, so I bought her the example in your pic in that color. The first was electric blue.
They work OK and at $13 shipped, pretty cheap off of Ebay.
Chris
Well, that was fast. Went from available to unavailable while I was looking at other goodies.
Picked up a coupla other drop-points anyway, nice!
And holy crap, yeah, free shipping on the lot!
Usually, the gun-branded knives are not very good. As usual though, “good” is relative. For $2.60, that’s an incredible bargain and 7Cr17Mov isn’t unreasonable at the usual $15.99. Edge retention isn’t too far off from 8Cr13Mov and corrosion resistance is actually quite good. Much like 440A, 7Cr17Mov used to be a celebrated steel for budget diving, camping, and survival knives.
Of course, these did sell out right away. Just in the time since you posted, this model is gone. Looking over all the items on sale under ten bucks, only one model was left. It was an 8Cr13Mov knife similarly marked down to $5.97. I ordered it because “what the heck”.
Yeh, like the dreaded go,comma knives that were PF clones that went for… 7bux a pop when GB was dumping ’em?
I still edc mine.
I don’t care about that much about edge-retention or the kind of stuff that a lot of “knife guys” need for using it every day on the job, etc. If the blade dulls, I sharpen it. <shrug/>
So some of these critters at 3-7bux each? Yeah, I’ll “sample” whatever I can. 
Oh, and inventory comes’n’goes. The electric blue one was OOS, but then I see later that it’s available. Placed an order, literally only 1 available, so I grabbed it. Someone maybe dawdled a bit too long with an order, and 1 went back into stock. I couldn’t complete an order because one critter suddenly became unavailable, too. Removed it from the lineup (after wasting like 10min trying to figure out wtf’s wrong, as the “error” sounded like CC info was bad), but once it was gone from the cart, the order went through fine.
So with free shipping, grab what you can and check out fast, then go back for something else. No need to “bundle” 4-5 knives at a time.
Although I often carry a different dedicated knife depending on the expected situation (and MT, too), since we were talking about ultra inexpensive blades I thought I’d mention the box cutter that I’ve been using for the last 10+ years. I have them in my tool bags, vehicle, and even winter coat. It’s my go to when I know I’m cutting things A LOT, like fiberglass insulation for my attic. That being said, I’ve tried Stanley, as well as some other $20+ boxcutters over the years. They all are sitting in my garage replaced by this version.
When I bought them over the last few years, they were going for 89 cents. I think their price is now around $1.25 at WMt. I do, however, use better replacement blades after using up the ones that are included:
Hyper Tough Utility Knife
sometimes, for some tasks, you just cant beat ole reliable! plus, every day of the week i would take this red boxcuttah against a roll of insulation instead of my dogma or baklash (my main EDC’s that is)
Despite my more expensive knives having blade steels with better wear resistance, being more expensive makes me especially disinterested in cutting fiberglass, opening cement bags, or slicing really dirty stuff.
Quick question… has anyone gotten notice from S&W that their knives shipped yet?
Just curious how long they usually take to ship, whether asap or “Yeah, we’ll eventually get around to it”.
Bags of cement I’m ONLY using the cheapest box cutter in my toolbox… woof… that makes my stomach uneasy thinking of sinking even my $9 Kershaw into…