I bought my first Gerber knife during the summer of 1998. The knife was inexpensive and worked well for many years so when I was looking for a new work knife I thought I would get a Gerber knife. I was looking for a lightweight knife with a side clip. I found out Gerber knives made today are cheap, not inexpensive, just cheap both in price and in quality. I bought a couple new Gerber knives and neither one was nearly as good as the one I bought a few years earlier.

The new knives were used almost everyday and had to be sharpened almost every week. Even a cheap knife sold at the price these are should be able to hold an edge for a little longer than a week. The only two good things about the current line of Gerber knives are they are lightweight and they are cheap enough that you can use it as a work knife and if it is lost or broken, you are not out much money.

The Gerber name use to represent a decent knife at a fair price. Gerber now represents a mass-market knife with quality sacrificed as much as possible to make the knife as cheap as possible. It is far easier to stamp out a soft medal blade than it is to stamp out a hard medal blade. You can stamp soft medal faster and the stamp die last longer. Guess which way Gerber decided to go soft steel or hard steel that hold an edge.

I like the shape and feel of both new Gerber knives and they could be good inexpensive knives if the metal used for the blades were not so soft they loose their edge so quick.