If you remember the brief fire that burned bright that was the original KnifeHaterz IG account, you might also remember, before it went off the rails started just being mean, his or her precision sniping of one the gear world's greatest foibles--our infatuation with small batch stuff.

Let's just all admit it--if there is a piece of kit out there and there is some "I made this by the sweat of my brow in my garage" story behind it, we love it. We root for those makers and companies. We cherish and lionize those brands. But the reality is, some of the items these folks or companies produce isn't that special. Just because one dude made something with a Dremel or the company chooses to bequeath to us one or two blades at a time doesn't, necessarily mean that it is great.

Yes, this post is inspired by my now more than three month long wait for a Busse 2nd Gen Battlemistress. The receipt told me the wait could be 2 to 20 weeks. What does that even mean? Well, a call to Busse last week told me that it doesn't mean either 2 or 20 weeks. Instead, I was told it would be 20 weeks plus a month or so. Yikes.

There are two problems that people seem to overlook--poor product design and lack of products. There are egregious offenders in both camps and some inauspicious small makers hit both.

The worst offenders of the first kind, in my mind, are some of the so-called custom knife makers. These are folks that have a grinder. That's it. They aren't really making knives, they are making what Mike Stewart calls knife shaped objects. These are crude, clunky designs that don't cut. You see a lot of these on IG and many are fixed blades. They have "finishes" that are accurately called "mistakes". If you make a mistake and repeat it enough, it becomes a finish. Some of these knives aren't just bad cutters, some are so weird and so poorly made I would know what to do with one if I got it for free. But worse than the junky product is the sycophantic buyers that praise the design as "original" and the maker as providing excellent customer service. This is the absolute worse form the infection I have written about before called Magical Thinking. Here we aren't even talking about something lame made by a master. We are talking about junk made by a dude with a grinder.

As the boom in the knife business and the custom knife business continues we will continue to have folks that decide to jump in and see what they can do. As I have noted before, simply based on the law of averages, very few of these new makers will be any good. Most will be flushed out of the hobby once the market contracts and hopefully their turd-like products will go with them. The thing that puzzles me is the forces of the market SHOULD be punishing these folks. Why buy some crude hunk of shit for $200 when you can buy a well designed knife for much less on the very same Internet that brought you the IG famous piece of crap? Market logic depends on the rationality of buyers. In the knife world, that sometimes goes out the window.

As bad as the person-with-a-grinder-and-a-dream products are, in some ways the vaporware folks are even worse. If you are around my age and were infatuated with video games in the early 1990s you remember how hype obsessed folks in the enthusiast press were. No game that was released was at good because there was another game, available in Japan only, of course, that was better. We had Mario, but we were waiting for an unavailable Mario ripoff. And then there were the Japanese only game systems we were always pining for--remember the SuperGrafx? It's easy to hype a product if you never have to make it or release it to the public.

So it goes with some small batch gear makers. Wanna Survive Knives fixed blade? Me too. They look awesome on paper, because all you need to do to look awesome on paper is write down some good specs. Let me try this:

Survive Knives Vapor

4.5 inch blade

5.5 inch handle

CF molded sheath with Tek-Lok

SM100 Blade Steel

Drop Point Blade Shape

Westinghouse Micarta scales

Weighs 3.4 ounces

Price: $175

Look at that! I did it! I made an awesome knife! Or I listed a bunch of specs. Boy do I wish I could use CAD because then I could really make the Vapor even cooler.

I get that Survive Knives is basically run by one guy and it is hobby, but even with those limitations, they are producing precious few actual products. And don't bother trying to time a release. I have now been suckered into calendaring a release three times, only to go to their site and find nothing. And the release notes are silly: in production, out of stock, pre-order....blah blah blah, but never: In Stock.

Some companies pull out of the vaporware stage. HDS did so with their Rotary and even now, years later, it is one of the best lights on the market. But my hope for Survive Knives is dwindling. There are complex instructions for buying their blades--Monday sales (which three times did not happen while I was watching) and pre-orders. Let's be clear--never pre-order a knife if you have to pay for the whole thing up front. Too many problems happen with this set up and too many great makers don't do this. If Scott Sawby could hold my order for three years without even a penny, Survive Knives can do so too. Then there are the flash sales. I wish I could say this was a joke, but they had the GSO 5.1 "in stock" for two days starting at 2 PM and ending at 2 PM two days later. I am not sure how they could make it more inconvenient to buy one of their products. You know what the "How to Buy" button should say? Click to add to cart, pay. That's it. I don't want to have to calendar a sale and I don't want to have to sign up for your newsletter where you show the one or two people in the world that actually have one of your knives outdoors slaying beasts with them. Make knives, not newsletters.

But for some reason, folks think this is a good way to build buzz for their gear, like free advertising. It might be, but it also builds frustration and distrust (especially with a pay up front preorder model). And it's bad business. Why bother with all of the shenanigans necessary to land a Survive Knives blade when Bark River is making readily available stuff that is as nice and cheaper? And if you want exclusive there is the available, but not in crazy numbers Fiddleback Forge stuff.

In the end, Survive Knives will get lapped by the competition that has decided to, you know, make knives. Weird right?

Don't get suckered by the hype of small batch. Look for quality. Don't give your money away up front to anyone, unless you are asking for something to be made with crazy materials. And don't be a small batch fanboy. Imagine if some small batch guy made a knife as sweet as the Mnandi. How bonkers would people go?