That's a real shame, Sam. Mine is close enough to even wear the oxide coating off. I very rarely use wire cutters, so that wear is just from plier use, not cutter use.
I have a Diesel somewhere. Bought it a few years ago, and as soon as I took it out of the box I just thought it was a MP600 that was made in China. I never used it as I just bought one to have it. That looks pretty bad, but the big question is, how does it cut wire? I am just curious.
If tools can talk, it will be asking back Gerber the same question... How do I cut wire?!? But probably they wouldn't reply either..
What I mean is have you actually tried to cut wire with it? I am curious how this flaw actually affects it's cutting ability.
Thanks for the clarification, Sam! I figured you had checked that beforehand.
it's the star of a pliers based MT. Dun think they can magically cut without any contact..
Well. You can. However, not quite like imagined. If you're in a tight, you can place the wire in the cutters and use your free hand to squeeze the jaw tips passed each other until the cutters meet. I have used that method on really crappy tools before.
My Diesel cuts wire just fine, but then there is the fact it was one made before assembly was outsourced. Gerber and SOG really need to send teams of the engineers, that design the tools, to oversee the manufacture and assembly.
All this talk about this thing made me dig mine up! On mine, the box states "assembled in USA of USA and imported components". My cutters also appear to have no gap in between them. There is a 2012 date on the box so I may have had this longer than I thought. I thought Gerber was trying to manufacture more of their tools here in the USA. I still do not see why Gerber makes this when all it appears to be is a MP600. I own several MP600's but do not have time to get one right now for comparison. The saw may be different. Anyhow, I am digressing. It stinks that Gerber apparently has let the QC on this model go. I am going to guess that Gerber will not give you your money back for it. Maybe you can find an older version on Ebay?
I want to say a few years ago(edit: probably wasn't that long ago). I remember seeing an article, but cannot find it now. My Diesel had "Assembled in USA with Global Materials" on the clam packaging. I rarely hold onto clamshell packaging. I'll look around some more on google tomorrow. Edit:Here is a photo I found showing the boxed version. It is written by the UPC. Hard to make out though.
Thanks mate the box for mine is long gone. I only hold on to them long enough to be sure everything works, and then it gets ditched, so I've no idea what mine said.
Thank you for checking on that, Mike! So, it would appear, the older US-assembled tools were likely to be less defective. We all definitely need to make sure we buy ones with pre-2015(or 16/17, not quite sure) to get good cutters. Understood! I have started keeping only boxes that can be broken down to a flattened state. But, like you have been doing, I have been tossing a lot of packaging for less valuable tools. I really do hope Gerber gets the cutter issues sorted, because the Diesel is a fine tool otherwise. A step in the right direction for Gerber may be to modify the handles to accommodate the 600 pliers instead of the Diesel pliers.