Bark River- who’s fault?

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ShitsInaBush said:
Twisting a blade or wiggling it obviously has the potential to damage the blade, without seeing what you actually did, it wouldn't be fair to say one way or another definitively if there's a fault here or defective blade. There's been some discussion regarding edges overheating on blades due to carelessness in production. I would hate to be running a business and find out I had someone purposely lacking in performance over some personal problems. Hopefully everyone working over there takes pride in their work otherwise people will continue to make reviews when their knives fall apart. I had my own personal experience with a Bravo one having the Corby bolts come out after some batoning. So that was disappointing, I thought I used the knife what it was intended for but it fell apart. I'm glad I wasn't out camping in the middle of nowhere when it failed. I didn't bother sending it back after going online and finding some unfortunate stories of former customers being completely mistreated after coming forward, which was a tremendous turn off. If a customer is using a tool for it's intended purpose ( not torture testing with cinder blocks) and they suffer a failure, they shouldn't be ridiculed for sharing their issue. If a owner has QC issues, they should tackle the issue immediately and fire whoever is the culprit, regardless if that person is family or friend... If they're hurting your business, it's a no brainer. But people will run their businesses how they please, customers be damned at times.
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That's really bad, I'm glad I got lucky with my Bravo-1, it's one of my favorite heavy duty fixed blades and I've batonned and pounded on it like crazy. How does that even happen that the pins just fall out? Hopefully you claimed warranty on it?
 
kafolarbear said:
That's really bad, I'm glad I got lucky with my Bravo-1, it's one of my favorite heavy duty fixed blades and I've batonned and pounded on it like crazy. How does that even happen that the pins just fall out? Hopefully you claimed warranty on it?
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I wish I could have but I didn't start using the knife until after I bought my second BRK. As far as I can remember the blade edge itself held up to the batoning and chopping rather well, but the handle came loose and that was a shocker. Considering I had seen so many people using their knives pretty heavily out there in the world, I figured it was a fluke. But I googled something related to handle issues, which led me to an online forum where there was a not so pleasant exchange between M.S and another individual. It left a bad taste in my mouth and I tried to chalk it up to an isolated incident but then there was another story regarding some censoring of complaints which just threw me in a direction I had no idea I'd be heading in after all this came to light. It's really unfortunate because in some ways M.S has nothing to do with some of the well made blades , it's his employees who are putting in the work. I imagine if M.S does make a knife it is sold at fan boy pricing, not like others aren't doing so already. Rather than bash, I am a firm believer in taking my money elsewhere.
 
kafolarbear said:
That's really bad, I'm glad I got lucky with my Bravo-1, it's one of my favorite heavy duty fixed blades and I've batonned and pounded on it like crazy...
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Same here. My little 3V Bravo 1 has been a great little "camp" knife.

At first, I questioned my decision to buy "Maple Burl" scales. However, they've held-up quite well to my usage, and have really exceeded my expectations...



 
kafolarbear said:
How did your knives fail?
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I'll save you some reading, as I posted this on page 2 or 3. A Trail Buddy 3, marketed as a camp knife, developed ripples along the edge like the OP's knife did after some hacking on wood - Brazilian Cherry, not a hardwood by any stretch of imagination. Edge was carefully ground down, sharpened and sold.

A Tope Vidarr shifted its bolster after some even lighter hacking on the same wood. That mortised tang was definitely done wrong. Cleaned up and got rid of it.

No other brand has failed me twice. I have a Ka-Bar zombie war sword, cost me like 50 bucks, that I've batonned thru some gnarly knots. I posted a pic here years ago where the lodged blade had a serious bend mid log, came back to true after it was done with it. Money well spent. Can't say the same about the barkies.
 
zuluninja said:
I'll save you some reading, as I posted this on page 2 or 3. A Trail Buddy 3, marketed as a camp knife, developed ripples along the edge like the OP's knife did after some hacking on wood - Brazilian Cherry, not a hardwood by any stretch of imagination. Edge was carefully ground down, sharpened and sold.

A Tope Vidarr shifted its bolster after some even lighter hacking on the same wood. That mortised tang was definitely done wrong. Cleaned up and got rid of it.

No other brand has failed me twice. I have a Ka-Bar zombie war sword, cost me like 50 bucks, that I've batonned thru some gnarly knots. I posted a pic here years ago where the lodged blade had a serious bend mid log, came back to true after it was done with it. Money well spent. Can't say the same about the barkies.
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Yeah that's unacceptable, sorry to hear you had those experiences. I would really like to hear someone who knows what they're talking about chime in on what causes the rippling along the edges. Is the steel too soft or the blade too thin? Or something else entirely?
 
shane45-1911 said:
Garbage heat treat/tempering.
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I don't know, Bark River outsources their heat treatment to Peter's heat treatment. Does any other company use Peter's heat treatment services? If the gripe is with Mike Stewart being a scumbag, he's not the one doing the heat treatments, unless that service is just known across the board for bad heat treatments.
 
kafolarbear said:
I don't know, Bark River outsources their heat treatment to Peter's heat treatment. Does any other company use Peter's heat treatment services? If the gripe is with Mike Stewart being a scumbag, he's not the one doing the heat treatments, unless that service is just known across the board for bad heat treatments.
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Don't underestimate anything Stewart does or says. He has claimed MANY things that were not true.

I am not privy to relationship that Stewart has with Peter's, but if history is any indication - he has probably screwed them over too and I would expect they are not doing their best (or any) work for BRK.
 
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In a business where craftsmanship is paramount, you'd think QC issues would be minimized at all cost. But it's almost as if they're using their warranty as a crutch for defects in the majority of the complaints I've read about. It's great they have a lifetime warranty and will do everything they can to take care of the customers most of the time. But you shouldn't let your QC reputation slip just because you have an ironclad warranty. A company like CPK would rather make a flawless blade than worry about the scope of their warranty and what it covers. They make enough good blades to cover their QC issues, that's why they are still in business. It's not that they make a bad product, the owner doesn't have the greatest attitude and has let some integrity go out the window in some instances. They could do a better job catching the defects, their reputation in the veteran knife community has taken a hit over the years because IMHO they spend more time on the glam side of manufacturing rather than the quality. People new to the knife world will never see any of this, and to be fair I don't think the man deserves to be completely shut down, just needs to clean up his act. His employees are capable of making some great stuff and I would hate to take that away from those who actually take pride in their craft.
 
kafolarbear said:
I don't know, Bark River outsources their heat treatment to Peter's heat treatment. Does any other company use Peter's heat treatment services? If the gripe is with Mike Stewart being a scumbag, he's not the one doing the heat treatments, unless that service is just known across the board for bad heat treatments.
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Peters is good. But he can't help it if the wrong steel is used or the blade overheated during grinding after treatment.
 
kafolarbear said:
I don't know, Bark River outsources their heat treatment to Peter's heat treatment. Does any other company use Peter's heat treatment services? If the gripe is with Mike Stewart being a scumbag, he's not the one doing the heat treatments, unless that service is just known across the board for bad heat treatments.
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ferider said:
Peters is good. But he can't help it if the wrong steel is used or the blade overheated during grinding after treatment.
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Yes.

As has been mentioned many times, bark river ruins blades while grinding and sharpening. In fact, that is exactly what bark river admitted to doing to the bade at the heart of this very thread. Of course, they didn't offer a replacement, just to give it another try and send it back smaller.

And yeah, I think it is important for dealers to know that we know this is how bark river operates. No doubt they know. It's not a bad thing for customers and dealers to have the same info on a maker so we can look at them and say, "why you carrying his water?"
 
kafolarbear said:
I don't know, Bark River outsources their heat treatment to Peter's heat treatment. Does any other company use Peter's heat treatment services? If the gripe is with Mike Stewart being a scumbag, he's not the one doing the heat treatments, unless that service is just known across the board for bad heat treatments.
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How you know it's Peter's? It's not on BRK or Peter's site.
 
zuluninja said:
I'll save you some reading, as I posted this on page 2 or 3. A Trail Buddy 3, marketed as a camp knife, developed ripples along the edge like the OP's knife did after some hacking on wood - Brazilian Cherry, not a hardwood by any stretch of imagination. Edge was carefully ground down, sharpened and sold.

A Tope Vidarr shifted its bolster after some even lighter hacking on the same wood. That mortised tang was definitely done wrong. Cleaned up and got rid of it.

No other brand has failed me twice. I have a Ka-Bar zombie war sword, cost me like 50 bucks, that I've batonned thru some gnarly knots. I posted a pic here years ago where the lodged blade had a serious bend mid log, came back to true after it was done with it. Money well spent. Can't say the same about the barkies.
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FYI, Brazilian Cherry, also known as Jatoba, is an exceptionally hard wood.
 
Just giving my 2 cents, knife social justice warriors feel free to cry me a river.
I bought my first bark river a few months ago, a bravo 1.25 Lt in 3v with an uneven grind, it didn’t affect the performance but it was aesthetically unpleasant. I decided to contact them and they told me to send the knife for warranty repair which I never got to, while using the knife a piece of wood cracked and I ended up hitting the edge pretty hard with a rock, after seeing how little damage it suffered I decided I liked the knife and have bought more knives from them since, 5 more to be precise with 0 issues. I don’t know Mike Stewart personally and I believe him as much as I believe anyone else on this or any forum. He has not done anything to me and my knives look and perform as expected. I cannot comment on mikes character just as I cannot comment on peoples issues with brk, I was not there, I was not involved and has not happened to me even though if you were able to find 2000 complaints about brk, they have been producing thousands of knives for over 2 decades, doesn’t seem like a lot to me. What I don’t understand is why people in this thread whine so passionately about it. if anyone wants to try one of brk knives your feelings about the morality of the decision shouldn’t be enough to call other members fanboys, biased, inexperienced and shut them down just because they have different opinions based on their personal experience with a product, that childish “cancel culture” behavior it’s ridiculous on a forum made to share a hobby.
 
Sucar said:
that childish “cancel culture” behavior it’s ridiculous on a forum made to share a hobby.
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You’re right, this is a forum to share a hobby. The forum/community that has been taken advantage of by the very man you’re defending. We should just turn a blind eye until the next person gets scammed? Because “Sucar” hit a rock and his knife didnt disintegrate? This has nothing to do with “childish cancel culture”. It is about educating people on a con man who has stolen tens of thousands from community members/friends on numerous occasions as well as engaging in numerous other illegal anti consumer business practices. I’ll continue to expose con men because a community that allows snakes to thrive is not a community I want to be a part of.
 
Sucar said:
What I don’t understand is why people in this thread whine so passionately about it.
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Did he steal from you? He did from me. That gives me the right to whine as much as I like in this thread.

I'm so tired of the "he did nothing to me" bullshit. We are here to educate you about the history of the man and his knives, and ultimately try to raise the bar of this hobby.

Turn a blind eye if you want and continue supporting a PROVEN criminal, con-man, thief and liar, but shut your mouth. You are lowering the bar with your ignorance.
 
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