DeLorean ride 2011 Tell Me About Bark River Knives, Please.

[Esquire1954]

I am happy with my Bark River knives and I do not batton them. Or any high grade cutlery knife.

I do not understand why people insist on trying to cleave wood with high rockwell knife blades when froes are the appropriate tool for this.

A froe should be made from a low to medium carbon steel, so it can be bashed and twisted without breaking.

http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/shinglefroe.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Froe

Use the proper tool for the job.

Why use a knife to do the job of a hatchet I'll never understand

 

[Owen K.]

I only have a gunny hunter from them, love the knife but there are a few voids in the maple burl handle, they look like they were filled but not totally sanded flush, a bit of a bummer on a 300+ knife but not worth sending back IMO. Great user knives maybe I'll get some pics up. Also holy necrobatman.

 

[jmh33]

View attachment 1787883
My Trailmate.
John

 

[shane45-1911]

This from a previous post on BF regarding Mike Stewart and his "fine knives". It sums it up nicely:

"Really? Catastrophic failures of the knives being posted regularly on forums for the last several years, Mike Stewart's decade-plus long history of fraud and lack of ethics, (as attested to by several high-ranking members of the knife community*)... you think all that is completely made up?
Stories of good experiences with Bark River and Mike Stewart don't magically make the bad ones go away.
*Will Fennell, former VP of Camillus; Jerry Fisk, ABS Mastersmith; Mike Turber, former owner of Bladeforums. Just off the top of my head."

The truth is out there if you want to find it. He is a douchebag, liar and cheat - personal experience. He will never see another penny of my money.

 

[PocketKnifeJimmy]

My only contribution to this thread are some pics of my Black Jack Knives knife that Bark River makes under contract. How do I know this?... Bark River marks the other side of the blade with their company's brand name

 

[Thomas Linton]

Why use a knife to do the job of a hatchet I'll never understand

A hand axe or a hatchet is for chopping. A butter knife is for splitting.

 

[rycen]

Continued from 2011, original thread

Tell Me About Bark River Knives, Please.

I've been looking at some of the Bark River products on the web; they have some pretty nice looking stuff, but I don't know a whole lot about them. Read some good stuff on a custom dealer's site about them, but he sells them, so I didn't expect any negatives. Can anyone give me some info on...

www.bladeforums.com

play me out Huey

 

[Srtr]

I like them because when they're in stock, they have a *usually* pretty big selection of semi custom knives to choose from without having to wait months to get it.

Here's my latest, the bushcraft scout in magnacut. Probably my favorite fixed blade in this size. Next to my large 31.

Do we have a brk picture thread? If not we need one.

 

[Boattale]

I really like my BRK 3V Canadian. But the sheath they supplied with it was a generic misfit.
I liked the knife enough to get a well fitting sheath made for it.

 

[Fred1950]

I have 4 of them. Excellent knives. I have a bumblebee, a Gameskeeper II, A Canadian Special, and a Woodland Special. I don't baton any of my knives. I would if I had to for some reason, but I have hatchets and axes. Along with saws, etc...

 

[irsh]

I lust after the knives. So many beautiful knives. Then I read enough bad reviews that I buy something else.
Am I missing out or dodging a bullet?

 

[Another Shepherd]

After lamenting Bark River's declining quality standards, the DBK boys cut to the chase at 23:44

 

[qmether]

 

[shane45-1911]

Then I read enough bad reviews that I buy something else.
Am I missing out or dodging a bullet?

Good call.

Bark River has a known history of deliberately misrepresenting what type of steel is used.

To you folks with your "3V" and "Magnacut", you may want to send your knives for independent lab analysis. It sure would suck if it turns out you didn't get what you paid for and thought you were buying.

Not that that ever happened, right Mike? And it certainly didn't happen A LOT either, right Mike? And you definitely never told people they "don't know what the f%#k you are talking about" when called out on it, right Mike?

 

[dirc]

yeah, many old threads talked about this... seems they like to use a2 instead of whatever high-end steel was listed

for $250+ price points I just won't take the chance
need to be careful since they also seem to have 3 or 4 other 'brand names'

 

[tltt]

For customers, there's the mismatched steel thing and the sloppy knives he puts out sometimes. There are periods in my opinion, where they'll put out badly done knives, and hope the customer just lives with it or they'll just fix it later, and offer apologies.

The big trouble is with Bark River and dealers and individuals looking to break into the knife business. Larger dealers take preference, and the smaller ones have to wait on Mike. Mike will sometimes take your money, and use it some what like a loan in my opinion till he's forced to give it back or make the knives. It's been discussed on the forums a few times.

This isn't a new thing, it goes all the way back to the original Blackjack company. One, if he's been in the hobby long enough, can probably think of a couple of dozen makers/designers, suppliers, dealers, etc.... Mike has had trouble with over the years without breaking a sweat.

Mike does know how to design a knife, and which designs to copy. And when they're spot on, they're very nice knives, but Mike Stewart is Mike Stewart. Be careful dealing with him.

Here's a good sampling of threads on it, from Blackjack to BRKT -

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/general-update.1436280 .

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/general-update-2.1482621 .

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/ripped-off-by-bark-river.403520/ .

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/blackjack-knives.124519/ .

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bark-river-has-taken-16-000-of-my-money.585934/ .

https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bark-river-again.1463481 .

 

[PocketKnifeJimmy]

In the past, while perusing the local flea market, I've looked at some really low end quality $10 to $15 knives.
They probably were made from very low end stainless steel, they probably had zero quality put in on their heat treating, many handle parts were very mickey mousey made zinc castings and low end plastics.
With that said, I noticed that most times these knives had very consistent blade grinds to them.
How? I mean, how could it be that such low end products could actually score fairly well in their consistency to have one blade match almost exactly to a duplicate being sold right beside it? Well, the likely answer is that they are made using not only cheap quality materials to keep cost as absolutely low as possible during manufacturing, but the hand labor is likely just as important to keep to a minimal. So, these low end knives are obviously being done on CNC machinery that removes a lot of need for more employees, and is obviously faster and less costly in the time they take to make them.

Now, a company like Bark River does a lot of the final work on their knives by using an actual hands on crafted method.
This not only adds extra costs in the form of it being more labor intensive, but also adds cost because it takes longer to do.
But, since they are a knife production company, rather than a true custom knife maker, the hands on will also mean some deviations from one specimen to another.
The one area that obviously takes a little extra labor, time, and skill, is their convexed blades.

I personally do think that they should really try honing in on correcting the issues that are most often brought up when it pertains to quality control.
That said, with they being semi hand crafted production knives, I think they may likely not make everyone happy, since full modern technology is not one of their goals to achieve. Their hands on methods of manufacturing is considered as one of their positive traits by many of their customers.

As for Mike Stewart, I don't know the man. With that said, I think he will go down as being as controversial as Jim Parker was.
Kind'a sad, but does seem to be what has happened with his reputation.
Jim Parker had people that thought very highly of him, and others felt he was bottom of the barrel material. I believe Mike Stewart has the same reputation now, and will likely never be able to turn that around.

 

[Boattale]

If Bark River was using whatever steel and labeling it what they wanted to, why would they ever be out of stock on specific steels?

 

[GPyro]

I don't like the fact that they do not have a store front in Escanaba where they make them.
There's other knife makers in the area that do.

There's a lot of knife making history in that area of Escanaba & Gladstone, MI.
Hess and Marbles, just to name a few.
Embrace your local community. At least in the summer months. It's a beautiful area.

I like to support local business, but if you don't welcome your customers, I'm not interested.

I've spoke with them on the phone.... They're not interested in being friendly.

That combined with the negative history....... You couldn't give me a Bark River knife.

 

[tltt]

If Bark River was using whatever steel and labeling it what they wanted to, why would they ever be out of stock on specific steels?

The reports of bad steel run 2017 - early 2019, perhaps Stewart was forced to clean up his act after there were too many of them. I'm of the opinion that the internet, plus getting older has been forcing him to chill out a bit. Things are much different now that a person can post to Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, plus dozens of other knife groups, forums, etc....