Just saw this.....Bark River is no more?

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Jaybees said:
Bark River small collector here. At the moment, I'd argue that at least with knives made in Bark River's goldern era (pre-2019), should at least hold their value or slightly dip for a few months. Probably as time goes, those knives will start to increase bit by bit. As long as the knives are legit steel (A2, 52-100, 5160, 3V) they should be good to retain their value. Stainless models might get a bit more scrutiny, but i have an early Bravo 1 with hard rock maple handle in CPM-154 thats a user, and given how the steel performs and sharpens, I'm confident it's the real deal. Stewart might be scammer, but he knows knives and he knows how to heat treat. So much good will burned in the knife community will hurt knife values for a time, but in the long run, the good stuff will be fine value wise (in my opinion).
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Mike Stewart is a world class shitbag. End of story. There was no good will. You supported a total and complete shitbag. What he may or may not know about knives means less than nothing next to how he used and treated people. Enjoy your collection.
 
Terrible for the workers, dealers, and customers to have been taken on a drag like this. Only one of the three dealers I regularly buy from went all in on Bark River blades as their flagship brand and I'm honestly not sure they can survive this. I'm glad that I only bought one of their knives and it was long enough ago that it might even be made from the same steel it says it was made from.
 
Jaybees said:
Bark River small collector here. At the moment, I'd argue that at least with knives made in Bark River's goldern era (pre-2019), should at least hold their value or slightly dip for a few months. Probably as time goes, those knives will start to increase bit by bit. As long as the knives are legit steel (A2, 52-100, 5160, 3V) they should be good to retain their value. Stainless models might get a bit more scrutiny, but i have an early Bravo 1 with hard rock maple handle in CPM-154 thats a user, and given how the steel performs and sharpens, I'm confident it's the real deal. Stewart might be scammer, but he knows knives and he knows how to heat treat. So much good will burned in the knife community will hurt knife values for a time, but in the long run, the good stuff will be fine value wise (in my opinion).
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He said he made about 1 million knives, thousands and thousands of collectors will continually shed their collections. Supply will flood the market with demand remaining low permanently bc who in the hell in their right mind is going to start collecting them moving forward??? High supply and low demand, I’ll let you figure that one out. Sorry man, you’re delusional as a fan or in denial of how bad the situation is for collectors which is understandable if you have a sizable BRK collection.
 
Jaybees said:
Bark River small collector here. At the moment, I'd argue that at least with knives made in Bark River's goldern era (pre-2019), should at least hold their value or slightly dip for a few months. Probably as time goes, those knives will start to increase bit by bit. As long as the knives are legit steel (A2, 52-100, 5160, 3V) they should be good to retain their value. Stainless models might get a bit more scrutiny, but i have an early Bravo 1 with hard rock maple handle in CPM-154 thats a user, and given how the steel performs and sharpens, I'm confident it's the real deal. Stewart might be scammer, but he knows knives and he knows how to heat treat. So much good will burned in the knife community will hurt knife values for a time, but in the long run, the good stuff will be fine value wise (in my opinion).
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Pre-2019 is not a golden era. If you have been following this thread, there have been issues since 2006. There is no golden era.

As others have mentioned, collections of this brand are now worth nothing as more and more dirt has come to light.

Is it possible some of yours are legit steel? Sure. But the company name is forever tarnished, meaning whether or not your knives are legit is moot.
 
Danny Linguini said:
Mike Stewart is a world class shitbag. End of story. There was no good will. You supported a total and complete shitbag. What he may or may not know about knives means less than nothing next to how he used and treated people. Enjoy your collection.
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Yup, I probably unkowningly supported quite a number of unscrupulous knife companies and makers throughout my knife collecting years. Seems like the knife industry has a way of attracting these types unfortunately. Makes one wonder how many are still out there scamming others.
John Phillips said:
He said he made about 1 million knives, thousands and thousands of collectors will continually shed their collections. Supply will flood the market with demand remaining low permanently bc who in the hell in their right mind is going to start collecting them moving forward??? High supply and low demand, I’ll let you figure that one out. Sorry man, you’re delusional as a fan or in denial of how bad the situation is for collectors which is understandable if you have a sizable BRK collection.
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Maybe with some models, but the big difference is between the number of users out there and the number of safe queens. My small collection of 10 (2 users, 8 safe queens) knives probably isn't going to make much of a dent anyway. I stopped buying Bark Rivers when their sheaths became crappy and the price increases came close to custom made knives. I liked them at first, sure, but then moved on eventually to folders and haven't really looked back since. So for the moment, I'll enjoy the Bark River knives I have and I'll let the lawyers and the regulatory bodies worry about Mike Stewart. The one's in my collection will either go up in price, down in price or maybe stay the same. We'll have to wait and see what happens.
 
Patent Guy said:
Has anyone trotted out the old investor caution about buying at the wrong time…”catching a falling knife”?

I’ll show myself out
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As a restaurant manager in my former life, I attempted to catch the 3/8” blade attachment of a manual food slicer as it was falling to the floor. (So basically I tried to catch 6 serrated knives falling at once, parallel to each other, and evenly spaced.)

Regional management was in, and I didn’t want them to see a piece of equipment I was delivering to a prep cook crash to the floor. So instead, they got to see me getting 3 fingertips wrapped in a series of butterfly bandages and finger cots. Cuz ain’t nobody got time for no stitches on a Sunday after church!

~15 years later, 2 of the scars are still pretty prominent. Some lessons just have to hurt a little.
 
Jaybees said:
Yup, I probably unkowningly supported quite a number of unscrupulous knife companies and makers throughout my knife collecting years. Seems like the knife industry has a way of attracting these types unfortunately. Makes one wonder how many are still out there scamming others.

Maybe with some models, but the big difference is between the number of users out there and the number of safe queens. My small collection of 10 (2 users, 8 safe queens) knives probably isn't going to make much of a dent anyway. I stopped buying Bark Rivers when their sheaths became crappy and the price increases came close to custom made knives. I liked them at first, sure, but then moved on eventually to folders and haven't really looked back since. So for the moment, I'll enjoy the Bark River knives I have and I'll let the lawyers and the regulatory bodies worry about Mike Stewart. The one's in my collection will either go up in price, down in price or maybe stay the same. We'll have to wait and see what happens.
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At this point, the damage to the brand is so extensive that I don't think any of them have much value going forward, no matter when they were made. If you give them as a gift to anyone who knows anything about knives, they might even be offended. Sadly, the best value you can get from them now is as hard-use bargain knives for use around the home and garden. I get that there are a lot of people who bought these knives as some sort of investment and the loss in value will take time to process after spending this much on them, but other knife collectors are going to be looking at Bark River knives like gas station knives from now on.
 
In mid 2018, when i wanted to get a 3v camper, due to to what was shared on bladeforums i (reluctantly) stayed away from survive (couldn't be sure of receipt) and brk (couldn't be sure it was the right steel) which were the 2 options available. Then i discovered ambush knives & got the ambush alpha gen 2. Later discovering it was made by brk for dlt. Ambush has since been folded back into brk and the ambush alpha gen 2 has become the brk bravo alpha. When i discovered it had been made by brk and may be A2, i did the 'water test' and it didnt stain.
It seems to behave like 3v, extremely hard to reprofile and seems generally tough (batoning etc). Wondering what my chances of it being 3v?

Anyway, its reportes that some chinese steels perform quite well in reality (and are often indistinguishable from many conventional steels in practice, and are constantly improving) and add that to what seems to me (from viewing online) the considerable thickness of brk blade stock. After the fact (putting aside the pain and scope of the financial loss, fraud, loss of resale value etc etc)- from a pure user perspective, isn't it likely that people who own brk, have a quite strong knife that is both strong (due their thick bladestock) and may even (depending on which chinese steel/heat treat) have decent/good edge retention?
 
Jaybees said:
Bark River small collector here. At the moment, I'd argue that at least with knives made in Bark River's goldern era (pre-2019), should at least hold their value or slightly dip for a few months. Probably as time goes, those knives will start to increase bit by bit. As long as the knives are legit steel (A2, 52-100, 5160, 3V) they should be good to retain their value. Stainless models might get a bit more scrutiny, but i have an early Bravo 1 with hard rock maple handle in CPM-154 thats a user, and given how the steel performs and sharpens, I'm confident it's the real deal. Stewart might be scammer, but he knows knives and he knows how to heat treat. So much good will burned in the knife community will hurt knife values for a time, but in the long run, the good stuff will be fine value wise (in my opinion).
Click to expand...
There will be some market. I'm seeing facebook making it sound like no one else in the company could have known and begging the knife industry to forgive the people who ripped them off. I don't think they fully appreciate what has happened.

- a meeting took place that concluded with the notion "we should order Chinese knife kits and pass them off as American made"
- the order was placed
- weeks later the order was received, unpacked and inspected.
- another round of planning took place once the blades were in hand
- this step is a doozy. going out to the shop floor and telling your hourly employees what role you want them to play in the fraud. It's unclear if any resigned over it.
- "make sure you grind the 'made in China' ALL the way off"
- setting up the laser marking machine to mark CPM-154 on the blades. To be a fly on the wall near that person. One wonders if there was any guilt or just "knife is knife oh well".
- the knives were boxed up with labels that do not match the contents, including Made in USA branding
- emails sent to vendors letting them know the fraudulent order is on the way
- receipt of the stolen funds

This is not an off-the-cuff mistake that "any good man could make". We've all made mistakes, but this was a series of deceitful actions that could have stopped at any point if a shred of morality existed within the people performing them.
 
It's a shame what they did to BRK, employees, vendors and customers/collectors but not surprising.
Looks like a great opportunity for LT Wright and others to grow their business. They and others could easily grab BRK market share.
Who in their right mind would do business with the new J Stewart venture? I can't see any distributer, retailer or customer taking a risk on it. How likely is it that he as the ops manager and production manager at BRK was unaware of the fraud?
 
I’m posting this here because I think there are people that somehow thing this Chinese knife BS is the problem.


It’s just the tip of the iceberg. This guy has been a scammer for DECADES.

In 2017, a Bladeforums knifemaker and all around good guy named Brian Evans had a design for a nice little EDC, and commissioned Bark River to build it for him. You can read about how that went here.

Brian was hardly an isolated incident.

There are people in this thread asking why things like this weren’t being discussed. They WERE being discussed.



Also, it appears as though the word is getting out to the public - article in Outdoor Life.
 
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