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

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Just read about 10 pages. Was a good read fellas. This is all new to me. Not a fixed blade guy so not a clue about brk or anything else in regards to them until now.

Proud to be apart of a community with high standards and morals. Seems like this Brk situation was a powder keg waiting to explode. Glad it finally did and has cleansed our small American niche market of an obvious scumbag!

Now if we could all just get behind not supporting anything from China whether openly advertised or carefully concealed we will continue to have a strong healthy American made knife market forever!!! Cause like it or not, recognize it or not it’s currently under attack!!! By a much bigger foe than Mike whats a name!

As the consumers it’s literally up to us!!! Spend wisely my friends!
 
AdamFuzzyballs said:
Last I heard, a couple of years ago, Hess was trying to revamp their process so that they could have more in stock on a website that sold region specific goods. But Hess never seemed to come back and the entire website presence is gone now.

And no, I don’t think directly linked to Mike. But I believe that the Hess craftsmen started the business when Mike ran Marbles under- they were somehow connected to the Marbles factory. After that they started Hess Knifeworks, only to face competition almost immediately from Bark River, run by the guy who got them laid off in the first place lol.

I always got the feeling they didn’t like Stewart- else why wouldn’t Bark River have hired two experienced knife factory workers in the local area?

I digress, back on topic lol
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I have a couple of Hess knives, they are great skinning knives.
 
shinyedges said:
True lol but when I came back from deployment and got briefed on the status of the cartels, you wouldn't believe what these "people" were doing. Juarez was at the time the murder capital of the world, I can't divulge what was said, but trust me, risk of being killed near Juarez vs homestead? Different world. And I'm born and raised in broward county florida.

Chicos tacos after leaving the bars and clubs with the homies before heading back to fort bliss 🤣 priceless.
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Yep I was down there working on one of the Roving Sands exercises in 2003 or so. I wandered down towards the border on Sunday afternoon and looked across into Juarez and decided that I hadn't lost anything over there. I think I made the right call.
 
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Kind of amazing to me that there is a certain major dealer of BRK that has still not put any statement on their website, nor commented on the debacle as far as I know (but I don't live on socials).

I'm giving it about a week before they're running a deal - "Buy any Chi-Kershaw and we'll throw in the BRK of your choice!"
 
ShaiHulud said:
Dlt also sells strops and compounds of BR
Ill just assume those will be left alone as they arent knives and supposedly weren't made in a shoddy fashion. Unless everything BR will be discounted or culled.
Dlt has a heinous amount of BR knives, among all the commentary here one thing i believe is obvious, they cant sell them at their currently set prices with a straight face, however I guess the reality is after they test their "batches" those with the correct steels marked will remain at the price point previously set, I just dont personally believe they should because the BR name is permanently tarnished
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Even the stropping compound is low quality. About 20 years ago I got some...the green Cr2O3 compound should be good for a mirror polish, but it had a fair amount of much coarser grain material mixed in and left a lot of larger scratches on the blade. I switched to the KnivesPlus strop block and never looked back.
 
Hammer67 said:
Kind of amazing to me that there is a certain major dealer of BRK that has still not put any statement on their website, nor commented on the debacle as far as I know (but I don't live on socials).

I'm giving it about a week before they're running a deal - "Buy any Chi-Kershaw and we'll throw in the BRK of your choice!"
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That is pretty crazy. I certainly won’t be sending business their way in the future.
 
Hammer67 said:
Kind of amazing to me that there is a certain major dealer of BRK that has still not put any statement on their website, nor commented on the debacle as far as I know (but I don't live on socials).

I'm giving it about a week before they're running a deal - "Buy any Chi-Kershaw and we'll throw in the BRK of your choice!"
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If it's KSF, the original owner died and to the best of my knowledge the family inherited it. I'm not sure that they know what to do. The original owner was the one with the knowledge. (He was a member here and used to post in the Traditional Forum.)
 
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Skidoosh said:
Did BRK supply any government contracts? I thought the story behind the Bravo 1 was it was for Marine Recon.
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No. It was private purchase. Mike had a friend in a Marine Recon unit, and he batted around knife designs with him. Later when the deign came out, some members were interested in the knife, and Mike had them sold to the unit at a discount. KSF related this years ago, when people brought it up. Mike claimed he couldn't beat Ontario on pricing, so he never tried for government contracts.

Mike, himself, claims to have done sneaky stuff in Vietnam, but to date, no record of service has been found ;).
 
tltt said:
No. It was private purchase. Mike had a friend in a Marine Recon unit, and he batted around knife designs with him. Later when the deign came out, some members were interested in the knife, and Mike had them sold to the unit at a discount. KSF related this years ago, when people brought it up. Mike claimed he couldn't beat Ontario on pricing, so he never tried for government contracts.

Mike, himself, claims to have done sneaky stuff in Vietnam, but to date, no record of service has been found ;).
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Everyone’s special forces nowadays,or can’t talk about it as it’s classified.🤔

Hacks me right off,no one used SF as a description when I was in we just served and did our job.

Some of the toughest I knew were the cooks,leathal with a ladle one on one. 😆
 
somber said:

XRF test shows MagnaCut BRK with tungsten, which isn’t supposed to be contained in the steel.

How deep does the fraud go?
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He said in the video that XRF is for soils not for metals, the composition doesn’t look like any steel available. The composition doesn’t make sense . He even had another MagnaCut knife and didn’t test it as a comparison to see that it didn’t test correctly either. Then he fed the nonsensical data into AI and read it to people. If that knife isn’t MagnaCut the video doesn’t prove it.
 
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