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

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Did BRK supply any government contracts? I thought the story behind the Bravo 1 was it was for Marine Recon.
 
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.
 
Larrin said:
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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But that doesn’t make for sexy clickbait videos.



I couldn’t find anything rational in that Apostle guy’s bloviating beyond maybe reinforcing my ‘cult of personality’ perspective on Mike Stewart. What other possible reason could someone even attempt to be an apologist?

It’s not clear to me why anyone would listen to anything that guy has to say, but I guess everyone has their own ideas on entertainment.
 
Most of this thread has focused on the ethics surrounding BR and others, but there is another aspect of all this that I want to mention. The root cause of all of this mischief was that the company got in financial trouble. This goes back to comments I have made in other threads about the sustainability of the current knife market, pricing, etc. Sounds like to me (regardless of the unethical way they handled it) the law of supply and demand caught up with them and Bark River's business model failed.
I am afraid there are going to be more knife makers falling by the wayside soon due to economic factors. As fuel and everything else gets more expensive, I suspect many of these "premium" companies are going to find their revenues suffering as demand for premium/luxury knives will start to decline.
People only have so much money, and sometimes they have to make hard decisions about how they are going to spend it. I personally have never purchased a Bark River knife because I couldn't justify the price for what I was getting. Apparently I was not the only one.
 
chevyrulez1 said:
Most of this thread has focused on the ethics surrounding BR and others, but there is another aspect of all this that I want to mention. The root cause of all of this mischief was that the company got in financial trouble. This goes back to comments I have made in other threads about the sustainability of the current knife market, pricing, etc. Sounds like to me (regardless of the unethical way they handled it) the law of supply and demand caught up with them and Bark River's business model failed.
I am afraid there are going to be more knife makers falling by the wayside soon due to economic factors. As fuel and everything else gets more expensive, I suspect many of these "premium" companies are going to find their revenues suffering as demand for premium/luxury knives will start to decline.
People only have so much money, and sometimes they have to make hard decisions about how they are going to spend it. I personally have never purchased a Bark River knife because I couldn't justify the price for what I was getting. Apparently I was not the only one.
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Not discounting other factors that make it difficult for small businesses the succeed, but this isn't an example of any of that. At all. This is an example of poor morals/ethics and business practices on the part of Mike, apathetic or potentially ethically dubious dealers who knew what the game was and doubled and tripled down with Mike, and a cult of people who fought naysayers tooth and nail no matter how much evidence mounted that Mike was a piece of shit fraud who destroyed people's lives, in more ways than one as it would turn out.
 
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knarfeng said:
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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Yup - Derrick Bohn. And he was a standup guy.

chevyrulez1 said:
The root cause of all of this mischief was that the company got in financial trouble....
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No, the 'financial trouble' was the result of the root cause.
 
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chevyrulez1 said:
Most of this thread has focused on the ethics surrounding BR and others, but there is another aspect of all this that I want to mention. The root cause of all of this mischief was that the company got in financial trouble. This goes back to comments I have made in other threads about the sustainability of the current knife market, pricing, etc. Sounds like to me (regardless of the unethical way they handled it) the law of supply and demand caught up with them and Bark River's business model failed.
I am afraid there are going to be more knife makers falling by the wayside soon due to economic factors. As fuel and everything else gets more expensive, I suspect many of these "premium" companies are going to find their revenues suffering as demand for premium/luxury knives will start to decline.
People only have so much money, and sometimes they have to make hard decisions about how they are going to spend it. I personally have never purchased a Bark River knife because I couldn't justify the price for what I was getting. Apparently I was not the only one.
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And this is part of the reason I'm such a fan of Chris Reeve Knives. Despite all the complaining about availability online, they've taken a carefully measured approach to growth, fully aware of the ebbs and flows of this industry and the economy at large.

Unscrupulous people do unscrupulous things. It's why those that saw Mike Stewart lacking scruples weren't surprised when this happened. Quite often, people show you their propensity for douchebaggery long before they get caught.
 
I would imagine that for the knives that DLT has sent to NSM for testing, if any prove to be the correct steel they will publicly announce it. Will they publicly announce the ones that prove to be the wrong steel? BR has a long history of mislabeling steel, so there are probably a lot more than the ones that have been admitted to.
 
So, i know specific knives are mentioned in the main article that came out but im assuming its a real unknown for any of their knives without testing. Just bought a 3v Bushcrafter from the exchange and im kind of kicking myself for buying it instead of an LTW
 
I'd swear it was mentioned already but I can't recall this many pages of posts...

There was a Cedric and Ada (Pete) video where he ordered a spefic model to test. Pretty sure it was a convex edge test. It was supposed to be CPM154 but it rusted on him making him think it was something else.

Pretty sure that was way before 2019. Hard to not want to play connect the dots this deep into this.
 
Anyone who would try and back Mike or Jim have some screws loose to put it mildly. I tried to see it from their point of view but I just can't for the life of me figure out how to get my head that far up my own ass! Or as my pops liked to say, may he rest in peace, "the wind blew, shit flew, we all didnt see him/Mike/Jim for a day or two!"

I love to camp and be outdoors but im by no means a "bushcrafter" in the sense that Im out there building a log cabin with just a knife and a stick. However i do dabble and when I do, I use my LTW Genesis. I love it and im glad I went that route as opposed to the Shit River...uh...err...Bark River Knives.
 
ChipsandRolls said:
So, i know specific knives are mentioned in the main article that came out but im assuming its a real unknown for any of their knives without testing. Just bought a 3v Bushcrafter from the exchange and im kind of kicking myself for buying it instead of an LTW
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At this point, just use it and don't worry too much since there nothing you can do.
 
Maximumbob54 said:
I'd swear it was mentioned already but I can't recall this many pages of posts...

There was a Cedric and Ada (Pete) video where he ordered a spefic model to test. Pretty sure it was a convex edge test. It was supposed to be CPM154 but it rusted on him making him think it was something else.

Pretty sure that was way before 2019. Hard to not want to play connect the dots this deep into this.
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It was mentioned already, the steel discrepancies have been a problem going back decades, it's why trusting dealer stocks is impossible. Pretending only the 6 models confessed to are in jeopardy of being the incorrect steel is simply a way to save hassle and effort into addressing the entire problem that would be significantly more expensive and problematic.
 
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