Tim, I'll respond to your comments.
As far as this not being a current production Mad Dog knife, this knife was purchase 8 months ago by one of the forum members, at an authorized dealer. No if and's or buts. So, if that isn't current production, I don't know what is, because I think everyone here knows that ATAK's don't sit around in stock for 3 years, no matter what anyone says.
Second, there have been allegations that this knife was partially machine made, making it around 3 years old. I'll take pictures of the choil area (the area indicated as being evidence of machine shaping), but even with a cursory examination it's clear that the grinds on both sides of the blade are uneven and don't match up. If this is a sample of the machine grinding use, then that machinist didn't know how to program his tools.
The knife looks like it was hand shaped because of the uneveness of the grinds, by a right handed person at that.
So let's reexamine the facts.
Kevin says that the notch indicates a defective knife. We can all agree the placement of the notch is such that there's no way for an average user to find out whether their knife is genuine or not, and therefore there are quite possibly lots of fake Mad Dog's out there.
In order for this to happen, this means that someone had to
- Steal the defective blank
- Finish it without it being noticed, which means hiding this knife continously since there's an obvious notch on the tang
- Send it out for hard chroming, without being noticed
- Get it back in and fish it out, again without being noticed, yet leave the packing slip that said X number of knives were chromed
- Slap a handle on it and somehow recognize which one it is.
- Finish the knife and find a Mad Dog dealer that's willing to divert payments to them. (Oh yeah, that's not suspicious for a dealer)
- Keep up this chain of events for 3 years without anyone being suspicious
- Mad Dog has to be aware that someone is stealing and finishing his knives for at least 3 years, yet doesn't take any action to prevent this other than putting the notch *under* the handle?
Or, we can accept Allen Blade's version of events:
- All defective knives were destroyed on the spot, not thrown in a scrap pile where they could be pilfered continuously over a 3 year period
- The notch was put on all sides to help the glue get purchase, thought this procedure may have changed since he left.
Make up your own mind, but I know which story has a much less convoluted logic chain and is less of a stretch. I'm picturing a scene from The Great Escape where inmates are pulling all sorts of things out of their cloths in some master conspiracy to get this knife built.
Regarding the handle material being a "Modified G10", that's BS. Think of it this way - in order to purchase modified or special materials, you generally have to purchase the entire lot. So if you want a special steel, you have to buy an entire mill run of it. If you want a specialized product from a med-large manufacturer, you have to buy an entire run of it. Between the 2 of us, do you really think Kevin makes enough knives to buy an entire run of anything? I didn't think so. He's buying stock G10 or G11 cut in a slightly differant width for his handles, that's it. It's not proprietary, or anything more high tech than that.
Regarding the handle failures and lack of proof thereof, we are in the process of finding that information out right now. We've got calls in to a navy unit that has apparently experienced not 1 but 12 handle failures in 3 weeks from (suprise suprise), the handles rusting off. "Premature decomposition" was the term used, which allegedly is why a Mad Dog knife isn't going to be purchased officially by the Navy at any time in the future. If we can get a copy of that report it will be an interesting rebuttal to the "Sole Source Justification" that get's tossed around so often.
Finally, regarding the "internal" emails, again, that's BS. Mad Dog has made no bones about publically calling people liars, thieves, with "pathological" being his current term of choice. Now, when its coming out that he may not have been so truthful, he's nowhere to be found. Kevin also told the other person in the emails that point blank he didn't care if the information was forwarded to Mike. If he wanted it to remain internal, he shouldn't have given permission to release the information.
As soon as we had this information it became obvious that this information needed to be released publically because it quite possibly invalidates the tests. So, we went public with it and give our rebuttal and have yet to hear any responses.
Think of it this way, how would it sound if we had information that the knife might be a fake, yet sat on it for 3 months and then it came out? It would look like we didn't care about the tests and would take our results no matter what.
Instead, we are more than willing to throw away the tests that were done, and are willing to repeat the tests at any time with another "genuine" ATAK. You literally can not ask us to be more reasonable than this.
You also don't see us making excuses about this test. We're presenting the facts. Pure and simple. If you want to go into spotty histories, we can do that as well. Let me know when you would like to start and we'll start digging deeper into some of the stories that are floating around about just who is the "pathological" liar here.
Tim, give me a call, I'd like to discuss this and some other things with you. 1.800.969.7771
Spark
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Kevin Jon Schlossberg
SysOp and Administrator for BladeForums.com
Insert witty quip here
[This message has been edited by Spark (edited 05 November 1999).]
