The slipjoints are built for us by Queen Cutlery, a sister company to Ontario. Queen is located in Titusville, Pa and everything they do is built at that plant. The quality is excellent and we endorse their stuff 100 percent.
I think a lot of folks are confused on this Asia tactical folder deal. The reason we are pulling our endorsement of the knife is we had an agreement several months ago with Ontario to cease production of this folder due to issues with it coming from Asia. Ontario decided to re-order these folders and drop the bottom out of the price without even consulting with us. The Model 1 is a RAT design, not an Ontario design. We license them to sell the knife and they pay us royalties in return. They DO NOT own the design. If they did, they wouldn't have to pay royalties on the product. The Model 1 folder has our name on it. We can only assume there is a reason that Ontario can reduce the price of the folder as much as they have. Undoubtedly they are now getting them at a much cheaper price than the original price. So, the BOTTOM LINE to all of this is the fact that we had an agreement to quit making a folder design that we own outright. Ontario then re-ordered and dropped the price without telling us anything or consulting with us in any fashion. This is the reason Mike and I can no longer endorse the product. We have no idea how the price got so cheap all of a sudden or what the re-order is all about since we have not been kept in the loop on any of these decisions about OUR designs.
Jeff
