It's a long story.
In the beginning there was USENET, which had a knife discussion group called rec.knives that flourished for a number of years. Then the WWW revolution started, and Josh Burbank of PVK started a site called recdotknives.com which used one of the earliest forms of bulletin board software out there - wwwthreads.
Josh used RDK to troll people. At the time I was doing freelance webdev work and one of my customers was Earl Stewart of Central Florida Knife & Tool. He asked me to step up and help him defend Kevin "MadDog" McClung against various attackers both on rec.knives and recdotknives.com. I quickly realized that it'd be easier to control the territory the battle was being fought on than letting others dictate the terms, and knifeforums was born. Knifeforums quickly expanded beyond the capabilities of wwwthreads and was transitioned to Ultimate Bulletin Board software (UBB), which was much better (at the time). Mike Turber, owner of World of Weapons (WOW) was a moderator for the General discussion area of KFC and all of us were fighting the battles against the haters all over USENET & the web. Eventually Josh outed himself as using multiple profiles to fight back (IIRC he posted under the ID of Staples5 on USENET and like a dumbass signed his actual name to a post) and that pretty much sunk recdotknives.com - he got caught red handed doing the things he claimed not to do. After that, KnifeForums started to flourish.
Earl Stewart and I had a falling out because, quite frankly, he didn't want to pay me for my work. Rather than actually pay me, he decided to try to destroy my reputation, hoping I'd go quietly. McClung decided this was an opportune time for him to repay my efforts defending his sorry ass by stabbing me in the back repeatedly. Unfortunately, for them, I had friends who were also pretty pissed at both of these guys over other misc things, and they helped me out. Phone calls were made, and a battle plan was drawn... and, using the lessons learned from the RDK -> KFC battle, BladeForums.com was born. vB had just come out, so we purchased a lisc, set up BladeForums.com, and away we went. The original silent partner didn't like the way the KFC vs BFC fight was going and backed out of supporting, so Mike Turber stepped up and took over the financial ownership of BFC. I don't remember the exact details of the first battles, but the end game was that BFC won and grew, and KFC was left behind and stagnated.
I went to work for Turber and moved down to Jacksonville, Florida, doing web stuff for him and running BFC. Sometime after that, Stewart sold KFC to Nowka, yadda yadda yadda.
For whatever reason, WOW didn't do so hot for a bit, and Turber started 1SKS. Things continued not going so well and my paychecks started to bounce, so I grabbed my nuts and made Turber an offer he couldn't refuse - sell me 1SKS and BFC, or I'd quit, start my own sites, and he wouldn't be left with a business to sell. He took the paycheck. There were some other behind the scenes things, but they weren't important. Around 2002-3 I cleared out the last of my hurdles, had 1SKS / BFC owned outright, and moved shop back up here to Kentucky.
Anyhow, as soon as I had control over this site and didn't have to answer to anyone, I changed how it operated. I don't like using BFC as a sales tool for 1SKS - I believe that it should be a resource for the knife community, and if the community is happy with it, the community as a whole will support it. I think it does ok, you guys are the ultimate judge in that regard.
Thanks so much,Planterz.There's nowhere you can find this kind of info.So back in '98 it was owned by Mike Turber?What year did Spark buy it?Why did he buy it?
