Dale, man, how in the world did I miss this 20-page gem? Guess it doesn't help that I'm not actively on IG. Anyway, thank you for bringing this to the fore and I have no doubt you have done your level best to keep this as factual, and to the letter, as possible. I'm disappointed and shocked in Dustin's behavior to say the very least. I honestly thought he was better than this.
I am so sorry for what you have gone through and are still trying to resolve. I hope Dustin IMMEDIATELY sets aside his guilt, pride, embarrassment, and just picks up his phone and calls you personally. Brother, your patience and transparency is to be admired. As for Jim being involved to whatever degree, I agree with you wholeheartedly. I have every confidence Jim was, to a small degree, only trying to assist both parties. Bottom line, it's unfortunate that Dustin did not do the right thing from the get-go but that ship has sailed. It is fairly clear that his reputation and business are now clearly tarnished (secondary $$$ and demand are dropping daily) and this was entirely avoidable if he had only acted with integrity in all business deals/agreements. This is too bad because he is one helluva talented knife maker (who, BTW, was very nice to me 2+ years ago). I hope Dustin resolves this for you ASAP and gets back on track to reestablishing a more positive reputation and work ethic. This includes making things right with those (of the selected 25) still waiting on their knives promised by a prompt return of their $100 deposit--and personal apologies. If Dustin truly needs counseling/mental help, then he should get it, but there is no longer any excuse good enough for his repeated and lengthy delays. Keeping his word should always be a man's top priority, I don't care who you are or think you are.
I'll now be following this thread and hope it ends appropriately for you... and SOON. You're a good man, Dale. Call anytime.
~ Rob
Thanks, Rob. Good to hear from you. I am a very private person and the last thing I wanted to do was to make this public. But, after month after month after month of lies, I felt I had no other choice but to lay out every detail of what happened and let the community make its own judgement about what Dustin has done, and what he continues to make worse by ignoring the whole thing. He has stated publicly that he simply won't participate in social media or internet groups any longer and will just quietly sell his knives. I guess he thinks this storm will blow over, people will forget, and things will go back the way they were before. And maybe he is right, I guess time will tell.
As I have said before, I just don't buy his excuses any longer. He has always had one excuse after another from the very start of this deal two years ago. He's tired, he's stressed out, he is having a family problem, he has to build new shop equipment, he's mad that people are flipping his knives, he's mad that too many people are pestering him, etc etc etc. But with every excuse he gave me for why he could not honor our agreement, we was able to make plenty of knives for other people, for auctions, and for dealers. Just not mine. He has selective depression, I guess.
Anyway, I don't give up easily and I intend to make this my mission in life until such a time as he either gets some more serious consequences for what he has done, or he makes some real effort to fix the situation. The crazy thing is that all of this would be so easy to fix - if what Jim said is true and the two knives were being completed two weeks ago, where are they? Why no update? Why does he make zero effort to just step up and say, "look, I was wrong in how I've handled this but I am trying to make it right." This is not the kind of behavior we can tolerate in the knife community and if I have to follow him around to every knife show he ever plans to attend for the next 20 years, I will be right there to remind him that things don't just go away because you ignore them.