Photos [Updated with BR’s response] Problems with Brand New Bark River Gunny CPM-3V

[shinyedges]

It appears that you’re ignoring all of my responses and are completely fixated on the idea that people are attacking you and Bark River. It’s getting pretty amusing.

Also, it’s a pretty good ad-hoc test since you have a control that you’re testing against.

I'd ignore him, his agenda is pretty darn clear.

 

[LukeTheSpook]

It appears that you’re ignoring all of my responses and are completely fixated on the idea that people are attacking you and Bark River. It’s getting pretty amusing.

Also, it’s a pretty good ad-hoc test since you have a control that you’re testing against.

I wasn't ignoring you. I don't think anyone is attacking me, I was making a funny..

I have no experience testing a knife like that and I'm not even sure if O1 would show rust in two hours. I don't really want to try!!

 

[ridnovir]

Gee fellas we have one of these threats every 3 months like clockwork. You would think that people will get it off their chests in one go...oh well... I will chime in as well. The big picture is that BRKT outsell the competition by a huge margin regardless of their "past history" or ongoing QC issues. The reason is simple they have nice designs (most of them original and not plagiarized) and they offer them in various steels and handle combos...AND their knives are readily available for purchase - same cannot be said about ANY of the aforementioned alternatives.

 

[Pinnacle64]

Yep like them or not they sell like crazy because of their features, price point, availability, made in USA and each semi custom with so many choices in steels and handles.

Personally, I’ve purchased around a dozen BRK never had a isssue. Not trying to take anything away from others that have had a legit issue or problem that sucks.

 

[brownshoe]

Bark River has sold multiple knives that were not made of the steel the customer thought they were buying or heat treated as the wrong steel. That's not a QC issue, that's incompetence or fraud.

If fraud, then since it's across state lines, it's federal. It is no suprise they don't admit it often in a warranty situation. Enough individual cases of civil fraud, make the case for criminal faud.

The history of fraud for some of the people behind Bark River goes back ~20 years, however fraud convictions to protect knife collectors are not high on any prosecutors list, so the beat goes on... Per a post made earlier, in past comments they've admitted to consciously using the wrong steel at past companies.

There's a lot of other makers who don't have those kind of problems.

 

[AdamFuzzyballs]

What's id really like to see is the evidence for the majority of these claims. Every thread I've ever seen as "definitive proof" ultimately comes down to hearsay or shotty "evidence" from somebody's brother's cousin's friend Jed.

I don't have a dog in this fight, other than the few examples of Bark River I've seen having been extremely wellmade, and the Marbles I have from the Stewart era is fantastic. I have seen Mike Stewart interact with people on FB and from what I can tell he isn't an outright bad person.

Obviously, this is all anecdotal!

 

[22-rimfire]

Bark River has sold multiple knives that were not made of the steel the customer thought they were buying or heat treated as the wrong steel. That's not a QC issue, that's incompetence or fraud.

I think this is pure BS. Sorry. Anyone can make a mistake. Anyone. Maybe the wrong steel gets used for a particular batch of knives? I suspect it happens in a production environment. Stuff happens. Call it what you want to. I think you would get much more relevant information from Derrick at KSF relative to Bark River since he deals directly with them all the time. He deals with hundreds of their knives and knows.

 

[katanas]

I really don't know, I've never been a fan of their knives so I don't own any. All of these threads however, put together, do cause me to think of the "smoke, fire" analogy.

 

[LukeTheSpook]

I really don't know, I've never been a fan of their knives so I don't own any. All of these threads however, put together, do cause me to think of the "smoke, fire" analogy.

So many of these threads are manufactured. The more times they are called out the less you’ll see them.


Read them. There is a simple effective formula to almost all of them. Bad news, even when it’s not 100% true travels fast. Especially when it’s helped along by nafarious individuals

 

[tyyreaun]

I think this is pure BS. Sorry. Anyone can make a mistake. Anyone. Maybe the wrong steel gets used for a particular batch of knives? I suspect it happens in a production environment. Stuff happens. Call it what you want to. I think you would get much more relevant information from Derrick at KSF relative to Bark River since he deals directly with them all the time. He deals with hundreds of their knives and knows.

Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. The third time it's enemy action deliberate?

 

[Insipid Moniker]

So many of these threads are manufactured. The more times they are called out the less you’ll see them.


Read them. There is a simple effective formula to almost all of them. Bad news, even when it’s not 100% true travels fast. Especially when it’s helped along by nafarious individuals

That's a bold claim. Do you have any evidence at all to back it up?

 

[LukeTheSpook]

Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. The third time it's enemy action deliberate?

Has it happened three different times? I'm curious, we've seen the wrong label on the steel but I'm trying to figure out how many times it's happened.

You say it's happened three or more times?

 

[22-rimfire]

Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. The third time it's enemy action deliberate?

I really don't challenge your statement. When you say deliberate, do you mean one knife or many knives? Many knives would be fraud if it was proven intentional.

Mike Stewart is still the same Mike Stewart that worked for Marbles, helped to form Blackjack, made some EK knives, and finally the current Bark River company that seems successful. I think he had some problems in his life. Maybe he did some things he regrets. I don't know. But I look at the current Bark River knives and for the most part they are well crafted and quite fetching in appearance. I own several Blackjack knives in A-2, and a couple Bark River knives. I would like to own more Bark Rivers, but I just don't use fixed blades very often and hence I'm fairly selective. Bob Dozier tends to get more of my money.

 

[tyyreaun]

Has it happened three different times? I'm curious, we've seen the wrong label on the steel but I'm trying to figure out how many times it's happened.

You say it's happened three or more times?

It's happened at least three times, assuming every video and thread on that issue is true. The A2 labeled as CPM-154 that Pete from the Cedric and Ada channel on YouTube is one case, and I think Bark River admitted to that one. This current thread, plus this one, would be 2 and 3.

Anyway, I was mostly being facetious. I really doubt it's deliberate fraud, just horrible inventory control, etc. My only point, in response to 22-rimfire 's comment, is that you can't really discount it as just a mistake if it happens multiple times. There is a middle ground between it being an honest mistake, and it being deliberate fraud and deception - Mike just doesn't seem to care.

 

[NiceNife]

KnivesShipFree is accepting the return and has sent a return shipping label. They have great customer service.

I had a conversation with Mike Stewart on Facebook and sent him the details of this post. To be clear, I did not accuse him of intentionally mislabeling the knife. I actually believe that he didn’t. He’s offering to personally investigate, but I’d rather just send the knife back to the vendor, get my money back, and call it a day.

I did one last test with this Gunny 3V and left three water droplets on the knife for an hour and half. Details below. I also included a snippet of my conversation with Mr. Stewart because some conspiracy theorists here think I’m “manufacturing” negative posts about Bark River. I decided against sharing the whole conversation since that just doesn’t seem ethical.

Three large drops of tap water:

Heavy rusting and a deep pit developed after an hour and half on only one of the drops. The other two droplets didn’t cause deep rust. Could this just be poor heat treatment?

Part of my conversation with Mike today:

 

[tyyreaun]

Mike Stewart is still the same Mike Stewart that worked for Marbles, helped to form Blackjack, made some EK knives, and finally the current Bark River company that seems successful. I think he had some problems in his life. Maybe he did some things he regrets. I don't know. But I look at the current Bark River knives and for the most part they are well crafted and quite fetching in appearance.

I think this probably is getting very close to the core of what's happening. Mike has experience across multiple companies. He knows what will sell, and what won't. He also knows that many buyers either 1) will buy Bark River Knives cause they look cool, but won't use them, 2) won't really be able to tell the difference between steel types, or 3) if they do suspect something odd, will either ignore it or assume it's their own error.

Edited to add: by this I mean, not that they're deliberately mislabeling, but that they're not putting a high priority on keep their steel stocks properly labeled and organized, etc.

 

[Insipid Moniker]

I think this probably is getting very close to the core of what's happening. Mike has experience across multiple companies. He knows what will sell, and what won't. He also knows that many buyers either 1) will buy Bark River Knives cause they look cool, but won't use them, 2) won't really be able to tell the difference between steel types, or 3) if they do suspect something odd, will either ignore it or assume it's their own error.

Edited to add: by this I mean, not that they're deliberately mislabeling, but that they're not putting a high priority on keep their steel stocks properly labeled and organized, etc.

I doubt the error is in the raw steel stock, as then you would have knives getting entirely the wrong heat treat and similar issues. Not to mention it would be almost impossible not to catch that error during grinding and sharpening. I think it's much more likely that the problem lies in sloppy inventory practices or confusion the final few steps in preparing the knives to ship.

 

[jimmyd1982]

I doubt the error is in the raw steel stock, as then you would have knives getting entirely the wrong heat treat and similar issues. Not to mention it would be almost impossible not to catch that error during grinding and sharpening. I think it's much more likely that the problem lies in sloppy inventory practices or confusion the final few steps in preparing the knives to ship.

True, they probably would realise it, but they might decide to ship them out anyway rather than eat the loss.

 

[Jhansenak47]

True, they probably would realise it, but they might decide to ship them out anyway rather than eat the loss.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity."
-Hanlon's Razor

Do you have any evidence to support the claim that they are acting maliciously and not just negligent?

 

[tltt]

What's id really like to see is the evidence for the majority of these claims. Every thread I've ever seen as "definitive proof" ultimately comes down to hearsay or shotty "evidence" from somebody's brother's cousin's friend Jed.

I don't have a dog in this fight, other than the few examples of Bark River I've seen having been extremely wellmade, and the Marbles I have from the Stewart era is fantastic. I have seen Mike Stewart interact with people on FB and from what I can tell he isn't an outright bad person.

Obviously, this is all anecdotal!

The fellow who mentioned the steel deceptions is Anthony Lombardo posting as BladeandBarrel here, scroll to post #268 -
www.bladeforums.com/threads/bark-river-has-taken-16-000-of-my-money.585934/page-14#post-6025093 .

He actually worked for BlackJack. There have been other posts in support of this by other BlackJack employees over the years, but I don't recall their user names, and don't care to dig through 1000's of posts.

As to Stewart admitting it? That post was on the old defunct Knifeforums, where he ran the Marbles forum. People used to ask about old BlackJacks all the time, and one question was about steel types used. He admitted that toward the end, they used what was handy, whether it was older blades, different carbon steels (albeit ones that BlackJack was known for using), etc....

This didn't cause a fuss because - a) It was in discussion of simpler steels, not any specialized ones. b) It was in discussion of a different era in knife making. In the mid to late 90's when those knives were made, there was no social media, aside from maybe rec.knives, which very few knew about. You had to wait months for maybe a small announcement in a magazine about a steel change, and if one happened most people just shrugged, and hoped that yours was in a steel you liked. So that is why Stewart probably felt safe talking about it.

Now you can tell the world in 10 seconds about problems, so there is no excuse for such things.

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As for Stewart's response to this guy's problem. It's laughable. He's playing the industry giant angle that he does sometimes (When he's down, it's the "hat in hand nice guy". When he's up, the arrogance starts).

A little thing like changing the steel may only seem like a savings of a couple of bucks, but you stretch that across even a portion 40,000 knives, over multiple years, it's huge money in this industry. Also if he is actually doing it, it's a safe con. The tests to conclusively figure it out are over the cost of the knife, and you'd need to test multiples across a bunch of different things, to prove it wasn't just a bad batch.

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Again, enjoy the knives, but never trust Mike Stewart. There are reasons why guys like Fisk, Reeve, Maringer, Applegate, Becker, Cargill, Lovestrand, etc...., etc..... have nothing nice to say about him. They didn't just pluck his name from the sky.