From what I saw on FB, the premade blanks had a sticker on the knife or bag that said "Made in China", so those were getting removed. It doesn't seem that they were grinding much off since it was a sticker, but they were re profiling and tweaking the grinds on them supposedly. Many of the kits look like the generic kits that most knifemakers supply houses carry from China. PKS, a known retailer of these, announced it was going out of business recently and looking to sell the business to someone and had fire sales of their own inventory recently, so I wonder if that's what prompted a lot of this? Maybe his blank supply was drying up?
When I first started "making knives" many years ago in the late 90's, I used some of the premade blades and adding handles to them, and I quickly saw they sucked. Soft steel, no edge retention to speak of, etc. Thats what got me into making knives back in the late 90's and early 2000's when I got some belt sanders and could grind my own steel and send them out for heat treating until I stopped in 2004/2005 ish. There are newer blanks (Jantz Pattern, Swedish Puukko brands, etc) that are decent quality, but not near CPM steel performance, that I played with again around 2008-2015 when I was making stuff for family and friends and when I was rehandling Japanese kitchen knives as a hobby. I have used them on occasion and customers were told up front what they were and that I was only adding handles to them. I noticed a change around 2018 or 2019 when I started doing some more kitchen knife blanks and fillet knives for people again. The steel was often switched from AUS-8A or what it was originally to its "Chinese equivalent" and they went downhill big time! Rough edges, crumbly edges, etc. Cost more, and the steel was worse. So I got back into grinding my own blades again just before Covid. I know many of the lower quality blanks are in the $10-$30 range for a ground and heat treated blank. The Jantz/Enzo/Brisa stuff using nicer steels is more $$ as are the Damascus blanks.
In comparison, from my own experience, I know getting blanks water jet from NJSB for a knife just under 9" OAL in 1/8" thick Magnacut was around $36/blank a couple years ago, before heat treating and grinding. Same blank in Nitro V was around $12-$15 IIRC. I had NJSB water jet around 30 blades for me a few years ago of my own design to help speed my knife making along instead of individually cutting and profiling each one individually. Steel prices have done up since then as well! With steels like 52100, 80CRV2, Nitro V, Aeb-L, etc, and the cost for me to make a ground, hardened blank myself compared to what the imports cost, it wasn't much more expensive to do the blank from scratch myself, especially if they were water jet profiled already! I had the blanks done a bit oversize so I could modify the master blanks as needed for different blade shapes and stuff, too. I get a better quality end product that I control completely for not much more than a cheap blank, using decent steels.
I spoke with a supplier that BRK owes around $7K to for materials and found out that other suppliers stopped selling to BRK when the unpaid invoices started piling up for them as well. I saw over the years that some suppliers had material shortages and BRK wasn't able to get materials due to that, but now I wonder how much of it was from suppliers refusing to sell to BRK due to non payment!
DLT was buying the steel for BRK for a while, having it water jet and heat treated, then sent to BRK since steel suppliers didn't want to deal with BRK anymore. Hopefully the blanks they received were the ones they bought the steel for and not subbed out for the Chinese blanks! KSF posted that they will issue a store credit for the models effected and work on getting them shipped back to KSF. Not sure what DLT is doing in that regard for the effected models DLT is doing refunds and taking them back if wanted, or partial refund if they want to keep the knife it sounds like (watching the DLT video now) and looks like they are sending samples of what they have in stock to have it metallurgy tested to see what steel they are made from. I believe both dealers pulled those effected models from their websites, too? I've been trying to keep up over the past several days, but it's dizzying!
Stewart said they tested the steel in the China blanks and it had pretty much equivalent edge retention, toughness and more stain resistance than CPM154, so they considered it very close to CPM154, so it will be interesting to see what steel it actually is and how it actually performs. From what I have seen in the past with these blanks from China, they are definitely NOT "equivalent" or anywhere close!
People are questioning even older blanks, so it will be interesting to see how far back this stuff goes. I have read of concerns of this over the years and saw complaints back in 2006 with the Chinese made blanks, etc.
I am glad that the employees got their last paycheck, but it really sucks for the employees, the suppliers and dealers, collectors, etc. BRK knew they were in trouble and tried to keep the ship a float, but went down anyway and looked really bad doing it. The value of their older (hopefully legit) knives is in question, too!
****Edited some info as I am watching the DLT video*****
