CKF (Custom Knife Factory) - A love story between Russian design and Chinese high-end knife-making!

CKF (Custom Knife Factory) has been around for a while.
The Russian based company was established in 2012 by Mikhail Kulygin (Mike), a Russian Chinese knife dealer at the time. He was well known at the time by his nickname Kevin John on Guns.ru (one of the biggest Russian knife forum).
The nickname wasn't a coincidence - Mike was then one of the leading sellers (and some say even producers) of Kevin John made clones in Russia, mostly Sebenza, Strider and Hinderer knives, that had huge success. He learned to appreciate the level of craftsmanship, precision and QC that KJ provided, and wanted to bring it to the international knife market.
It all started with the Assymetric project, when a few forum members came together to make a production version of the awesome Alexey Konygin design. They turned to Kevin John to manufacture the knife and the project was very successful.
After that, he contacted with Russian designers - Alexey "Ratatuy" Konygin, Evg Muan and Anton "Tohus" Malyshev and they decided to collaborate with the new company - CKF.
The company's first knife was the amazing Decepticon 1, that was featured on the Knife Brand Maker (Jim Skelton's) channel, and the rest is history. They became so popular, that even nutnfancy agreed to show the knives on his channel.
CKF models are numbered limited production pieces, so they tend to sell out very quickly and usually keep their value over time. One of their latest creations is the Muscle (a collaboration with French knife designer Tashi Bharucha), my personal favorite knife from CKF so far.
Producing the knives in China also has it's drawbacks - some of their designs were "borrowed" even before they reached production and made by Chinese clonemakers. This happened with the Gnome, Assymetric fixed blade, T50 (later released as T90 by CKF) and the Medichi project (now known as Piston knife), that was cancelled because of the case.
I believe CKF will continue to cheer our eyes and hands with exclusive, quality models and I wish them all the best.

CKF Custom Knife Factory knives are available here: https://bit.ly/2Hw3zLy
Kevin John knives are here: https://bit.ly/2HAXLik
or here: https://bit.ly/2Em6Bjb
And even on Amazon: https://amzn.to/2VAQXXb