Bob, they made cheap machetes for years and only started making knives a few years ago. It took a while for them to understand the demands of knife buyers in USA and Europe may be different from those needing cheap machetes in South America. Their first production knives all used the same 1075 carbon steel as the machetes which in my opinion isn't a bad steel, but they certainly needed time to learn that knives and machetes are different tools, and that markets outside of S. America had different requirement/demands.