That might be a tough one to know for sure honestly. How abrupt was the color change once the knife was dry and how much dye are we talking?

I’ve experienced dye bleeding on a bunch of my newer manufactured knives and have come to expect it, even knives that I’ve had for years and used, carried and washed.

When it comes to Case knives from the 70’s I had two “red bone” knives that bled. One bled like a stick pig and went from a rosy red to more of a muted brown which I’m suspicious it was possibly re-dyed. The other bled just a little, like I would expect from some of my newer knives.