110 handle material

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willis

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Apr 14, 2002
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I was looking at a new Buck 110 last saturday at Smoky Mtn Knife Works and the scales looked like dyed plywood?I was just looking at WarrenB's post and the scales on his new Buck 110 look like the ones on my old 110.

Could the one I looked at have just been a bad example,is Warrens an older knife maybe that has been at the store a long time?

The fit and finish on the one I looked at was not too good and it felt all gritty when open and closed.My friend who was looking at some Buck fixed blades a few feet away asked me what that look on my face was about as I handed the knife back to the counter guy.I said "my 110 feels like a Mercedes door when it locks up and the knife I just handled felt like a Ford Pinto"

Anyhow does anyone know what the scales on the new knives are made of?

By the way my friend bought the knife he was looking at,it was a skinner with about a 4 inch blade and a nylon sheath.
 
willis said:
I was looking at a new Buck 110 last saturday at Smoky Mtn Knife Works and the scales looked like dyed plywood?I was just looking at WarrenB's post and the scales on his new Buck 110 look like the ones on my old 110.

Could the one I looked at have just been a bad example,is Warrens an older knife maybe that has been at the store a long time?

The fit and finish on the one I looked at was not too good and it felt all gritty when open and closed.My friend who was looking at some Buck fixed blades a few feet away asked me what that look on my face was about as I handed the knife back to the counter guy.I said "my 110 feels like a Mercedes door when it locks up and the knife I just handled felt like a Ford Pinto"

Anyhow does anyone know what the scales on the new knives are made of?

By the way my friend bought the knife he was looking at,it was a skinner with about a 4 inch blade and a nylon sheath.
Click to expand...

I made the mention that the wood looks like plywood at the knife dealer the other day and someone took out a loupe and said he could see the plys. I have been told more than once that they are using laminated plywood:eek: but have no first-hand knowledge.
 
Mitch W. said:
I made the mention that the wood looks like plywood at the knife dealer the other day and someone took out a loupe and said he could see the plys. I have been told more than once that they are using laminated plywood:eek: but have no first-hand knowledge.
Click to expand...

Yes, Mitch, stabilized and laminated birchwood.

Haebbie
 
These posts are a few years old, but I believe they still hold true.

"Richard Matheny
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To the best of my knowledge thin layers of Obeche are stained and pressure impregnated with an epoxy resin. The thin layers are then glued together to form a type of plywood which is very hard. The plywood is all Obeche because the inlays are machined/sanded to get the correct thickness in the knife frame during the manufacture of the knife. Colored inlays for the 110 and 112 are Birch using the same process. Brown inlays for the 500 series and many other Buck knives are also Birch using the same process. Hope this helps. "

"Richard Matheny
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Let's see if I can address all the questions here. Laminated Birch started to show up in the 1981/82 time frame on both fixed blades (ex 124s, 401s, etc.) and folders (ex. 500 series). As far as the uniformity of the color of the stain on Obeche and Birch for that matter, my guess is the wood has both porous and solid grain. The porous grain will absorb a lot more stain than the solid grain and thus get darker. In fact as you remove more material from even one layer of the laminate the colors will move around depending on the lay of the grain of the wood in that layer. Thus, matching wood inlays is more the luck of the draw than a deliberate step Buck can take in the manufacturing process. Just for reference, both Obeche and Birch start out blond in color prior to staining.

As far as the name Obeche, I trust we know that is the tree in Africa the wood comes from just as Birch comes from a Birch tree. I have seen Obeche spelled Obeechee but you will not find a dictionary definition for that spelling, so Obeche is the proper spelling.

As far as the layers of laminate, each layer of an Obeche handled knife will be a different piece of Obeche. I doubt if any effort is made to align the layers in the manufacture of the inlays.

If you really want to get into the wood thing, there is another consideration here. If you look at the early Bucklocks the laminate was cut parallel to the grain of the wood and the laminations. In later versions of these knives the wood was cut perpendicular to the laminations which we have called bias cut. This was done to minimize warping of the inlays because they are so thin in the Bucklocks. So if you are really a fanatic about collecting Bucklocks you need one parallel cut and one bias cut example to complete your collection.

Did I miss anything?"
 
Thanks for the replies and info about the plywood,I hope they don't start using OSB in the future.
 
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