buck has a few good fixed blades out there, and that buckmaster is not onne of them
Some of you are being way too hard on the Buckmaster. I have owned and used a number of them, along with alot of other knives and I can tell you that the 184 is a solid using knife. It has its idosyncraisies, but it should not be written off as a wall hanger.
On the positive side, the Buckmaster is a massively built knife. It has a 5/16 inch thick 7-1/2 inch blade with a very elegant bowie fighter shape. While the large sawteeth were virtually useless, the smaller serrations along the clip point worked well. The 425M steel blade was hollow ground and certainly capable of taking a good edge. Just a few swipes on a ceramic stick were usually all that was needed.
There was also little to worry about at the blade and handle joint. The handle was machined stainless steel cylinder over 1/8 of an inch thick, and the mechanical lockup was very solid. There were some heat treat issues with the first few hundreds knives, but the issue was corrected well before the Pat Pend versions went on the market.
It also had a real hammer pommel. The stainless butt cap on the pat pending was nearly 1/2 inch thick and nicely threaded in place. This was much stronger then the Brass and aluminum caps found on many well known survival knives.
But, the design was not without its' problems. The best known issue involved those goofy anchor attachments that screwed into the handle. Their purpose was never clearly explained; it was possible that Buck was as much in the dark as the rest of us, since the design had originally been put together by Phrobis and the US Navy SEALS. Despite the confusion, I suspect that the anchors points were intended to transform the knife into an anchor. You would simply attach the points, tie a length of 550 cord to the lanyard, detach the knife and sheath, and jam the entire rig into the rocks to anchor either a swimmer, or a small boat. I wouldn't recommend the grapple thing to anyone who doesn't have a strong deathwish.
Then there were the large poorly design sawteeth that tended to snag on just about anything that was being cut. If the knife had poor cutting performance it was probably due more to the clumsy sawback then to anything inherently wrong with 425M steel, or the edge geometry.
The chopping performance was also hindered by the shape of the blade. The elegantly clip point was a mistake. Why would I need a fighting point on what was otherwise a very heavy survival tool? The clip only served to make the blade more fragile, while removing weight from were it was most needed in a survival role.
My own pet peeve was over the sheath suspencion system. The harness was neither able to keep the sheath upright, nor keep it from bouncing around as you walked. There was nothing like 2-1/2 pounds of sloppy weight to constantly remind you of how heavy this thing was. Then again, it did introduce many of us to the concept of plastic sheaths. Until the Buckmaster came along the only choices offered in sporting knives were traditional leather, or something like nylon cordura; and those sheath pockets were a good idea. Fortunately, you could always improve things by replacing the sheath with the system developed for the M9 bayonet.
If Buck were to do the knife over again I would suggest that they remove or reduce the clip point; eliminate or redesign the worthless sawback; and either go with the M9 style sheath or something better.
n2s
