309 3 blade ?

M

m r merrill

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May 15, 2016
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244
I just purchased a knife and haven't received it yet but I thought it was a bit odd and thought I would ask the experts. It is marked 309 and has 3 blades. The only 309's I have seen were 2 blades. Any info on this would be appreciated. Thanks
Marc
 
Your knife is actually a model 310, but a 309 blade was used during manufacture rather than a 310 blade; both blades are the same. The 309 knife is the same as the 310 except it only has two blades rather than three.
 
Not that I know of; they were only used when the factory ran out of 310 blades. They show up fairly frequently, so they apparently are not that rare.
 
As Tin Sue said, the model 310 WHITTLER is a model 309 with the addition of a Pen blade to the existing Clip and Coping blades.

m r merrill said:
It has a 1992 date code if that helps
Click to expand...

Are you sure about the date code? To my knowledge the knife came out in 1994 "\". I have never seen one with a date code before that. The earliest ones are nice to find as they still have the flat grind blades. I think the knife originally was a Smoky Mountain issue and then later a regular BUCK catalog item from 1998 to 2000. The knife eventually became a BASS PRO exclusive and is sold (still) in a nice wood slide top box. Earlier knives are marked 310 on the tang but it seems that in recent years BUCK no longer bothers with a separate 310 tang stamp and just uses the 309 stamped blade on the Bass Pro offering. The Bass Pro online catalog image shows a knife with a 2010 date code and a 309 tang stamp so the 309 tang stamp has been used for a good while. With approaching 100 stores Bass Pro has sold a zillion of these over the years. If the 309 is going out of production it follows the 310 Whittler offering at Bass Pro will discontinue also. If you want a 310 Whittler you better get one while Bass Pro still has some 310's in stock.

https://www.basspro.com/shop/en/Buck-Whittler-Pocket-Knife-with-Gift-Box?searchTerm=buck whittler
 
Last edited:
Thanks tin sue and desotosky. I picked up a 310 from bass pro a couple of months ago and it was marked 310 with a 2016 date code. As far as the 309 I haven't received it yet, I'm going by the sellers pics and it appears to be 1992.
 
Tin, Desoto and Bert give facts but it doesn't bother me to give guesses. Would it not be commercially smart to put 309 blades in and then add the third blade in to save having to stamp 310 on blades if the customer didn't care. BP must have a specific contract. If someone else, lets say SMKW's just wanted a three blade whittler to sell, heck Buck was already stamping out lots of 309 blades. Will be interesting to see when 309 dies from factory will BP offering go the way of dinosaur also. BP send my sell-out commission in Rebel crawdads and Kastmasters.
300
 
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