Blue hole 560 Buck knife! ! ! ! !

ItsTooEarly

ItsTooEarly

Joined
Oct 10, 2007
Messages
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Hello all, I got this 560 down in San Diego on Saturday(7-26-08) when I was at the San Diego Zoo... The guy I bought it from said he got it from a guy named Pete that worked at Buck knives in El Cajon, CA... I got this 525 from him to... He said there was 25 of these made or about that many...

Anyway is this 560 hard to find with light blue in the holes??? I haven't seen one like this before... But I'm sure there out there... How about the 525, has anyone seen one of these with the same etching???

Thanks again,
Armand





 
good morning early,
the blue hole 560 is not found very often..
it is a good one to display ...:thumbup:
might i put it in my 560 grouping on long term loan?:eek::confused:;)
at least for the blade show in atlanta?:D:cool:
 
I've seen several blue hole 560s at the plant, 25 samples sounds about right for this knife. I have one of these and know that several other people have them also. The 525 is a new one for me. APICS is the American Production and Inventory Control Society in case you were wondering. Nice knives!
 
Richard Matheny said:
I've seen several blue hole 560s at the plant, 25 samples sounds about right for this knife. I have one of these and know that several other people have them also. The 525 is a new one for me. APICS is the American Production and Inventory Control Society in case you were wondering. Nice knives!
Click to expand...

Thanks Richard, for the information I really appreciate it...

Armand
 
The bottom knife in the photo is the version that I have with the blue holes. Anyone know if these two versions are somehow related and how many of these there are floating around?

Buck560Collection.jpg
 
Mike Kerins said:
The bottom knife in the photo is the version that I have with the blue holes. Anyone know if these two versions are somehow related and how many of these there are floating around?
Click to expand...

Mike, what's the deal on the blade of your "blue dot" that it appears gold in color in the pic; is it different of just some kind of light reflection?
 
Mike, I like yours with that gold blade... Its beautiful like all your knives... I need too clean mine up... What would you use to clean it??? I was so excited when I got it... I just wanted to try and find out more about it... So can you tell us how you got yours, if you want too that is???

Thanks
 
The gold blade is a Titanium Nitride coating that we called BuckCote way back when. The process anneals the steel a little but adds an extremely hard surface layer. We would then only sharpen on one side allowing the 80+ rockwell surface layer to act as a "Leading Edge".

There have been numerous threads on this process but it was a Vapor deposition where you hang knife blades in a nitrogen gas filled chamber. You then electrically bombard a ceramic target (could be aluminum, titanium, zirconium etc) which throws off atoms from the target. Those atoms bind with the Nitrogen gas to create a new molecule and then slam into the hanging blade...slowly building up a layer.

Using different ceramic targets gets you different colors, titanium was gold, zirconium was a lighter gold we called champagne and using titanium and an alumimun together gave a black coating.

We discontinued this product because the softer blades had a tendancy to roll with mild abuse. As a meat cutter/skinner they were superb...as long as you were careful not to impact anything hard...they would wear many times longer then uncoated blades...

The vast majority of our customers tend towards at least mild abuse therefore we switched to S30V and other high end steels at 60-62 Rockwell for our high end "users".
 
ItsTooEarly said:
Mike, I like yours with that gold blade... Its beautiful like all your knives... I need too clean mine up... What would you use to clean it??? I was so excited when I got it... I just wanted to try and find out more about it... So can you tell us how you got yours, if you want too that is???

Thanks
Click to expand...
If my memory is correct, when I got it off Ebay Joe Houser mentioned that it was a prototype that Buck made to measure customer response to a "gold coated" blade. I have no idea how many were made. Hopefully Joe will chime it. CJ, I hear what you are saying but this gold coating does not appear to me to be like the "BuckCote" that I've seen on other knives. I may be wrong. Lord knows I've been wrong on more than one occassion. As far as cleanning, I really don't use this knife so cleaning has not been an issue. I simply wipe it with a clean cotton cloth.
 
i got one of the back handle 560's with the dark gold blade!
got it from Pete of the old custom shop!
He said it was one that was done as
"lets see what this looks like in black"
now seeing the grey with gold-:)
i think this was done a short time later..
he said it was rare..
i like the grey and and gold :) or the plain and blue hole :) better then the black and gold.. :(
 
Mike K., Is your gold coated blade sharpened on just one side as CJ describes?...MW

...and beautiful collection of 560's you've got.....:thumbup:
 
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MWallace said:
Mike K., Is your gold coated blade sharpened on just one side as CJ describes?...MW

...and beautiful collection of 560's you've got.....:thumbup:
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Thanks for the compliment. No, the blade is sharpened on both sides. That is what has me trying to find out what the story is. I think they DID actually have some with the BuckCote but I think they also had some plain gold coated versions so they could do some sort of evaluation with a "placebo" in place to see if the comments about the BuckCote were founded.
 
Mike, i like the blue dot knife:D i need to find one for myself:rolleyes:
the one above the blue one looks like it's two tone in color? is the handle
silver and the holes gray?
 
honesttom said:
the one above the blue one looks like it's two tone in color? is the handle silver and the holes gray?
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Yes! I believe it's an older version. If you check the data sheet for 560's it should tell you where it falls in the line of succession
 
The older version 560's had straight hole walls versus the beveled walls of the newer ones. Older ones also have more of an edge offset.
fwiw
 
Pack Rat said:
The older version 560's had straight hole walls versus the beveled walls of the newer ones. Older ones also have more of an edge offset.
fwiw
Click to expand...

Great photo, it shows the comparison very well and i learned something new,
now i hope i can remember it.
Thanks
 
I forgot to add that the older ones are 7/16th inch thick.
Newer ones are 3/8 thick. Not a lot, but noticeable when holding them.

I like the older ones much better for some reason.
 
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