CapCase said:
Thanks for the information.
It is a shame though.
But Taiwan is better, imo, than mainland China.
If it is going to be imported from somewhere, Taiwan is a decent enough place. Kind of sad though to have a standard Buck model not made in the US any more.
But maybe they will be better than the current US made Bucklites. I went to Academy Sports today to pick up one or two model 442's in case it's the last chance to get one, and I passed on them because they are all messed up. When closed, the lock bar sinks below the front end of the handle which looks bad enough (the Squires at a store here have a similar problem, but I thought it was just that series), and then I noticed the two sides of the handle don't even line up at the front! What a junky looking knife. It was only $15. I forget how much the really old bucklites were, and I don't remember how much I paid for the 442 I already have (it was years ago), and for some reason it looks better. I thought it was at least $20, and that was at the same store. I went through about 15 of the current batch they had, and they were all the same.
It's a shame to see Buck's #2 series be turned into a piece of crap to satisfy stores with no sense of quality. Seriously, you have the 110/112 series, then you have the Bucklites. Everything else seems like it comes after that. No wonder I don't see anyone carrying a Bucklite any more. I have an old 112 Bucklite, and it's as perfect as the brass/wood 112. But the replacement 442 looks like crap.
Buck should have kept making the regular Bucklites good, or even better as one would expect, and have some other line of cheap junk to sell to stores that don't care.
Most of the Bucklites I have are either the Mini or older versions (which I always liked better than the recent series), so I don't know if the 442 was always made like this or it got worse as the price lowered. I have a couple 444's, which aren't really perfect either I guess but not as bad as what I saw today.
