Buck Handle Material

[Tin Sue]

There is some discussion over in Traditional about Buck doing different jigged bone patterns, should jigged bone be selected as the handle material for the BF knife, and maybe even jigging/checkering of wood. My assumption was that Buck did not do this in house and all the various handle material was outsourced as is. Am I wrong about this or does Buck actually do things like jigging etc. at the factory?

 

[David Martin]

A good question.? DM

 

[bertl]

I don't know about the jigging/checkering, but I do know that the Delrin/Valox is outsourced. Buck does not have the thermosetting equipment.

Bert

 

[300Bucks]

My guess is Out house. 300

 

[DeSotoSky]

My guess is Out house. 300

Craig, is there some hidden comment on handle quality there? ....

 

[300Bucks]

Just joking around. Let me restate, I would say that to my information from the past, that 99.9% are out-sourced. I dislike jigging that looks pressed in and is unifom. The mid 80s jigged redbones and brown bones are fine. To make (or fake) a good jig bone you need sharp edge random gouges and lighter coloring toward the ends. The pre war pocketknives especially from Sheffield, UK were hand cut from actual bone. No way can you do that on a $50 pocketknife today. One of the first overseas contract trapper Special Editions had excellent simulated jig bone but later examples suffered in image. Not to my desires lately, some folks find the canoes to have nice scales...300

In my mind the brown bone on the left, the redbone in the middle and the brown with the round medallion were well engineered by Buck in the 80's.

These 'bone' scaled Camilus Buck California Toothpicks or Clippers were decently done in the 80's but the brown bones were just a tad uniform in their jigging. The simulated stag was called Stagalon and somewhere between artificial stag and something not rendered on a Buck pocketknife till then. These were a SMKWs specials. The one with lighter ends may be actual bone. I can't swear on the dark scales but the stag is rendered of non animal substance. As you can see there is no model number as the SMKWs specials from Camillus generally were but call them Model 333's.