- Joined
- Jul 15, 2015
- Messages
- 126
Brief review-
The knife itself is really very good. Flawless and sharp. The flat grind lets it get very close to the material being cut so it can do things like shave off the smooth layer of some scrap leather without gouging resulting in very fine nearly transparent peelings.
The plastic sheath has good retention which appears to be adjustable with a Chicago screw set at the mouth of the sheath.
The belt loop element of the sheath is a bit more problematic. It is a clever design which has a spacer to choose for wide or narrow belt and the array of Chicago screws allow for re-orienting the sheath for horizontal carry.
I have not seen or read any reviews of anyone doing this and I wanted to try horizontal carry on my daypack hipbelt.
The belt loop is secured to the sheath envelope with a series of Chicago screws. One is extra long and has a spacer collar. The others are the same length.
The picture instructions Buck includes with the knife have a single too-dark picture of the sheath and some line drawings of how to align the Chicago screws in both orientations.
Unfortunately, the nature of the screws, the holes, and the sockets for the screw heads make this change really, really fiddly. I wound up having to put the firesteel socket in a different order than the instructions stated because I simply couldn't get all the bits to align.
Two of the Chicago screws are used to hold the belt clip to an intermediate Z shaped flat. The nuts are too thick resulting in being unable to cinch down the screws so they don't wobble in the retainer.
Another concern is that tightening all these screws is a problem because the nuts have nothing to keep them from turning against the slick plastic. Needle-nose pliers help a little but result in more fiddly slippage and droppage. (this is a bench job - not a field job)
Finally, tightening the screws in the field would be a real problem because not only are needle-nose needed, but the can opener type flat blade screw driver one would likely have in the field probably wouldn't fit thru the holes to reach the screw heads.
I don't want to use Loctite because I might want to reorient the sheath and with no purchase on the Chicago screw nut heads, this might prove extra difficult to reverse.
My final gripe isn't so much about Buck as about the vendor I purchased from. The place is best known for selling reloading components. They ship knives in a much-too-large 24"x24" padded envelope. This means that the knife box moves around a LOT in transit and a heavier knife, such as the Selkirk or Brahma, can burst thru the end of the thin Buck cardboard box both damaging the box and resulting in the knife floating freely in the bag.
I'd earlier traded emails with the Customer Service dept regarding this result with my Brahma but they claim it's too hard to write a packaging spec. (I called BS on this because I have written packaging specs myself but nothing changed.)
Neither knife was damaged but both boxes were a mess so from a collector standpoint this supplier should be avoided. (Lighter knives such as Paklite Caper come thru just fine due to their very low mass inside the fabric sheath inside the box.)
A Ka-Bar Foliage Green ordered and shipped this same way came thru with less box damage as Ka-Bar uses a bit more robust cardboard.
My $.05 worth.
The knife itself is really very good. Flawless and sharp. The flat grind lets it get very close to the material being cut so it can do things like shave off the smooth layer of some scrap leather without gouging resulting in very fine nearly transparent peelings.
The plastic sheath has good retention which appears to be adjustable with a Chicago screw set at the mouth of the sheath.
The belt loop element of the sheath is a bit more problematic. It is a clever design which has a spacer to choose for wide or narrow belt and the array of Chicago screws allow for re-orienting the sheath for horizontal carry.
I have not seen or read any reviews of anyone doing this and I wanted to try horizontal carry on my daypack hipbelt.
The belt loop is secured to the sheath envelope with a series of Chicago screws. One is extra long and has a spacer collar. The others are the same length.
The picture instructions Buck includes with the knife have a single too-dark picture of the sheath and some line drawings of how to align the Chicago screws in both orientations.
Unfortunately, the nature of the screws, the holes, and the sockets for the screw heads make this change really, really fiddly. I wound up having to put the firesteel socket in a different order than the instructions stated because I simply couldn't get all the bits to align.
Two of the Chicago screws are used to hold the belt clip to an intermediate Z shaped flat. The nuts are too thick resulting in being unable to cinch down the screws so they don't wobble in the retainer.
Another concern is that tightening all these screws is a problem because the nuts have nothing to keep them from turning against the slick plastic. Needle-nose pliers help a little but result in more fiddly slippage and droppage. (this is a bench job - not a field job)
Finally, tightening the screws in the field would be a real problem because not only are needle-nose needed, but the can opener type flat blade screw driver one would likely have in the field probably wouldn't fit thru the holes to reach the screw heads.
I don't want to use Loctite because I might want to reorient the sheath and with no purchase on the Chicago screw nut heads, this might prove extra difficult to reverse.
My final gripe isn't so much about Buck as about the vendor I purchased from. The place is best known for selling reloading components. They ship knives in a much-too-large 24"x24" padded envelope. This means that the knife box moves around a LOT in transit and a heavier knife, such as the Selkirk or Brahma, can burst thru the end of the thin Buck cardboard box both damaging the box and resulting in the knife floating freely in the bag.
I'd earlier traded emails with the Customer Service dept regarding this result with my Brahma but they claim it's too hard to write a packaging spec. (I called BS on this because I have written packaging specs myself but nothing changed.)
Neither knife was damaged but both boxes were a mess so from a collector standpoint this supplier should be avoided. (Lighter knives such as Paklite Caper come thru just fine due to their very low mass inside the fabric sheath inside the box.)
A Ka-Bar Foliage Green ordered and shipped this same way came thru with less box damage as Ka-Bar uses a bit more robust cardboard.
My $.05 worth.
