Buck warranty.

Normally yes, but on a long discontinued model like that..........I'd contact Joe Houser at Buck and talk to him.

Here is his e-mail.

jhouser@buckknives.com

Or he moderates the Buck forum here, you can usually post there and find him.
 
I would have posted in the Buck forum w/o the pic unless they wanted to see evidence of it. I'm sure they would repair/replace it. My $.02.
 
contact joe houser and he will take care of you. in my experience buck backs their products pretty well. you're not a fireman are you?? to screw something up like that it takes a firefighter. good luck, ahgar
 
The hollow handled knives rarely stand up well to chopping and such heavy duty tasks as that. Its one of the reasons I shy away from that type fixed blade. Few if any are made well enough to stand up to heavy use when made with hollow handles. At least that has been my experience with them.

STR
 
The Last Confederate said:
One more example of.....

Knives are for cutting and axes are for chopping.
Click to expand...

You don't put that much steel in the blade for static cutting. It is an example of faulty steel, heat treatment of the tang, or improper join mechanics. That knife actually has a much thicker profile than the bit of a wood cutting axe. Long blades outchop axes on many types of woods hence the use of parangs, goloks, bolos, machetes, etc. .

-Cliff
 
Do you really think its faulty steel Cliff? It isn't the first knife like that I've seen break in the same place. There is so little steel there connecting the handle to the blade that it seems to me that even if everything was done just perfect at the joint and for H/T it still is the weakest link in the chain at that junction point of the blade and handle and the spot where it will snap under load everytime with a hollow handled knife. This is common with all hollow handled knives so it seems to me that its a design thing more than faulty steel or heat treatment. The ones I've seen that held up well (which are few and far between) have had more metal in the handle by double or triple the amount seen in this knife.

STR.
 
My experience is that you are both right to some degree.

With this particular knife design, with the THREADED narrow tang, the steel choice and the steps on the choil shoulders not being stress relieved/rounded, you have a recipe for breakage at that very spot, with big chopping/prying every time.

It was a faulty design, coming right smack in the middle of the hollow handle craze fueled by Rambo movies.

The good part is that Buck does have a GREAT warrantee department/service, and they will do everything they can to make it right.

Best Regards,

STeven Garsson
 
It is a weak point mechanically, there is no arguing that as you noted there is a small amount of metal there and it is also really squarish. However when you load a knife by prying there is actually little internal stress on the knife in the handle (unless you load it right at the end of the handle which is unusual) so it isn't as simple as it breaks at the weakest point because the greatest internal force is going to be elsewhere.

It doesn't take a lot to keep tangs stable for this reason, some khukuris for example have small partial tangs as do goloks and similar blades which are all designed for chopping and they have much bigger blades which hit with much large impacts. This isn't the first time such problems have been described though on hollow handled knives. Les Roberston noted such failures with Randalls and another user commented on two breaks of Randall hollow handles recently. I wonder if it isn't a welding issue.

Have the problems you have seen generally been on the higher end knives? Does Buck have a significantly higher rate of return of that knife in particular. Similar for Randall.

-Cliff
 
I've seen two knives near identical to that one from guys wanting to know if I could save it and/or at least make it so they could use the blade again. One was a Buck and the other I don't recall but it was stamped Taiwan on the back of the blade.

As for high end knives: I had a Mike England hollow handled knife for a while and although it never got used because of the collector value I fear it would have suffered the same fate if it had been used. I'd consider that a high end custom, especially when you consider that I got $350 for it when I sold it and it didn't have any more meat at that handle/blade junction than the one pictured here. (Maybe even less because it was a smaller knife length and width wise) I do know the steel in that one by Mike was 01 if that makes any difference. You could see that stamped down inside the handle if you looked with a flash light. Differential heat treatment may be something to consider on one of those hollow handled knives.

STR
 
I believe that picture is why CRK makes their hollow handled knives from a single block of steel.
 
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