BuckMaster 184

d762nato said:
I had a friend years ago that had one and he dropped it on the ground, and it hit a rock and broke the tip off. I'll never forget because it was a survival knife supposedly. I haven't talked to the guy in years so not sure what he did with it. I thought it was a cool heavy-duty knife until that tip broke off.
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Yeah I herd the first line of production had issues with the tip it would break and bend.
 
Kevspeedy99 said:
Yeah I herd the first line of production had issues with the tip it would break and bend.
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I had also read about that, it having been an early production issue. But, they did correct that issue.

I wonder if their later going to drop forged blades, gave any strength benefits to the Buckmaster's overall blade durability?
 
PocketKnifeJimmy said:
I had also read about that, it having been an early production issue. But, they did correct that issue.

I wonder if their later going to drop forged blades, gave any strength benefits to the Buckmaster's overall blade durability?
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The best ever advertisement for Buck's Buckmaster was published by Cold Steel. It featured a broken Buck 184 with the blade fractured into 4-5 pieces. Then it explained that Cold Steel had used a vise and the leverage of a 6 foot pipe to break the knife. And after all of that, the handle was still firmly attached to the tang. The ad ran in exactly one issue of Blade Magazine. The biggest concern during the 80s was the tang integrity on hollow handled knives, and this ad clearly demonstrated that there was no such concern with the Buck 184.......Buck should have sent a big THANK YOU to Cold Steel.

n2s
 
BTW: back in the mid 1980s, when I decided to commit on buying my first good quality field knife, I went with the Gerber BMF. Gerber had a better reputation back then and their knife seemed lighter, more comfortable and more practical.

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not2sharp said:
The best ever advertisement for Buck's Buckmaster was published by Cold Steel. It featured a broken Buck 184 with the blade fractured into 4-5 pieces. Then it explained that Cold Steel had used a vise and the leverage of a 6 foot pipe to break the knife. And after all of that, the handle was still firmly attached to the tang. The ad ran in exactly one issue of Blade Magazine. The biggest concern during the 80s was the tang integrity on hollow handled knives, and this ad clearly demonstrated that there was no such concern with the Buck 184.......Buck should have sent a big THANK YOU to Cold Steel.

n2s
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Must have missed that. Why would CS be doing tests on a Buckmaster? Was it to show that other knives broke, while CS didn't?
 
PocketKnifeJimmy said:
I had also read about that, it having been an early production issue. But, they did correct that issue.

I wonder if their later going to drop forged blades, gave any strength benefits to the Buckmaster's overall blade durability?
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They have 3 versions PRE PAT. PAT PENDING. PATENTED. The first one was not the best it had its weak points
 
not2sharp said:
They were trying to promote the CS Trail Master.

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Found it.

n2s
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This doesn’t seem like such a good advertisement for Buck like you alluded to previously if they were able to easily snap the knife with light hand pressure - Exhibit B. Oh that’s after snapping the tip in a block of wood (A), then they easily broke it again by hand (C).

What good is the handle if the blade easily snaps off? Lol
 
A little searching online, had me finding these pics...

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Blurry, I know. The dealer price for the Buckmaster 184 was $78.50 dealer price, ($203 in 2022 dollars).

The full MSRP was $159, ($415 in 2022 dollars).
 
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That was part of Cold Steel's schtick back in the day. I remember Lynn Thompson carping about wanting to find a Busse Battlemistress too so that he also could tear that up.
 
PocketKnifeJimmy said:
I know that Buck tweaked the heat treating because the early models had some reported failures that they felt should not have occured. I wonder if the one that Lynn Thompson broke was one of those early ones?

It would seem that the broken one was on brittle side of things 😱
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Any knife can be broken, especially if it has a fine point like the Buck Master. The trick is learning how to get the most from your knife without breaking it. To me, knowing that the handle survived that abuse intact was a great big positive in Buck's Favor. It showed that as long as I did my part the knife could be counted on to hold together.

n2s
 
not2sharp said:
Any knife can be broken, especially if it has a fine point like the Buck Master. The trick is learning how to get the most from your knife without breaking it. To me, knowing that the handle survived that abuse intact was a great big positive in Buck's Favor. It showed that as long as I did my part the knife could be counted on to hold together.

n2s
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Yes, I agree. The area that most are concerned with on hollow handled survival knives, is the blade to handle connection. And, heck, that picture definitely doesn't show a problem there with the Buckmaster! 👍
 
I guess I still don’t understand, what good is the handle with an inch or two of blade tang left after snapping the rest off? How does this make it a dependable survival knife?
 
According to the ad, the broken tip resulted from this: "Drove tip 1/2" into hard dry maple, snapped out losing 3/8" of the point." I don't know about anyone else but I've never done that to a knife.
 
not2sharp said:
The biggest concern during the 80s was the tang integrity on hollow handled knives, and this ad clearly demonstrated that there was no such concern with the Buck 184.......

n2s
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Indeed. I remember back around '86-'87 sitting in the library in high school, discussing this very aspect of this very knife (184) with a couple of other nerds.
 
Jsega51 said:
I guess I still don’t understand, what good is the handle with an inch or two of blade tang left after snapping the rest off? How does this make it a dependable survival knife?
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Well obviously if you snapped the rest it doesn't. Its probably not a good idea to break your knife if your life depends on it. If your point is that there are more durable knives that have been built before and since you are undoubtedly correct. However, with heat treating problems solved the Buck master is perfectly serviceable... although I suspect that very few of us that own one are going to need to go all John Rambo or even Bear Grylls with it. At this point these are more of a collectible , a bit of nostalgia perhaps rather than something we would take camping.
 
Stelth said:
According to the ad, the broken tip resulted from this: "Drove tip 1/2" into hard dry maple, snapped out losing 3/8" of the point." I don't know about anyone else but I've never done that to a knife.
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You haven't?!😮. What DO you do with yourself all day? All us real Rambo types spend our time jamming our knives into trees as high as we can reach and then doing pull ups on them. Get with the program!😉
 
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