ID tiny (old) Buck fixed blade?

O

oldmanron

Joined
Jun 19, 2012
Messages
195
Hi guys,

Back in the early/mid 1970's my wife's brother-in-law gave me a tiny Buck fixed-blade that he'd already had for quite a while. It was really small (7.75 inches total length, I'm pretty sure) but made in the same style as their regular fixed-blades of that era ... completely straight short clip-point blade, black phenolic handle, duralumin butt-cap, aluminum and rust-coloured fiber (leather?) spacers at the front and rear of the handle. The blade is exactly 3.75 inches long and is just .5 inch from the spine to the cutting edge. No "blood groove" ...

The handle is four inches long. The sheath (unfortunately repaired at the attachment point with three chrome rivets) is the normal black leather with the fold-over snap-down flap. A few days ago I spent a half-hour wrapping it (in an absolutely bombproof manner) so I could take it to the Post Office and mail it to the young son of my good friend. The kid is about to "graduate" from Cub Scout to Boy Scout.

About 20 years ago Chuck Buck was at S.I.R Sporting Goods in Winnipeg as part of a promotional tour ... and he was signing (with an electro-engraver) the blades of owners' Buck knives (both old and newly-purchased) in the store. When he saw my little knife his eyes went kinda big and he said, "Oooooh ... you don't want to get this one signed. It's really old and would be worth quite a bit of money to a collector down in the States."

And then he went on to explain that it could be ID'd (and dated) by the placement and colour of the fiber spacers ... among other things.

Does anybody know anything about the story of this tiny little Buck?

I thought that I spotted it a day or two ago on EBay ... a Buck 102 ... but I believe that my blade is a bit shorter than the 102's blade. The only thing that's stamped on the blade is the word BUCK. There's no USA and no cryptic date marks.

Thanks!
 
It's probably an early to mid-sixties 102 that has had the blade sharpened enough to shorten it up from the four inches that it should be.

They were a little longer than the current models.

Real fine that a boy scout can have it now.

:)
 
Mr. BG,

Hmmm ... I hadn't thought about that shortened-blade possibility. And the guy certainly had access to every possible grinder and machine tool ... he was the designated 24-7 go-to guy when the biggest printing presses in Winnipeg had a melt-down.

The boy's father was a student of mine in Grade 6 in 1972-73 in Winnipeg and then (coincidentally) across town again in 1975-76. Crazy about winter camping and mountaineering ... I arranged to get him "Mountaineering: Freedom of the Hills" as a book-gift for Top Grade 9 Student for that year.

He helped with my junior-high backpacking/mountaineering club from 1980 to 1986 ... and we went high-country backpacking in Glacier National Park about a dozen times during the Canadian Thanksgiving long-weekends. (We'd each wangle an extra day-off for marathon driving time.) He got married when he was about 30, and I was his best man. He's about 50 now, and I'm 62.

He is like my younger brother and is the consummate woodsman, and is really enjoying his youngest child and only son ... gently easing him into the life that he himself so much enjoys. I live on a ranch in SW Alberta, and we still talk on the phone almost every week. I was looking at the knife the other day, and it seemed like such an obvious no-brainer. :)
 
That's the great thing about Buck knives.......they just keep going and going.

:)
 
Possibly a 116 Caper(bottom knife)

001-17.jpg

116caper003.jpg
 
Imafritz,

Thanks for taking the time to post the pics. I do remember the Buck Caper (I was the kind of kid who wrote-away for catalogues ... and my dad subscribed to Sports Afield and Field & Stream and maybe even Outdoor Life) , but (as BG said) mine does have a clip point and its blade is noticeably longer than the the Caper's intentionally-stubby little blade.

I notice that your Caper has the same old-fashioned (I think) "spacer" arrangement as my knife ... with the four brownish fibre spacers in addition to the aluminum ones.
 
Last edited:
It must be similar to this old 102. The overall length is 7 3/4" with a blade length of 3 15/16".

Old102.jpg
 
Plumberdv said:
It must be similar to this old 102. The overall length is 7 3/4" with a blade length of 3 15/16".

Old102.jpg
Click to expand...

Now ... that's looking like the knife that I sent.

When my friend receives it, I'll tell him about this "group effort" to nail-down the story/history of his son's first great knife.

The boy's name is Sam ... which should appeal to them Texans out there :)

I'll ask Robb to send to me all the exact specs. He's Mennonite ... and has two huge chests of Snap-On tools ... this is becoming fun.
 
oldmanron said:
Imafritz,

Thanks for taking the time to post the pics. I do remember the Buck Caper (I was the kind of kid who wrote-away for catalogues ... and my dad subscribed to Sports Afield and Field & Stream and maybe even Outdoor Life) , but (as BG said) mine does have a clip point and its blade is noticeably longer than the the Caper's intentionally-stubby little blade.



I notice that your Caper has the same old-fashioned (I think) "spacer" arrangement as my knife ... with the four brownish fibre spacers in addition to the aluminum ones.
Click to expand...

oops, nother example of me not reading full post. :o
 
Hi guys,

Several days before I started this thread I started a similar one in the "Edged Tools and Weapons" forum on the CanadianGunNutz.com website. So, I went back there to share what I learned here ... and speculate about the possible reason for the shorter-than-normal blade.

The guys in the Buck Knives forum at Bladeforums.com were really helpful with photos and stuff. The general consensus is that it's a mid-60's 102, but the blade seems to have been modified/shortened by the original owner for some reason. Standard 102's of that time had a blade that was 4 inches long, and mine is 3 5/8 inches.

The original owner was a very skilled tinkerer, with access to state-of-the-art machine tools at work. There's no obvious sign or hint that the blade has been "bobbed' but ... if he did shorten it ... I wonder why. Maybe he accidentally snapped off the tip, and then just re-ground a new tip.
 
oldmanron said:
Now ... that's looking like the knife that I sent.

When my friend receives it, I'll tell him about this "group effort" to nail-down the story/history of his son's first great knife.

The boy's name is Sam ... which should appeal to them Texans out there :)

I'll ask Robb to send to me all the exact specs. He's Mennonite ... and has two huge chests of Snap-On tools ... this is becoming fun.
Click to expand...

If the knife has a short blade as it appears, I'd speculate that was done by accident rather than by design. I have more than a couple of older fixed blades like that and if the reprofiling is done well, they can be hard to notice unless you measure the blade or have an unmodified one in hand to compare it to.

Here's some more info gleaned from a handout from Joe Houser (Buck Historian and Buck employee) that was given out at the last Buck Collectors Club reunion and shared with me by David Martin.

If your knife has a side to side pin in the pommel (easily seen in my photo), it would have been produced from early/mid (May/June) 1963, with the single line stamp ending in early 1967 with the last being Buck with an asterick (Buck*) like the one in the picture that I posted. They added U.S.A. to the stamp sometime in 1967 when they started marketing knives to Canada.

Perhaps this will help.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top