Isn there anyone at Buck that checks the quality of the knives anymore ?

RAZORBLADES said:
Sorry,i'm not spending $30 to ship back BRAND NEW knives that have never been used,for warranty work,Instead i sent mine to Jarheadz28 and i just got them all back,all problems were fixed perfectly,no sloppy blades,solid lock up,built like buck should have done it the first time.I am not worried about warranty,since these will never go back to buck.
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I would love to hear from either you or Jared what he found to be the problem causing the blade play. Was this vertical play or wobble?
 
pinnah said:
J Hubbard, your profile page lists you as Manager USA Products at Buck. Perhaps you can clarify some things?

The discussion of bushings came up with respect to Buck knives that develop vertical play with hard use. See:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...orical-review-of-Buck-110-pivots-and-bushings

From that thread, it appears that the bushings changed from being integral to free floating and changed from steel (colored) to bronze (colored) over the years.

There is also discussion as to whether vertical play has more to do with worn bushings, worn pivot pins or both.

I donated my 482 and 486 to Jeff last week. The 482 is quite loose vertically and that happened within a year. Do I abuse my knives? All I can say is that I use them as hard but not harder than my $15 Opinels, which don't develop play. Jeff said he wanted his team to be able to inspect the worn knives to see what was failing. Perhaps you can talk with him?

Any insight as to why some Buck knives develop vertical play and some don't would be really helpful.

Thanks,
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You are correct. There was a steel bushing before the phos bronze one. I had forgotton that we used that. My apologies

Currently I am the QA Manager here.

We havent had the time to tear the 482 and 486 yet. We expect to get started on that this week.
 
You'd think J Hubbard would be expressing his curiosity about what Jared discovered......right?

Sounds like absolutely essential info to his job.

Wonder why he's not interested?

What about it, J???

:confused:
 
BG42, judging from the email exchange I had a few weeks ago as well as his postings here, I get the sense that Jeff is very interested in anything that has a bearing on the quality of Buck knives.

I find it utterly astonishing (in a good way) that Buck's QA lead would be engaged in anyway in an open forum like this. However, having worked in production companies before and having managed customer/stakeholder "forums" for companies professionally, I would suspect that Bladeforum engagement is not on or near the top of Jeff's job description (nor should it be) and suspect he's not been trained in forum/mail list engagement (nor would I expect him to be).

I see nothing in Jeff's response above other than he read my post and responded to it and did so without reading ahead in the thread to see the update that RAZORBLADES had gotten his knives fixed by Jared. For this reason, I wouldn't assume that Jeff is disinterested in what Jared found.

Actually, as much as I love hearing directly from Jeff on the forum (and I do) and I much as I think that forums are good sources of information for a company, it probably makes more sense for the QA lead to spend nearly all of their time focused on internal things.

The thing that surprises me is that Buck doesn't have a brand manager or product manager on the forum.

Regardless, I'm very convinced that Jeff is shooting straight and I'm thrilled he's responded. Maybe he'll be able to report on what they find when tear down the wobbly Bucklite Maxes that I donated to the cause.
 
I wouldn't get TOO thrilled.

Buck has given no actual information except for the wrong information that Hubbard gave us about the bushings.

Par for the course. They say they're terribly interested and checking into it.......and the thread dies and we never hear any more.

On the bright side, maybe Razorblades and Jarad will share something interesting about the bushings.

:)
 
It is possible that Buck is in a tough spot on this. If you recall, Jeff corrected himself above and confirmed that Buck did, in fact, change from steel to bronze bushings. If their analysis confirms what several knife mechanics have suggested, that bronze bushings are more prone to wear and thus vertical play, then they will be in a tough spot of admiting that design changes created a less durable product.

The catch 22 of the situation is that I have a hunch that bronze bushings give a smoother action and are probably favored by collectors and light, casual users. I further suspect that actual hard users who might prefer a more durable but less smooth action are in the very big minority. If that is the case (just my speculation really) that would be a tough business call.
 
Haven't a lot of the complaints been about knives that were not heavily used, but instead, brand new??

So I doubt that wear would be the main issue.

Something else (like initial fit) must be the reason.

Just my guess.

:)
 
I`ve been following this topic all along, and finally decided to post. I`ve been buying, and using, (sometimes pretty darn hard), Buck knives since 1975. Either I`m the luckiest man on earth, (doubtfull with what all has been going on in my life), or Buck (and all the stores I`ve bought them at), have been "hand selecting" them for me, because I have never got a bad one. That`s probably the reason why the only knives I buy at all anymore (except for the occassional SAK), are Bucks.
 
I'd have real reservations about blaming a blade being loose on the phosphor bronze bearings being used now. For those of you old enough to remember the good old slot car days, think about the oilite bearings (phosphor bronze) that were used as axle and motor bearings. I'm not talking about the cheesy little home track and HO scale stuff, I'm talking about the "Pro" level cars that were run on large commercial tracks all over the USA and the world in those days.

Those bearings stood up to hour after hour of running with the SS axles or armature shafts spinning at umpteen thousand RPM's and they usually outlasted the car. I've competed in slot car races that ran for 24 hours straight with no bearing failure or looseness. Four driver team, stopping only to change rear tires (two minute job) a couple of times or to change drivers .
 
I'm still going with out of spec lockbars. I'm thinking somewhere along the manufacturing process they're getting out of wack. That's the only thing I can think of that would cause vertical play.
 
BG42EDGE said:
You'd think J Hubbard would be expressing his curiosity about what Jared discovered......right?

Sounds like absolutely essential info to his job.

Wonder why he's not interested?

What about it, J???

:confused:
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Actually I'm always interested in what goes wrong with our knives. It has been my career for 25 years. I am most interested in new in box feedback as that means our QA system did not work well enough to keep our customers happy. Also knowing how the knives fail after use is essential to our improvement efforts.

pinnah said:
BG42, judging from the email exchange I had a few weeks ago as well as his postings here, I get the sense that Jeff is very interested in anything that has a bearing on the quality of Buck knives.

I find it utterly astonishing (in a good way) that Buck's QA lead would be engaged in anyway in an open forum like this. However, having worked in production companies before and having managed customer/stakeholder "forums" for companies professionally, I would suspect that Bladeforum engagement is not on or near the top of Jeff's job description (nor should it be) and suspect he's not been trained in forum/mail list engagement (nor would I expect him to be).

I see nothing in Jeff's response above other than he read my post and responded to it and did so without reading ahead in the thread to see the update that RAZORBLADES had gotten his knives fixed by Jared. For this reason, I wouldn't assume that Jeff is disinterested in what Jared found.

Actually, as much as I love hearing directly from Jeff on the forum (and I do) and I much as I think that forums are good sources of information for a company, it probably makes more sense for the QA lead to spend nearly all of their time focused on internal things.

The thing that surprises me is that Buck doesn't have a brand manager or product manager on the forum.

Regardless, I'm very convinced that Jeff is shooting straight and I'm thrilled he's responded. Maybe he'll be able to report on what they find when tear down the wobbly Bucklite Maxes that I donated to the cause.
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You are corrrect. I have a few mins a day to keep up with the forum. There are a lot of us that watch the forum. This time of year we are buried in year end production, new products production and all that goes with it so the forum sometimes is not responed to as much as we would like. right now we are working 50-60 hours weeks.
I would love to know what Jared and Razor found. I just figured out yesterday that I can e-mail from here. I had thought I couldnt do any of that since I'm not a paying member.
I havent even had a chance to open the box from Pinnah

pinnah said:
It is possible that Buck is in a tough spot on this. If you recall, Jeff corrected himself above and confirmed that Buck did, in fact, change from steel to bronze bushings. If their analysis confirms what several knife mechanics have suggested, that bronze bushings are more prone to wear and thus vertical play, then they will be in a tough spot of admiting that design changes created a less durable product.

The catch 22 of the situation is that I have a hunch that bronze bushings give a smoother action and are probably favored by collectors and light, casual users. I further suspect that actual hard users who might prefer a more durable but less smooth action are in the very big minority. If that is the case (just my speculation really) that would be a tough business call.
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Never a tough spot. We are an honest an open company despite what some here think of us.

StuntDouble said:
I'm still going with out of spec lockbars. I'm thinking somewhere along the manufacturing process they're getting out of wack. That's the only thing I can think of that would cause vertical play.
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There are several things that can cause vertical play. We will see. Vertical play out of the box would indicate a dim issue with lockbar, blade etc.. Play developing over time would indicate sometihng wearing out. These things take time to investigate.

As a company we appreciate the tough feedback, this is the only way we can improve ourselves. Thank you also for the kind words.

A couple quality facts

100% inspection is only 80% effective. It takes 3 100% inspections to acheive 98% or better.
99.9% good out of this building still has the potential of 1000 knives per million bad.

Anyone can reach me via e-mail @ jhubbard@buckknives.com or call me @ 208.262.0500 x137

Jeff
 
Jeff, you rock.

Just wanted to say that.

Loyalty to Buck runs very, very deep for many of us. IMO, your involvement in the forum is above and beyond the call of duty, so as a big fan of Buck, "Thank you."
 
Jeff, your answers here confirmed my opinion of you after you took the time two years ago to give Cindy and me a personal tour and some time to sit down and chat. (Of course I'm usually right with my first impressions of people) Thanks!! :)

I am a proud BCCI Lifetime member. :thumbup::thumbup:
 
I'm curious about WHY Razor or Jared haven't come here and explained what "problems" were found and the fix that it took. :confused:

The silence from them on the subject is very strange indeed.;)
 
I think it is time for ranting, raving and speculation to stop. By now, Buck is aware of possible problems and everyone should give them time to examine things. Unlike some of us, the people at Buck don't have all day to sit posting messages on the forum. Give them some time.
 
Actually, that's not true.

The time for the ranting, raving and speculation to stop is when Buck comes back and says, "Ok, here's what we're doing to fix this problem and we expect it will take (fill in blank time period) for you to see results."

That would be respectful and functional behavior.

It would also be new.

(!)
 
Sorry so late in responding guys. Busy time of year.

I've reported to Jeff what I found and I'm sure he will note it.
I think this was one of those rare instances where one slipped through.
I can see RAZOR'S frustration as the Border/Shipping cost between us and Buck can be a hassle. Too bad there's no company like them up here. Supporting quality as close to home is important to me.

I think Razor is out fishing, and hopefully enjoying using his knives.

Happy Holidays!
 
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