ONE FOR THE PROs

mbjannusch

mbjannusch

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Apr 1, 2010
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I recently picked up a couple of early 119s on that famous auction site. The first and the topic of this thread is a 119 barrel nut, and the other is a single line stamp 119. A little bit of history for those who don't know about the time lines of these knives. The 119 barrel nut dates between 1961 through 1963. The 119 one line stamp over laps the barrel nut, with dates of 1961 through 1966 to early 67, when the blade stamp BUCK* came into play. Typically the Barrel nut had a hand forged blade and a bolt was brazed to the tang. The handle was constructed and a "barrel Nut" was tightened down to hold the handle together. A plug of alumnium was fitted to the hole in the pommel to seal the barrel nut.

Fast forward to now. I watched this 119 barrel nut on the bay and it appeared strange. The pommel was crooked and it looked like there was a groove in the the plug. I figured someone thought that was the way to remove the pommel or something along those lines. I bid anyway and won. When I got it home I looked at this groove and it didn't have any tooling around the hole in the pommel. You would figure if someone used a dremmel or some other type of tool to cut this groove it would have left sign showing that type of work was done. I ventured a bit farther and used a flat headed screwdriver and attempted to turn the plug. Much to my surprise it turned and the handle began to loosen. I took this plug out and it was threaded and fit on to the bolt that was brazed onto the tang.


I have never seen this before and I'm not sure what to make of it all. In addition this 119 barrel nut is considerably heavier and has a real thick blade. I measured the blade and compaired it to the one liners I have. The 119 barrel nut has a blade thickness of .24 inches as compaired to the one liner 119s I have and they measured .13 inches.


Is it possible that this knife was some sort of early prototype or transition into the barrel nut era...??? If any of the x-perts have any ideas I love to hear them. Here are some pictures to help get an idea of what I'm talking about...


This first picture is just a few of my 119 starting with the barrel nut at the bottom working your way up to the 1973 three line stamp with 4 micarta spacers ( read with the blade pointed up)


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This picture shows the barrel nut pommel with the grooved plug, I don't know what to make of it, HELP...


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This picture shows the difference in thickness in the blades from the barrel nut to the one line stamp... sorry for the great picture of the clay I used to hold the knives side by side...


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As you can see the barrel nut is almost twice as thick as the one line stamp. If they over lap in time should the difference in thickness be this dramitic.???
 
Well, I gave my post some thought and remembered that the early model barrel nuts had leather spacers and this one has bone hard fiber spacers, so that blows the idea of a model leading up to the barrel nut era. Maybe a post leather move into fiber spacers. I'm still puzzled as to why this has a grooved plug as apposed to a traditional barrel nut and plug. In addition the thickness of the blade is still in question.
 
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Matt, totally out of my area......but could it be as simple as the machine tool used to cut the groove in the plug 'wobbled' as it was removed. I have seen slippage of cutters on lots of stuff, some cheap made some not. There is probably not a of these knives to have a look at. Maybe Tele will take a look, I think he has some old 100s. 300
 
I watched this 119 barrel nut on the bay and it appeared strange. The pommel was crooked and it looked like there was a groove in the the plug. I figured someone thought that was the way to remove the pommel or something along those lines. I bid anyway and won. When I got it home I looked at this groove and it didn't have any tooling around the hole in the pommel. You would figure if someone used a dremmel or some other type of tool to cut this groove it would have left sign showing that type of work was done. I ventured a bit farther and used a flat headed screwdriver and attempted to turn the plug. Much to my surprise it turned and the handle began to loosen. I took this plug out and it was threaded and fit on to the bolt that was brazed onto the tang.


I have never seen this before and I'm not sure what to make of it all. In addition this 119 barrel nut is considerably heavier and has a real thick blade. I measured the blade and compaired it to the one liners I have. The 119 barrel nut has a blade thickness of .24 inches as compaired to the one liner 119s I have and they measured .13 inches.
Click to expand...

Well, that's fascinating and should inspire an interesting response from Joe unless he's already gone hunting.

:)
 
Typically the plug ins't the fastener though, its just aplug that covers the "barrel nut"...

This is actually the fastener...
 
The plug was only used if, in the process of sanding/buffing down the barrel nut, they ground through to the threaded hole of the BN. The majority of BN knives I've seen dont have a plug at all.
Can you post a picture of just the barrel nut laying on the table? I've seen a bunch of them so I might be able to tell if it was Buck made or one that someone made later. Someway or another it seems that the knife was taken apart at some time and they either used a nut that had a slot or they slotted the Buck BN.

Years ago when I was trying to piece together the progression of the 100 series knives I pretty much came to a brick wall while trying to make sense of all the varying blade thicknesses I saw on the 119, 120, and 103. I think I know what happened but if I am correct, then ALL 119 BN with leather spacers should have the very thick blade. This means all one liners from 61-mid 63 when the shop switched to flat tang.

If I had the chance to see many one liners, I may be able to determine when the first thinner blades happened.
 
Well, i'll post again just to keep this thing going, I haven't got the answers I'm loolking for yet. I never realized that the barrel nut and the plug were the same thing. I guess it isn't to unheard of, unless you take one apart. I was under the impresson there was a barrel nut, and a plug sealed it all together so it wouldn't be taken apart. Live and learn...
 
This seems to be an uninteresting post but, I got conformation that what happened was like Joe said someone ground to far and punched through the back of the barrel nut and cut a slot into it to remove it. Nothing special, Thanks to those who participated...
 
The only thing that doesnt quite sit right with that is how they would have been able to cut the slot without cutting the pommel end? My guess is that the barrel nut got loose and they were able to remove it, and cut the slot. The pictures were perfect and it does look like the kind we used way back then.
We rarely get BN knives back in warranty but when we do, loose pommels are usually the problem. I've seen maybe a couple over the years where the BN was actually loose. To take them apart I used to hammer a slotted screwdriver into the center of the bn, breaking through to the threaded hole. I had a couple where that did not work and I just stripped out the newly created slot.
FWIW, Leroy can probably fix that if it bothers you to have the slot.
 
Joe,
Thanks and I have contacted him already, He is able to help and I'll be going down there next week.
 
mbjannusch said:
This seems to be an uninteresting post but, I got conformation that what happened was like Joe said someone ground to far and punched through the back of the barrel nut and cut a slot into it to remove it. Nothing special, Thanks to those who participated...
Click to expand...

Hey, just because people didn't have anything to contribute doesn't mean it wasn't a very interesting and informative post. Check the # of views.... 289........
 
Yes, it's interesting.

Many of us learned something new. Most of us are far more acquainted with post barrel-nut knives.

:)
 
Joe, I've not seen any barrel nut models with slots in them either. Plus, the barrel nut models did not continue thru 1963 they ended in May of 1963 and glad you corrected yourself on them only having leather spacers. DM
 
Keep me honest David! :)
We dont know when the switch from leather spacers to bone hard fiber occured, but it was sometime before that May 1963 date.
The info I saw on when Buck started "production" knives in 1961 suggests that it was pretty late in the year, possibly September. If this is true, then this means 4 months of 1961, 12 months of '62, and 5 of '63.....total of only 21 months production of BN knives.
I have more info...I'd call it weak at best, that suggests that we only made about 60 BN 120's in 1961.
This might explain why that modle is so hard to find today?
On the other end is the 105, with possibly as many as 4000 BN made.
 
There was a time line sheet on a table at the 20yr. that stated "1963 June of this year Buck changed from Barrel nut construction to Flat tang and with this came bone hard fiber spacers". Not sure whos seminar it was. Later during a seminar discussion on barrel nut construction it was put forth that this type construction ended in May and the pinned started. So, putting the sheet and discussion together was how I arrived at those dates. I didn't know the beginning date was Sept. I merely had mid 61 penciled in during our discussion. So, I'll write hard fiber spacers maybe started before May 1963? This explains why I've not seen a 120BN and have seen a 105, 121, 103 and 102. I know that 116BN do exist. Another one very hard to find. I wish some of our more long term collectors were on this site as they have this information and could set us straight in these discussions. But we're stuck with some limited data on many of these topics. DM
 
Well the 121 started in 1964, so there will not be a 121 BN. The first 121 had the vertical stamp and the fish scaler. I have had and seen a 103 (I sold it to Herbert Noll), A 105 formally owned by Heath Stone sold this evening, and there is a 102 on an auction site now, but its in bad shape. I think DM's is a bit off. The leather spacer knives started before Buck became incorporated april 5, 1961 and went till some time in '62 when they changer to fiber spacers, ending in '63. There are 120 Bn with hard fiber spacers, they are just few and far between. Believe me the next one that turns up I'm putting up big money to get it, beware!!!
 
Then why did you say earlier the barrel nuts went thru 1963? I've held a knife that looked to be a 121 in my hand and it was a barrel nut. I don't doubt there could be hard fiber spacers with barrel nut and theres room for you to be a bit off. No one here has the grand last word on this subject. DM
 
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