- Joined
- Sep 8, 2002
- Messages
- 1,351
Passaround Buck/Mayo (BU-172) Review
I've had the passaround Buck/Mayo for a bit less than a full week. As I've stated in other reviews, I'm not a professional edge tester, so I won't be commenting much on the edge holding ability and such, I'll be concentrating more on fit-finish, ergonomics and blade shape.
Externals
The Buck comes in a bland brown cardboard box that hides a very nice two piece black plastic(?) presentation box with a felt covered molded cutout for holding the knife. The presentation box has Tom Mayo's 'Circle M' logo with BUCK written underneath it. The knife with clip weighs 2.9 oz on the Pitney-Bowes mail scale at work. Closed it is 4 1/4" (10.7cm) in length and it is 7 1/2" (19cm) opened (measured by hand using a ruler). The handles are two pieces of bead blasted titanium in the normal grey color and the blade (Crucible's well regarded S30V) has a nice satin finish to it. The handles are slightly contoured for a more rounded profile in the pocket. The clip is attached at the very top of the handle. The only option for clip placement is tip down, right hand side.
The handle has the Mayo signature holes, drilled in three rows on the non-locking left side when viewed from the spine and one row on the locking side. They are countersunk to avoid sharp edges. But the machining marks of the countersinking are visible beneath the bead-blast finish. This isn't to say that the marks are obvious, but close inspection reveals that the handles were not thoroughly polished after the holes were countersunk and before they were bead blasted. Not a large nit, but someone looking for perfection would notice it. Another much more noticeable flaw is a large machining burr on the inside edge of the lock bar near the end. This is situated where you thumb presses to close the blade. This also seems to have been missed during the polishing/finishing stage before bead-blasting took place. The bead-blast finish wears extremely well with only a single very-hard-to-spot small worn area on the handle despite the Buck/Mayo being mid-way through a passaround.
The two sides of the handle are held together with three spacers and torx screws and a larger torx pivot screw. The clip is held in place with two torx screws (looks identical to the frame screws. There is no back spacer. The handle has two symmetric "guards" which flare out and then join in a smooth curve at the pivot end.
Overall, the knife is extremely pretty, with smooth curves and lines.
Blade
The blade is S30V, marked with Tom Mayo's Circle M over "BUCK" on one side and Paul Bos' Flame BOS over S30V over U.S.A. on the other side. Both marks are just in front of the opening oval. The blade is 3 1/4" (8.2cm) from the handle to the tip and the edge is 3 1/8" (8.0cm) The blade is hollow ground all the way to the spine and has a nice thin edge. It has a perfectly straight edge for about 1 1/4" (3.2cm) followed by a smooth belly to the slightly dropped tip. The edge grinds are even side to side, but don't maintain same width for the entire edge which mars the otherwise perfect symmetry. This difference is purely cosmetic. The tip is sharp and thin. The spine is lightly V-ground and is extremely nicely polished from about the thumb hole forward leaving no sharp edges. The base of the spine is flat but ever so slightly radiused/smoothed, giving a very nice comfortable feel to the thumb.
Mechanics
The Buck/Mayo is a integral framelock design, with a lock bar on the right side handle and a stop pin. The stop pin serves to stop the blade from closing too far and from opening too far. At least that is the idea. The Buck/Mayo that I received opens too far with the lock bar moving over 110% of its width. This leaves the blade with a very slight wiggle in the open-close direction. I corrected this during the time I had the blade by slipping a piece of paper around the stop pin. This changed the lock coverage to about 90% and provided a rock solid lockup. The blade itself is perfectly centered with no hint of bias to either side. The "relief cutout" at the base of the lock bar is on the outside (probably due the contoured handles.
The ball detent of the Buck/Mayo does an extremely good job of keeping the blade closed. Some might say too good of a job. Once the detent is released, the opening resistance is even all the way to the lock bar snaps into place with a "snap". Closing the blade has the usual framelock awkwardness. The detent closes the blade to the stop pin with a satisfying "click". Due to the strong detent, I couldn't "flick" the knife open from the fully closed position. You can flick it open after clearing the ball detent by hand. The lock didn't change position whether opened softly or hard. The spydie drop is not possible, due to the guards bumping (painfully I might add) into your fingers.
Ergonomics
Note: I have small/medium hands, short fingers, but wide-ish palms. The bead blasting, curved handles and smooth guards allow you to grip the Buck/Mayo very comfortably with the saber and reverse grip. Unfortunately, due to the guards, the filipino grip (with thumb extended) is not terribly comfortable, and the polished back of the blade doesn't afford much purchase. (Note: it may not be practical to add thumb grooves to the back of the blade because there isn't much material between the hole and the back of the blade.) This is definitely not a knife built for fighting or stabbing. Choking up on the blade is also somewhat uncomfortable due to the guards. The guards are a good idea for protection, but they don't do it for me.
The lock bar is another issue. I found the edges of the hole cutout on the lock bar to be sharp and could have done with a good polishing/smoothing before being bead blasted. Closing the Buck/Mayo hurts more than it should due to the sharp edges and the aforementioned burr on the lockbar. Or it could be that my thumb is soft from too much typing.
Clip
As mentioned above, the clip is right hand, tip down only. The clip is (1/4" 0.6cm) wide and 2 1/4" (5.7cm) long, made of bead blasted titanium which perfectly matches the body. It is slim and simple. As mentioned above, it is held in place at the top by two torx screws. The flare at the open end was short and a little tight and required me to finger it open in order to fit over my jean pocket's lip. This low profile would keep it from scraping things. Unlike some framelock clips, the clip on the Buck/Mayo does not press against the lock bar.
Pocket Feel
The tip down clip provides a very low ride in the pocket. The contoured handles also helped reduce the bulk and it was comfortable to carry the Buck/Mayo in both my front right pocket and my right rear pocket. The light weight makes it easy to carry and the strong detent and tip-up design should keep the weight (or worry that it might open) off of your mind.
Cutting performance
As I don't trust my sharpening skills, I didn't sharpen it, but used the knife as-is. When I got the Buck/Mayo, it wasn't quite shaving sharp, but still pretty sharp. Cutting through cardboard was easy but the blade seemed to want to curve to one side or another. It took concentration to keep the strokes straight. The same with paper. I'm not sure why this is. Other than the slight curving, the blade sliced through paper, cardboard and cord easily and well. The Buck/Mayo's blade isn't a hard use knife, but should perform well as a light duty slicer.
Subjective/Personal Stuff
The Buck/Mayo is an extremely nicely designed and finished knife. If it weren't for the small machining imperfections and the lock problem it would be perfect. I'm sure that if this Buck/Mayo were mine, I'd be able to send it in to Buck and they'd set things right. However, I'm not a fan of hollow ground blades (I guess my Spyderco Dragonfly has spoiled me with it's thin flat ground blade) and the oval hole seems to be a less than optimal solution to the opening problem. I also don't like the guards, which undoubtedly fill a purpose, but don't fit with how I like to grip a knife. The front guard also interferes with deep cuts. On the other hand, the knife looks beautiful, has a very nice clip and an extremely good slicing blade which should be pretty sheeple friendly. For someone who is comfortable with the handle design, it would be a great dress/office EDC folder.
I've had the passaround Buck/Mayo for a bit less than a full week. As I've stated in other reviews, I'm not a professional edge tester, so I won't be commenting much on the edge holding ability and such, I'll be concentrating more on fit-finish, ergonomics and blade shape.
Externals
The Buck comes in a bland brown cardboard box that hides a very nice two piece black plastic(?) presentation box with a felt covered molded cutout for holding the knife. The presentation box has Tom Mayo's 'Circle M' logo with BUCK written underneath it. The knife with clip weighs 2.9 oz on the Pitney-Bowes mail scale at work. Closed it is 4 1/4" (10.7cm) in length and it is 7 1/2" (19cm) opened (measured by hand using a ruler). The handles are two pieces of bead blasted titanium in the normal grey color and the blade (Crucible's well regarded S30V) has a nice satin finish to it. The handles are slightly contoured for a more rounded profile in the pocket. The clip is attached at the very top of the handle. The only option for clip placement is tip down, right hand side.
The handle has the Mayo signature holes, drilled in three rows on the non-locking left side when viewed from the spine and one row on the locking side. They are countersunk to avoid sharp edges. But the machining marks of the countersinking are visible beneath the bead-blast finish. This isn't to say that the marks are obvious, but close inspection reveals that the handles were not thoroughly polished after the holes were countersunk and before they were bead blasted. Not a large nit, but someone looking for perfection would notice it. Another much more noticeable flaw is a large machining burr on the inside edge of the lock bar near the end. This is situated where you thumb presses to close the blade. This also seems to have been missed during the polishing/finishing stage before bead-blasting took place. The bead-blast finish wears extremely well with only a single very-hard-to-spot small worn area on the handle despite the Buck/Mayo being mid-way through a passaround.
The two sides of the handle are held together with three spacers and torx screws and a larger torx pivot screw. The clip is held in place with two torx screws (looks identical to the frame screws. There is no back spacer. The handle has two symmetric "guards" which flare out and then join in a smooth curve at the pivot end.
Overall, the knife is extremely pretty, with smooth curves and lines.
Blade
The blade is S30V, marked with Tom Mayo's Circle M over "BUCK" on one side and Paul Bos' Flame BOS over S30V over U.S.A. on the other side. Both marks are just in front of the opening oval. The blade is 3 1/4" (8.2cm) from the handle to the tip and the edge is 3 1/8" (8.0cm) The blade is hollow ground all the way to the spine and has a nice thin edge. It has a perfectly straight edge for about 1 1/4" (3.2cm) followed by a smooth belly to the slightly dropped tip. The edge grinds are even side to side, but don't maintain same width for the entire edge which mars the otherwise perfect symmetry. This difference is purely cosmetic. The tip is sharp and thin. The spine is lightly V-ground and is extremely nicely polished from about the thumb hole forward leaving no sharp edges. The base of the spine is flat but ever so slightly radiused/smoothed, giving a very nice comfortable feel to the thumb.
Mechanics
The Buck/Mayo is a integral framelock design, with a lock bar on the right side handle and a stop pin. The stop pin serves to stop the blade from closing too far and from opening too far. At least that is the idea. The Buck/Mayo that I received opens too far with the lock bar moving over 110% of its width. This leaves the blade with a very slight wiggle in the open-close direction. I corrected this during the time I had the blade by slipping a piece of paper around the stop pin. This changed the lock coverage to about 90% and provided a rock solid lockup. The blade itself is perfectly centered with no hint of bias to either side. The "relief cutout" at the base of the lock bar is on the outside (probably due the contoured handles.
The ball detent of the Buck/Mayo does an extremely good job of keeping the blade closed. Some might say too good of a job. Once the detent is released, the opening resistance is even all the way to the lock bar snaps into place with a "snap". Closing the blade has the usual framelock awkwardness. The detent closes the blade to the stop pin with a satisfying "click". Due to the strong detent, I couldn't "flick" the knife open from the fully closed position. You can flick it open after clearing the ball detent by hand. The lock didn't change position whether opened softly or hard. The spydie drop is not possible, due to the guards bumping (painfully I might add) into your fingers.
Ergonomics
Note: I have small/medium hands, short fingers, but wide-ish palms. The bead blasting, curved handles and smooth guards allow you to grip the Buck/Mayo very comfortably with the saber and reverse grip. Unfortunately, due to the guards, the filipino grip (with thumb extended) is not terribly comfortable, and the polished back of the blade doesn't afford much purchase. (Note: it may not be practical to add thumb grooves to the back of the blade because there isn't much material between the hole and the back of the blade.) This is definitely not a knife built for fighting or stabbing. Choking up on the blade is also somewhat uncomfortable due to the guards. The guards are a good idea for protection, but they don't do it for me.
The lock bar is another issue. I found the edges of the hole cutout on the lock bar to be sharp and could have done with a good polishing/smoothing before being bead blasted. Closing the Buck/Mayo hurts more than it should due to the sharp edges and the aforementioned burr on the lockbar. Or it could be that my thumb is soft from too much typing.
Clip
As mentioned above, the clip is right hand, tip down only. The clip is (1/4" 0.6cm) wide and 2 1/4" (5.7cm) long, made of bead blasted titanium which perfectly matches the body. It is slim and simple. As mentioned above, it is held in place at the top by two torx screws. The flare at the open end was short and a little tight and required me to finger it open in order to fit over my jean pocket's lip. This low profile would keep it from scraping things. Unlike some framelock clips, the clip on the Buck/Mayo does not press against the lock bar.
Pocket Feel
The tip down clip provides a very low ride in the pocket. The contoured handles also helped reduce the bulk and it was comfortable to carry the Buck/Mayo in both my front right pocket and my right rear pocket. The light weight makes it easy to carry and the strong detent and tip-up design should keep the weight (or worry that it might open) off of your mind.
Cutting performance
As I don't trust my sharpening skills, I didn't sharpen it, but used the knife as-is. When I got the Buck/Mayo, it wasn't quite shaving sharp, but still pretty sharp. Cutting through cardboard was easy but the blade seemed to want to curve to one side or another. It took concentration to keep the strokes straight. The same with paper. I'm not sure why this is. Other than the slight curving, the blade sliced through paper, cardboard and cord easily and well. The Buck/Mayo's blade isn't a hard use knife, but should perform well as a light duty slicer.
Subjective/Personal Stuff
The Buck/Mayo is an extremely nicely designed and finished knife. If it weren't for the small machining imperfections and the lock problem it would be perfect. I'm sure that if this Buck/Mayo were mine, I'd be able to send it in to Buck and they'd set things right. However, I'm not a fan of hollow ground blades (I guess my Spyderco Dragonfly has spoiled me with it's thin flat ground blade) and the oval hole seems to be a less than optimal solution to the opening problem. I also don't like the guards, which undoubtedly fill a purpose, but don't fit with how I like to grip a knife. The front guard also interferes with deep cuts. On the other hand, the knife looks beautiful, has a very nice clip and an extremely good slicing blade which should be pretty sheeple friendly. For someone who is comfortable with the handle design, it would be a great dress/office EDC folder.