Stainless or Nickle-Silver

The bolsters on this knife are more than likely to be "Nickel Silver" (white brass). Stainless steel would exhibit a slight amount of paramagnetism. A magnet on a string pendulum would be interrupted in its swing over said bolster. I have seen Boker folders which have satin Nickel plated , diecast Zinc bolsters.
 
IT has the old English script stamp making it a stainless frame. The block letter stamped blades utilized the nickel frame. DM
 
DM, I don't know what you are seeing, but the link that the OP put up brought me to one with BLOCK lettering and a \ date stamp. I beleive that to be a NS bolstered knife. Very easy to sand and buff to a mirror polish.
 
If you do a search and look thru old posts, I believe that the best info. is that the Model 500 Duke has always been stainless. In the 2000 catalog all 500 series are listed as stainless. In the 2002 catalog, the 501/503/505 are listed as stainless (500 had been discontinued). In the 2003 catalog, the 501/503/505 are listed as nickel silver. In one of the threads, it states that the tooling was changed as part of the material change. The angle of the seam between the bolsters and the birchwood are mirror image on the newer NS models. On the older SS models, there are different angles on the head and tail bolsters (also part of the design change). By the time the switch was made to nickel silver, the 500 was out or on the way out, so it was not updated.
 
Thanx RLF ...I assumed that the 500 series followed the 700 series timeline, and I was wrong.
In light of that I would send it to Buck for a spa treatment... Having re-furbed a very beat up 500 script stamp it is a LOT of work sanding and polishing the SS bolsters...
 
sitflyer said:
DM, I don't know what you are seeing, but the link that the OP put up brought me to one with BLOCK lettering and a \ date stamp. I beleive that to be a NS bolstered knife. Very easy to sand and buff to a mirror polish.
Click to expand...
I would question this too. The knife that I viewed yesterday evening had the old English stamp. Yet when I clicked on it today it has the stamp you note.? The article I'm referencing was authored by Joe Houser and Larry Oden, states that Buck has switched to sintered nickel silver on these models but Not the exact date. The book was published in 2005 so I'm thinking sometime prior to that. DM
 
It has a 94 blade on it which was prior to the change on the 501 so I would say SS. It also looks more like SS.
 
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