which one to get..................

B

bkkd

Joined
Dec 9, 2005
Messages
173
for just a general beater / woods knife and just packin around

i know the kershaw has good metal in it, but what about the buck?

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I have the Buck/Strider with g-10 handles and an ats-34 steel blade heat treated by Paul Boss. This is a solid knife with a great handle design. The lockup is solid with absolutely NO blade play in any direction. You can get a cheaper version with zytel handle scales ( not as grippy as g-10 ) and a 420HC steel blade. The Buck 420HC is regarded with some measure of respect in this forum by quite a few. However it is not held in as high esteem as Aus-8, 440C, 154CM, Ats-34, VG-10, or Sv30 that is properly heat treated. The Buck 420HC by all accounts here is well heat treated and can be sharpened to a fine edge. It needs shapening more often then the other steels mentioned but it is supposedly able to take a lot of abuse.

I hope this helps. I have never had a Kershaw and am not familiar with the steel they use on the above model.:D
 
that is the zytel/420HC knife pictured. I had one, and found the scales to be rough, and a bit heavy overall. The blade cut well, had an ok hollow grind. My biggest complaint was that you can't disassemble the knife, I would have liked screw construction instead of rivets.
 
I was thinking of getting one of those buck striders, they are very sturdy knives to handle, I don't know if I really like the 420HC steel, but it might be my ignorance in the matter. I wish they had them in in ats-34... But If 420HC is done right by Buck, I might have to reconsider.
 
For a general beater, the buck would be better for hacking and prying type work. As a general EDC and ordinary cutting knife the Kershaw would probably be better, as it’s designed to cut much more efficiently than the Buck Strider. As long as you’re not chopping concrete I’m sure the Kershaw will take most of the abuse you could give it.
 
I had a Buck and it was a good beater for rough stuff. Haven't fingered the Kershaw but if it's as slim as they typically are, I'd take it over the Buck as an EDC.

The Buck is fairly thick and the clip needs to be bent so as not to tear up your jeans pocket. I sanded the scales to take the edginess off them. I eventually sold it.
 
For the purpose you've described a small or medium sized fixed blade would be much better suited but you've probably ruled that out already.

Out of those two(BuckStrider and Kershaw) I've only used the Buck-Strider which I really like. I would not use it for rural activities as the lock of a folder will fail/break at some point if you really stress it with prying battoning splitting and neither of those will really excel in any general carving type tasks.

Just my 2 cents...
 
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