ww2 buck knives

ww2 buck knives

Plenty of Bucks were in Vietnam.

In the 1940's Buck Knives were all handmade, so the production rate was pretty low.
 
knarfeng said:
I have heard of 120's and 119's being used in Vietnam.
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Yes 119's and 120's were used, but probably the most popular knife among those that really needed/used them (and that wasn't me) in the Nam was the Gerber Mark II.
 
postfallsidaho said:
Joe Houser would be the guy for all of this info. Most were marked BUCK and some were not marked... Most had the lucite handles I believe, but I would email or wait for Joe on this subject! Lots of cool stuff there ;)
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Joe would be the guy, but here are a few 40s and 50s.

 
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To the best of my knowledge Buck knives were not used in WW II like the Kabar, for example. At that time, Buck was not making a knife comparable to the Kabar. Hkingdom's photo shows a selection of Buck knives from the period but they are probably later than the early 1940's. We suspect that the Lucite (A Dupont trade name for acrylic plastic) handled knives were made from aircraft scrap materials (Continental Aviation in San Diego or its suppliers probably) but we can't tell if this was done during or after the war or both. Acrylic and aluminum were both rationed during the war and were not easily available anyway because they were new production materials at that time and very expensive. Hope that helps.
 
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Here are a few more examples of the early ones. I got this picture from a magazine article where they actually interviewed Hoyt Buck. The date was 1947. It is likely that the knives were all stamped BUCK by this time. Most of what we know about the early knives was pieced together from stories and what little bits of hard data that we have.
The largest knife in the picture, the Scimitar, is about 30" in length if I remember correctly.
Masonite and lucite were the handle materials of choice. Lignum Vitea came along a few years later and then in the mid 1950's, they switched to Ebony and elk.
 
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