Became a student (and collector) of 1988-1989 Buck 531s because of a recent purchase

[Happy Hippo]

Did you ever buy a knife which you thought looked cool and got it at a decent price only to find that there is a huge story behind it? This happened to me when I bought the 1991 and 1992 BCCI Annual club knives. Those are the 531 Bucklock-1 and the 535 Bucklock-2, respectively. You more experienced collectors probably all ready know this story. I found out that there is a 3rd knife to this series - the 1990 BCCI Annual. But this one has the Sawby lock design - not a lockback. The Sawby design to lock the blade was introduced in the 1988 catalog on the 531, 535, and 539 knives. 532 was planned also, don't think it was made. But soon after, there were issues with the design. The lock failed under heavy use. In fact, a Buck spokesman injured his hand when he was demonstrating what force it took to fail it. It was a disaster for Buck. They tried to get the knives back but the story is they only got about 25% of them back. The kind of odd thing is that the 531 Sawby won "knife of the year" in the 1990 Blade Show in Knoxville. I guess they hadn't realized the enormity of the situation at that time. BCCI picked the 531 Sawby as their 1990 Annual Club knife. You had to sign a waiver to Buck to get one. There were 5 versions of the 531 Sawby in the 1988 to 1990 time frame: 1) The knife with a 1988 blade, not the BCCI version. 2) The 1990 BCCI Annual knife (with gold etched logo and numbered bolster). This knife has the 1988 date symbol with a dot in the center. The dot presumably indicates design changes made to help mitigate the effects of the design. 3) same as (2) except the bolster isn't numbered. 4) The 1989 blade, not the BCCI version - no dot in the center of the symbol this time. 5) The 1990 BCCI Annual Knife with the 1989 blade - presumably it has numbered bolsters. Does anyone actually have all 5 of these? Perhaps there is a sixth, which would be the same as (5) except the bolster isn't numbered. Or perhaps in variation (5) the bolster isn't numbered. Then there are future versions that retain the Sawby frame but are used in the lockback versions. There are also versions that use large rivets because Buck was later concerned that the birch inlays in the parallel cut design could peel or curl with the normal rivets. I am not going to pursue these intentionally because it is a distraction from collecting 112s, but if I run across them and the price is right, I would probably get them. Who would have "thunk" a single purchase caused five more purchases. Such is the life of a knife collector, I imagine. I am attaching the 1990 and 1991 BCCI Annual knives and the one version with the large rivets that are in my collection. Also I'm showing examples of the parallel-cut versus bias-cut birch inlays and the 1992 BCCI knife, that is a 535. Also shown is the lockback version that used a Sawby frame but with large rivets. Incidentally, all the Sawbys are parallel cut birch.

Edit: After reading this, I see I referenced something in the pictures that I should explain. Some of the Bucklocks came in boxes that were labelled Bucklockers for some reason.

 

[bertl]

Here is my 531 Bucklock-1—1988 symbol with a dot; no blade decoration. The front bolsters are concave on the inside to accommodate the Sawby mechanism.

 

[Happy Hippo]

Here is my 531 Bucklock-1—1988 symbol with a dot; no blade decoration. The front bolsters are concave on the inside to accommodate the Sawby mechanism.

View attachment 2333026

View attachment 2333029

So, that looks like the regular non-BCCI Sawby. I wonder if there are any versions of non-BCCI without the dot in the 1988 date symbol? Thanks for showing the Sawby frame. One of my pictures is a lockback but using the Sawby frame. So now people will know what I meant. Maybe we can get pictures of every Sawby version here.

 

[bertl]

I wonder if there are any versions of non-BCCI without the dot in the 1988 date symbol?

Have you read the BCCI Newsletter articles about the 531—Vern Taylor (May 1995) and Larry Oden (December 2011)?

 

[Happy Hippo]

Have you read the BCCI Newsletter articles about the 531—Vern Taylor (May 1995) and Larry Oden (December 2011)?

Yes, I read the chapter in larry's book. I didn't remember if Vern's knives were completely undecorated, I thought they just didn't have the bolster number.

Yes, after rereading, Vern's knives just didn't have the serial number. So yours is the standard version.

 

[Loneland Joe]

I have 531 , 532 and a 535 all dated 1991 . I've never seen a patent pending on a Buck tang before I got these knives