Buck 119 Brahma what would you do?

[unimogbert]

What would you do if this were your knife?

(Short summary- DO NOT TAPE THIS BLADE FOR SHARPENING UNLESS YOU ARE READY TO WIPE IT DOWN HEAVILY TO CLEAN OFF THE REMOVABLE COATING LEFTOVERS!)

Review of my new Buck 119 Brahma knife.

I've had the knife for 3 weeks or so and have been looking at it closely for about 1.

On receipt the knife looked very good. The edge is sharp with a toothy texture and even on both sides.
The knife point is very pointy with the bevels lining up evenly all the way to the very end.
The blade coloration was smooth and even. The blade is the classic 119 shape and the texture under the coating seemed to be very smooth - like a normal 119 blade without coating.

The butt cap is an asymetrical steel piece a little bit like the Kabar Dogshead end with lanyard hole though smaller and has a final round brass or aluminum knob or nut with a tiny crosswise hole in it, perhaps for the tool used to tighten it. So the pommel is not completely flat as would be the case for something designed for pounding.

The handle is a light colored leather tapered and rounded but without the sheen of any coating.

And it smelled burnt. Not like sheath or saddle leather.

The burnt smell had to be from the manufacturing step of turning the leather of the handle. So I sealed it in with a coating of Snoseal. (beeswax waterproofing for boots).

While using a hair dryer to warm the Snoseal and help it absorb into the handle I noticed that the edge bevels were different. One side was wider than the other. I measured one side at 1.8mm wide and the other at 1 mm. (used the protruding portion of a dial caliper) This suggested that the bevel angles on the sides are different.

Note that the other edge picture didn't turn out.

I wiped the blade with some Remoil to put it away and consider the bevel situation. The wiping patch came away a little dark! It seems like the coloration comes off to some extent just by wiping. It also seemed like the edges of the blade grind lost more color than flats. OK. Looks kinda cool that way.

A few days later I got out my Edge Pro Apex rig, colored the edges on the knife, then used a dry fine stone to find the edge angle. I have a dial type angle finder to lay on (1) the base glass (2) the blade table (3) the blade flats and (4) the stone back. So after adjusting the stone to flat scrape off the Sharpie from the edges I came up with the wide bevel being a 20 degree (dps) angle and the narrow one being 25. (Knife was not taped since I wasn't creating swarf debris it need protection from. However the blade table and guide are taped. I suspected that the root cause of the bevel differences is asymetric sharpening from the factory.

I thought this over for awhile considering whether to return the knife to Buck for the coloration and assymetry.

I decided instead to sharpen the thin bevel side to the same angle as the wide side.

So I setup the EP and got ready to remove some metal from the spine side of the thin bevel at the narrower angle.
I taped the knife with blue painter's masking tape on both sides. (1 layer each).
I Sharpied the 25 degree edge, set the angle to 20 degrees using the angle finder on the back of the stone as it lay on the blade and started honing.
To my surprise the Sharpie was being removed all the way across the existing bevel anywhere along the length of the knife.
I colored the other side bevel and honed it without changing any settings - same thing - honed all the Sharpie off all the way across the wider bevel. I double-checked that I was holding the blade down on the blade table the same way on both sides.

So either my first measurements were incorrect, or something else is going on.

I don't like horsing around with warranty returns and such so decided to just press on and finish honing both sides at the existing geometry. So I finished with the Medium stone then went to Fine and then Extra Fine. Oboy is that a sharp, sharp knife! (hollow grind allows that I think)

Surprise! When I removed the painter's tape I found that some more of the blade color came up on the tape and the blade was lighter gray where the tape had been but was still dark where the tape had not been.Wiping with Remoil sort of smoothed out the mottling from the adhesive but I had inconsistent coloration of the blade. A later session of vigorous wiping both dry and with Remoil removed the removable layer and left a nice even #2 pencil gray colored coating on the blade.

The knife has not yet been used and is completely functional and very, very sharp.

I might be doing something wrong, or the knife blank might have been asymmetric so that a set edge geometry on the grinder gives different bevel widths (several non-symmetric blank configs could yield this result) I've tried to measure location of the blade relative to the flat stock of the knife but my measuring technique and tools are inadequate.

So I have something very slightly asymmetric about the knife leading to different width edge bevels.
My concern over the coloration of the blade has dissipated. I suspect that the coloration will suffer with usage anyway.

So this is not a perfect knife. I have asymmetric bevels and coloration that is lighter than out of the box.


What would you do?

 

[jb4570]

WWID?

Keep it and use it, just like you said. This knife is not a collectors knife it was made to be a user just like the old Kbars. The one I have the coating or bluing wipes off also, it also came with a pit blemish in the blade steel. I thought about sending it back also, then said what the heck I'm going to use it and scratch it up anyway. Shame on Buck for their poor QC.

Here is the pit on the blade, it will have no affect on it knife as a user though.



jb4570