Buck folders in 420J2 steel

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KHarper

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Just bought a matched pair of cheap Buck jackknifes because I liked the red color of the handles and the long, thin spey blade on one of them. I see they are 420J2 steel, which is different from the normal 420HC that Buck uses. Am I safe in assuming that knives from Buck will at least be at the "good" end of 420J2, and be properly heat treated, etc? I read on an older thread that 420J2 can be passable and the carbon content varies between .15 and .30%. Basically, how would well-treated Buck 420J2 compare with normal Buck 420HC? These are clearly meant to be Christmas present throwaways to grab the attention of gift buyers, but I hope that doesn't mean that Buck has abandoned all pretense of quality. Then again, part of why they use 420HC is that it's cheap but decent steel, but if they are now descending to an even more inferior steel for their "real cheap" knifes, I don't know how I feel about that. Seems like they could have just used their normal 420HC without increasing the price point too much. I guess when you're in the high-volume, low profit margin game small amounts count....and that's what worries me. Anyway they were really cheap and I'm not likely to use them much anyway. Just curious.
 
I have had some experience with their Chinese line, and they are decent knives. They make great gifts. I have found the steel in my use to dull fairly quickly but resharpen well. I happen to like that though. I also found that the Chinese bucks have less "snap" in the springs than others, and some small gaps in the backsprings. I think that they are pretty good pocket knives for the average user, but maybe arent nice enough for us Blade Forums snobs haha.
 
CVamberbonehead said:
I have had some experience with their Chinese line, and they are decent knives. They make great gifts. I have found the steel in my use to dull fairly quickly but resharpen well. I happen to like that though. I also found that the Chinese bucks have less "snap" in the springs than others, and some small gaps in the backsprings. I think that they are pretty good pocket knives for the average user, but maybe arent nice enough for us Blade Forums snobs haha.
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420J2 is used on some Buck knives made in China. I am not aware of it being used on any US-made Buck knives. CV's description pretty much matches my expectations for 420J2. I have not tried it, nor will I.
 
http://www.zknives.com/knives/steels/steelgraph.php?nm=420j2

problem with it is only 0.15-0.36% carbon
so, about 1/4 of a percent on average - which is just not enough to get high hardness even with a good ht

I'd be shocked if the hrc ever exceeds 52, which is fine for some things perhaps, but will wear & dull down awfully quickly if you do any hard work
... great for a low cost wall hanger and that's about it
 
I'm not sure 420J2 is heat treated at all. Maybe OK for spoons. I suppose there is a market for these (Buck is a business, after all) but I'd never buy one.
 
I own and occasionally carry a Chinese made Buck mini-trapper in 420J2. I originally bought it for my nephew so he could a) learn how to use a non-locking knife, b) have a knife that's easy to sharpen (and would regularly need it), c) have something that won't rust because a 10 year old with 5 acres of wooded backyard is bound to leave that knife out overnight.

His mom said give it to him, his dad said no, I figured I didn't want to fight about it either way and kept the knife. I've since used that knife to pare down wood just to pass the time, to cut various cords, to open boxes, and to help cut off a few dead pine branches to collect fatwood.

In my experience the clip blade of the trapper has fine spring action, the spey blade is a little weak. Both blades get sharp just fine. Both blades cut stuff. Both blades dull relatively quickly. Both blades sharpen up easily. The fit and finish is pretty good. I don't have a problem carrying the knife around as my pocket knife. After collecting that fatwood the main clip blade was relatively dull but it steeled back into shape when I got home. I imagine I could have just steeled on my car window and it would have been fine but I didn't find a need to do anymore cutting that day.

The bottom line is, it's a small pocket knife built for 'everyday' tasks. It gets sharp, it gets dull, it cuts stuff (better when it's sharp, less good when it's dull), looks nice, works fine, isn't scary, and it was like $15.00 dollars or something.

Edit to add: you ever see pictures of "so and so's grandpas jackknife" and see how the blades are tiny and thin because the thing was sharpened so much? It's because so and so's grandpa sharpened the knife a lot because back then knives got sharp, got used, got dull, and got sharp again. No one expected a knife to cut down a tree and butcher 3 moose before requiring touch up on some diamond stones or a mini belt grinder.
 
I have ... "a few" ... offshore made Buck 300 series knives. Mostly the 371 stockman and a couple 389 canoes, and a large trapper endorced by some "professional" bass fisherman.
All have the 420J2 blade steel.
A couple of the 371's and 389's I've had for about 8 years give or take a week or three.
So far, I have not had any problems with them. The heat treat seems to be good. Whether or not Mr. Bos ever developed a heat treat for 420J2 steel, I don't know.

They trim branches on the multi-use trails just about as well as my other Buck knives, and hold an edge "long enough" for my uses. Dry stropping usually brings back the edge.

To date, I haven't had any problems with them. If I ever do, I'll just send it in to Buck, since they have the same FOREVER warranty as the domestically produced knives. :)
 
Alberta Ed said:
I'm not sure 420J2 is heat treated at all. Maybe OK for spoons. I suppose there is a market for these (Buck is a business, after all) but I'd never buy one.
Click to expand...

Not directly related to the original question but...

I could just about throw a rock to the Buck factory. When they moved up here it was fairly big news due to the employment opportunities and such. One thing that was getting negative attention though was their outsourcing of of some models to China. One of the Bucks did an interview and explained that they don't like it either but Walmart forced them into such a tight price-point to remain on their shelves that they had no choice. I don't recall the specifics but at the time they had to have X percent of their models at or below something like $15.
 
Eli Chaps said:
Not directly related to the original question but...

I could just about throw a rock to the Buck factory. When they moved up here it was fairly big news due to the employment opportunities and such. One thing that was getting negative attention though was their outsourcing of of some models to China. One of the Bucks did an interview and explained that they don't like it either but Walmart forced them into such a tight price-point to remain on their shelves that they had no choice. I don't recall the specifics but at the time they had to have X percent of their models at or below something like $15.
Click to expand...
Buck Knives brings work back to U.S.
Post Falls manufacturer has just hired 10 people after upbeat first quarter
David Cole
April 23rd, 2009





-—Staff photo by David Cole
C.J. Buck, CEO and president of Buck Knives Inc., says the company now makes knives one at a time, reducing the amount of time the products spend on the factory floor.
POST FALLS—Bucking a familiar trend in the manufacturing sector, knife maker Buck Knives Inc. says it has been bringing back to its plant here some of the production that it had been contracting out to Chinese manufacturers in recent years.

The shift, made possible partly by plant efficiencies it has made here and triggered by a desire by both its owners and many of its customers for its knives to be U.S.-made, has been under way for months, says C. J. Buck, its president and CEO.

"The good news is manufacturing is absolutely viable in the United States," says Buck. "We're a good example of that."

As recently as three or four years ago, Buck Knives was importing from Chinese contract manufacturers about 50 percent of its knives, he says, adding that today, that percentage is 30 percent to 35 percent. The company's knives are sold all over the world.

Buck Knives plans to increase domestic production by 20 percent this year, and recently hired 10 people to work on its manufacturing floor in Post Falls.

Buck Knives moved to Post Falls in 2005 from El Cajon, Calif., near San Diego. Its 120,000-square-foot Post Falls plant is located at 660 S. Lochsa St., and currently employs 220 people, Buck says. He declines to say what its annual sales have been, not wanting competitors to have the information.

He says one of the reasons Buck Knives had to outsource so much of its production stemmed from the company's relocation from Southern California, which he describes as a massive undertaking that used the majority of its internal resources for almost two years. As part of the transition strategy, the company began to outsource to China manufacturing of its newest products because its engineering staff was so busy training new factory workers in Post Falls, Buck says.

"It's all based around the relocation," he says. "That's what prompted a surge in imports, and now that we're stable in our new factory, it's coming back to our more normal model."

Still, he says, some manufacturing will continue in China, because the price point on some of the knives the company offers doesn't allow it to make them here.

"Only China, right now, is still able to land (at the shipping dock) a product for 20 percent, sometimes 30 percent, less than we can build it," he says. "Oftentimes, China can land a product for less than our cost of our materials."

Because the knives the company imports from China are lower-priced models, only about 25 percent of Buck Knives' overall knife sales, in dollar volume, are of products imported from China, compared with about 40 percent just two to three years ago, Buck says.

Although the majority of the company's sales during the transition period continued to be from U.S.-made products, the importing of knives didn't sit well with the Buck-family tradition, nor did it go over well with some longtime customers.

"We have fielded many complaints about our decision to import products, even though we were clearly focused on offering the same high quality," says Buck. The company backs its imported products with the same lifetime warranty it offers on knives it makes here.

"It has become apparent that Buck Knives is held to a different standard" than other U.S. manufacturers, he says.

Buck Knives has long-term manufacturing partnerships with about seven Chinese companies that specialize in making different types of knives, Buck says.

Buck Knives began to look at implementing lean manufacturing principles even before it moved to Post Falls from Southern California. The company made that decision in late 2001, after it was stung by a big drop in sales following the terrorist attacks of September that year, Buck says.

Remaining a manufacturer

The company, like other cutlery businesses, brings in about 50 percent of its business in the last four months of each year, he says.

The company had to make a choice, he says. Either it could become just a marketing company that sold knives made in other countries, or it could change its manufacturing approach and continue to make knives itself.

To remain a manufacturing company, Buck says, the company needed to reduce its costs, and one significant way to do that was to get out of California, where high energy and labor costs were cutting into its margin. He adds that the political and government atmosphere in California wasn't business-friendly enough, either.

Idaho, the owners expected, would be different, and it was, he says.

"What I really like about Idaho is they keep it simple," Buck says. "They take care of businesses. The businesses are the horses pulling your wagon. Don't hobble the horses pulling your wagon. That's stupid. Help them pull your wagon even better."

At its new plant in Post Falls, Buck Knives continued with its vision for lean manufacturing. It first implemented lean manufacturing in California, and was able to reduce greatly the amount of manufacturing space needed.

"We have made a ton of changes," Buck says. "Now we are letting them be realized."

In the past, the company had made knives in large batches, using a traditional assembly-line process, and it took four to six weeks for the knives to completely travel the line. Now, it makes knives one at a time, in circular manufacturing cells that take up a fraction of the space the old assembly line did in California before the company began to adopt lean manufacturing. In fact, Buck Knives' Post Falls plant has 30 percent less manufacturing space than the one it operated in El Cajon, Buck says.

That change reduced the amount of time it takes to produce a knife, and also enabled Buck Knives to shift production from one product to another far more easily, says Phil Duckett, the company's chief operating officer.

"When the need arises, we can quickly switch our manufacturing cells from making one model to another," Duckett says. "Our ability to respond to customers' orders for products we do not have in inventory has resulted in consistently high marks for shipping our customers' orders on time and complete. You can see the great advantage it gives us over competition (that's) still processing products the way we used to do it."

He adds, "You strive for velocity. You need to convert the raw materials into a salable product as quickly and as efficiently as possible."

Says Buck, "Lean means fast, flexible, and responsive to our dealers."

He says the lean manufacturing efforts ultimately have made it possible for the company to make more knives here rather than having them made by Chinese contract manufacturers.

The changes, Buck says, have made for happy customers, too. He says he's had dealers tell him lately that Buck Knives "is the smoothest vendor to deal with."

Dealers have to maintain less inventory, because Buck Knives can resupply them faster, he says.

"We're responsive, we ship fast, and we ship complete," Buck says. "If I can be more responsive to customers, customers are going to start pushing more business my way, and away from the people that they have to work harder on. The key is to ship complete and on time."

Buck asserts that customers now will push business his way, even if they might pay a little more, because they like the company's flexibility and responsiveness. "Customers don't want to take a risk and get stuck with too much inventory or have back orders," he says.

Although the lean manufacturing efforts have been successful, Buck Knives still must do business in an economy that is weakened by recession and lower consumer spending.

The fourth quarter of last year was incredibly difficult, with sales down from the previous year by about 25 percent to 30 percent, Buck says.

He says the company is planning for a "similarly compressed" sales year this year.

"We're planning on it being worse, even though we expect it to be better," Buck says
 
Recent

At Buck Knives in Post Falls, Idaho, business meetings open with a prayer. Each knife comes with literature that says: “From the beginning, management determined to make God the Senior Partner.”

At the giant National Rifle Association convention held in St. Louis last April, knife buyers lined up at the company’s exhibit, eager to have purchases autographed by CJ Buck, president of the company that bears his family’s iconic name.

The company was founded in 1902 by Buck’s great-grandfather. The Buck Model 110 has been so popular since its introduction in the 1960s that consumers sometimes call any brand of knife a “Buck.”

Buck reacted to customer criticism a few years ago by bringing back some manufacturing it had outsourced to China. Now, “90 to 95 percent of our new products every year are USA-made,” CJ Buck says
 
Here it is:

https://www.spokesman.com/stories/2004/jun/22/bucks-move-will-save-bucks/

Over the years, the American maker of sport and utility knives has shifted about 15 percent of its production to Asia, a move necessary to produce the $19.95 and $25.95 knives demanded by retailers such as Wal-Mart, Buck said.

But Buck hopes to see that 15 percent figure decrease in coming years. “We can’t make (those models) in San Diego,” he said an interview in Spokane Monday, “but we hope we can make some of them in Idaho.”

Also, just to be clear, in no way am I disparaging Buck or their motives for overseas manufacturing. I'm a big fan. Now Wal-Mart? Not so much...
 
brownshoe said:
Can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear :)
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Bad anology. A sow's ear would be leather. Leather is far more durable than silk, though not as "pretty". :)
I don't think even Buck's 420J2, good as it is, is anywhere near as durable as Case's "TruSharp" 420HC (much less so with Buck's Bos heat treated 420HC) or even a well treated 440A.
 
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