Forum Knife Updates and comments

I got mine in today. It’s dark out now, so I’ll take pictures in the morning.

The good:
  1. Scales are nice and thin, and evenly matched.
  2. Great transitions from scale to booster.
  3. Love the slanted bolsters.
  4. Stamps and etches are all well done.
  5. It’s so nice to have a traditional with CPM-154 blades.
  6. Love the shapes of both blades.
  7. I really like the size and weight of the knife.
  8. The pull on the sheepsfoot is about a 4, but very crisp. I like it.
The bad:
  1. I got unlucky on the covers. Mine are very light, with little contrast. I may try to improve the contrast with potassium permanganate.
  2. The multiple gaps between the springs and liners are quite bad. Worse than even my worst Case or Queen.
  3. The thickness behind the edge of both blades runs from about .038” to .040”. That instantly makes the knife a safe queen in my opinion.
  4. The pull on the clip blade is about a 3, and not very crisp. Not terrible, but in no way impressive.
  5. The long pulls are very wide and rounded looking. They are perfectly functional, but not aesthetically pleasing from a traditional perspective. Very modern looking, like the Lionsteel Roundhead pulls. But they look out of place on this particular folder.
All in all, I’m not blown away. Natural covers are luck of the draw, so no biggie there. The spring gaps are more cosmetic than anything, so I’ll grudgingly forgive. We all knew that the pulls on the Buck blades were a concern, and they’re about what we expected. Weak but not dangerously so. But the thickness behind the edges is an unacceptable mistake. Overall, the aesthetics are not good enough to make it a nice safe queen, and the thickness of the grind makes it even less valuable as a user.

Sorry, but I’m just not feeling this one.
 
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Buzzbait said:
I got mine in today. It’s dark out now, so I’ll take pictures in the morning.

The good:
  1. Scales are nice and thin, and evenly matched.
  2. Great transitions from scale to booster.
  3. Love the slanted bolsters.
  4. Stamps and etches are all well done.
  5. It’s so nice to have a traditional with CPM-154 blades.
  6. Love the shapes of both blades.
  7. I really like the size and weight of the knife.
  8. The pull on the sheepsfoot is about a 4, but very crisp. I like it.
The bad:
  1. I got unlucky on the covers. Mine are very light, with little contrast. I may try to improve the contrast with potassium permanganate.
  2. There multiple gaps between the springs and liners are quite bad. Worse than even my worst Case or Queen.
  3. The thickness behind the edge of both blades runs from about .038” to .040”. That instantly makes the knife a safe queen in my opinion.
  4. The pull on the clip blade is about a 3, and not very crisp. Not terrible, but in no way impressive.
  5. The long pulls are very wide and rounded looking. They are perfectly functional, but not aesthetically pleasing from a traditional perspective. Very modern looking, like the Lionsteel Roundhead pulls. But they look out of place on this particular folder.
All in all, I’m not blown away. Natural covers are luck of the draw, so no biggie there. The spring gaps are more cosmetic than anything, so I’ll grudgingly forgive. We all knew that the pulls on the Buck blades were a concern, and they’re about what we expected. Weak but not dangerously so. But the thickness behind the edges is an uncaaptabke mistake. Overall, the aesthetics are not good enough to make it a nice safe queen, and the thickness of the grind makes it even less valuable as a user.

Sorry, but I’m just not feeling this one.
Click to expand...
Seems like such a harsh, overly critical review could have at least waited awhile. Most of us have not received ours.
 
Buzzbait said:
The thickness behind the edge of both blades runs from about .038” to .040”. That instantly makes the knife a safe queen in my opinion.
Click to expand...

Buzzbait said:
Overall, the aesthetics are not good enough to make it a nice safe queen, and the thickness of the grind makes it even less valuable as a user.
Click to expand...
If a knife is a user, I expect to sharpen it, so why would a "thick grind" make it a safe queen? Maybe I'm not clear on what you mean by thickness of the grind.
 
Buzzbait said:
I got mine in today. It’s dark out now, so I’ll take pictures in the morning.

The good:
  1. Scales are nice and thin, and evenly matched.
  2. Great transitions from scale to booster.
  3. Love the slanted bolsters.
  4. Stamps and etches are all well done.
  5. It’s so nice to have a traditional with CPM-154 blades.
  6. Love the shapes of both blades.
  7. I really like the size and weight of the knife.
  8. The pull on the sheepsfoot is about a 4, but very crisp. I like it.
The bad:
  1. I got unlucky on the covers. Mine are very light, with little contrast. I may try to improve the contrast with potassium permanganate.
  2. There multiple gaps between the springs and liners are quite bad. Worse than even my worst Case or Queen.
  3. The thickness behind the edge of both blades runs from about .038” to .040”. That instantly makes the knife a safe queen in my opinion.
  4. The pull on the clip blade is about a 3, and not very crisp. Not terrible, but in no way impressive.
  5. The long pulls are very wide and rounded looking. They are perfectly functional, but not aesthetically pleasing from a traditional perspective. Very modern looking, like the Lionsteel Roundhead pulls. But they look out of place on this particular folder.
All in all, I’m not blown away. Natural covers are luck of the draw, so no biggie there. The spring gaps are more cosmetic than anything, so I’ll grudgingly forgive. We all knew that the pulls on the Buck blades were a concern, and they’re about what we expected. Weak but not dangerously so. But the thickness behind the edges is an uncaaptabke mistake. Overall, the aesthetics are not good enough to make it a nice safe queen, and the thickness of the grind makes it even less valuable as a user.

Sorry, but I’m just not feeling this one.
Click to expand...

The "It's not a GEC so I don't like it" review...

If being .04 behind the edge renders a knife un-usable to you than you should probably only carry Spydercos in whatever super steel you fancy.
 
r8shell said:
If a knife is a user, I expect to sharpen it, so why would a "thick grind" make it a safe queen? Maybe I'm not clear on what you mean by thickness of the grind.
Click to expand...

This is a fair point. One of the biggest issue with Queen is they came out with uneven grinds making it a pain in the you know what to re-profile. If the grind on a knife is obtuse than it shouldn't be too tough to get it where you want.
 
That certainly a thick grind on a small folder
It would mean a lot of work to stone that down to at least. .020” behind the edge
G2
 
My understanding is that with a full flat ground blade, which is what we wanted, the thickness behind the edge is only going to get thicker as more steel is removed from the edge. Would the entire blade, from spine to edge on both sides have to be reground to achieve thinner steel behind the edge?

I've seen a lot of Krien regrind knives and I believe that is the process used to achieve a thinner blade.

Personally, I'm not picky about thickness behind the edge but I understand the reasons why thinner is better. I don't remember for sure but I don't think we voted on or requested any particular blade thickness. Many people do prefer a thin blade so maybe we should have.
 
Gary W. Graley said:
That certainly a thick grind on a small folder
It would mean a lot of work to stone that down to at least. .020” behind the edge
G2
Click to expand...

It definitely is a chunky little guy but is a knife that is .04" behind the edge rendered unusable or just un-optimal?
 
I kinda anticipated the thick grind as a thing bc of the Marksman FFG I saw Kevin Cleary or ApostleP (can’t remember which) talk about. I don’t really care about behind the edge thickness the modern I carry is an XM-18 which is about the same thickness behind the edge but a much thicker blade and it cuts just fine.

No hurry to get mine as my Case Bose stockman is about 3 days late and I don’t know what happen to it so I’ve learned to wait.
 
In my experience it’s too thick, had another folder that was about.030” and on a narrow blade it was not a good cutting blade
Some may prefer a stronger edge but on a small folder doesn’t make sense
G2
 
155440 said:
It definitely is a chunky little guy but is a knife that is .04" behind the edge rendered unusable or just un-optimal?
Click to expand...

That's about 8x thicker than necessary.

I received mine today. I haven't taken any pictures or measurements. The stag on one is probably objectively better than the other. Overall they're both very nice knives and I plan on sharpening one up and carrying it regularly.
 
I'm going to keep an open mind on this and I am still looking forward to getting mine.Once I have it in hand I will see what I think about it.
 
r8shell said:
If a knife is a user, I expect to sharpen it, so why would a "thick grind" make it a safe queen? Maybe I'm not clear on what you mean by thickness of the grind.
Click to expand...

I’m not talking about the edge angle. This is how thick the actual blade is where the edge angle begins. The thickness of my knife is appximately double what a Case or GEC would often be. This greatly effects a knife’s cutting efficiency, and only gets worse each time you sharpen a flat ground blade. I honestly see no reason why a knife of this size would be so thickly ground.

Put it this way. Mike caught some flack when the first round of Lionsteel Roundheads shipped with thicknesses of something like .028”. This is much thicker than a first gen Roundhead.
 
My regular 301 is pretty chunky, blade-wise, even with the hollow ground part. It took a little thinning to get the edge angle where I wanted it. Won't be surprised if the flat grind is even thicker (because of the lack of the hollow grind).

I am guessing mine will be here next week. I got the tracking number but still in the pre-shipping stage.
 
155440 said:
It definitely is a chunky little guy but is a knife that is .04" behind the edge rendered unusable or just un-optimal?
Click to expand...

Defintely not unusable. Just a rather inefficient knife in comparison to the knives of other popular traditional manufacturers.

What’s really odd isn’t that this is not the norm for Buck. My hollow ground 301 measures out at .028”. So maybe this was somehow necessary for either the flat grind or the CPM-154. It’s just not something I was expecting is all.

Everybody please enjoy your knives. Don’t let my pickiness about cutting efficiency get in the way of you loving your forum knives!!!
 
Just for curiositys sake, what's the spine thickness?
 
Everyone just needs to exercise some patience. You've done a great job throughout this whole process. Who cares if my knife is a few days later than everyone else's?
 
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