Hey everybody I’m back. Thank you all for bearing with the paucity of posting the past week, as I was most certainly out of town.
For those unaware, last week I attended a Press junket in Post Falls, Idaho, hosted by Buck Knives. It was a great trip. I met some new people on the media side of things, refreshed some old acquaintances, and learned all about Buck’s new knife – the Range. I will get back to that in a moment.
Flew in on Monday, and met up with Mike Faw, the outside PR guy for Buck, and Vivian Felker of The Bugle (Rocky Mtn. Elk Foundation). As we waited, we began to accumulate others, including Bill Bell (Athalon), Brent Wheat (Guns Mag), Mark Chesnut (Athalon, NRA, TTAG), as well as my old acquaintance Jim Shepherd (Outdoor Wire) whom I met on my last trip to Buck, and I have kept in touch with over the years.
Buck is celebrating the 20th anniversary of their move from San Diego to Idaho. As we learned in a company history presentation, Hoyt Buck made his first knives in Mountain Home Idaho, so in a way it was a return to the company roots.
Chris Bourassa is Buck’s Director of Marketing and Product Development, and has been my point of contact at the company for many years. He led a presentation on the company and the new products, before we made our way down to the factory floor.
We also got to handle some early WWII era Buck Knives, that were made for the war effort, before the company as we know it incorporated.
Once we hit the floor, we stopped at various stations around the floor, from the initial raw material processing, to the stamping, heat treat, grinding, and finishing and assembly areas.
I am always most fascinated by the stamping machines. They take rolled raw steel, and through dies, stamp out the blade blanks.
The specialty steels, (pretty much anything stainless and not 420HC) get laser cut in another area.
Not too many details on these next few photos, just showing the experienced craftsmen and women at work.
Buck is famous for its heat treat, which has a large side room of its own, complete with conveyor ovens and cryo freezer.
And I always find the finish tumblers the most hypnotic area of any knife factory.
Like last time, we were given a chance to try to finish sharpen a knife.
Like last time, I sucked. Probably even worse than last time. I will have to compare to my other one. I am leaving that one untouched, as it was my first experience ever. THis one I will work over with my stones, and I will end up with a 119 that I had a hand in that I can use. The 119 is a classic, and this will be my 4th one. I have a 20 year old one that is from my personal collection. I have my first HCA hand “ground” one, a Micarta one with my name engravesd on it, and now this one.
Laser engraving…
Quality Control…
One of my favorite areas, though the testing machines weren’t running.
In the afternoon, they let us try our hand at assembling the new Range EDC folder.
No, Buck did not merge with IKEA, but it sort of felt that way.
I will have more on the Range and its assembly in Part 2 tomorrow.
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