All About Pocket Knives

My brother in law buys a lot of boxes of stuff at auctions, and sometimes in the bottom of those boxes there are pocket knives in various states of (dis) repair. He gives me a lot of them and I fix some of them for him and I get to keep some others. The Buck 301 C (1995) shown was one of these. As you can see in the before picture, it was a mess and must have befallen some sort of disaster. I personally think it may have gotten into some piece of powered machinery to do the damage shown. I reused the blades and springs, while making new liners, bolsters and handle material. Don't let anyone tell you that the American made Buck pocket knives are not as tough as they get. I knew this, but it was reinforced when I was trying to take this one apart. When I first looked at it I was amazed that the shield wasn't knocked off. Then when you take it apart, you can see that the shield goes all the way down to the liner and is spot welded. I was able to straighten the one damaged spring and reuse it. New liners and bolsters were made from nickle silver and the rehandle was done with snake wood. I tried to duplicate the angle of the original Buck bolsters. A friend of mine had given me piece of snakewood and this was my first use of it. Very hard stuff with a great looking grain and color. Probably called snake wood because of the "reptilian" look of it.
Finished

That came out nice!!! I really like the snakewood!

EXCELLENT JOB!!
That sure is a beauty! And YES... I like the wood too....

VERY NICE! Good job OLDE CUTLER. Just goes to show what can be accomplished if you know what you're doing.

OC, you don't amaze me anymore, I've come to expect such quality work. Great job.

Beautiful job!

Winner! Looks great!

I wasn't sure this was going to work at first. The original Buck liners and bolsters are integral stainless steel and the liners are .045" thick and the plastic handle material is about .095". I was going with nickle silver liners only .025", although the bolsters were 1/8" thick. The thicker handle material I used as well as it being a very hard wood pinned and glued seemed to more than make up for the thinner liners.

D) All of the above
That looks SWEEEEET!
Excellent job!!

Buck didn't make that knife. They were made on contract from Camillus.

Bill DeShivs wrote:Buck didn't make that knife. They were made on contract from Camillus.

Bill
I was thinking that Buck took the 301 in house before 1995. Do you have a date when they did that, or did Camillus make them all til the end of Camillus? There was a thread on this a while back.
viewtopic.php?f=53&t=62372&p=737449&hil ... 01#p737449

Don't know. I was under the impression that all the slant bolster Bucks were Camillus.

Nice OC. Love the scales

That turned out great OC!

Turned out wonderful Olde!!!
That "snake wood" might just be the stuff i will get my Imperials redone in. I'll look on ebay/amazon to see how much pieces are.
Good stuff!