Big Buck Knives

Thinking about the Buck 110

The other day I was watching a Youtube video about the history of Buck Knives, and it really got me reflecting on my past.

The video reminded me of the fact that when I was a kid, growing up in my rural community, never a day went by when one wouldn’t see men with great big Buck (or clones) folding knives on their belts. Less often, but still in no way rare, a man with a fixed blade instead.

My family, we were fixed blade folks. Also generally Buck’s, but not the big 110 folders that were so popular then.

Now, decades later, I still live in a largely rural area, but I rarely see anyone’s belt sporting one of those Buck’s, and a fixed blade is almost never seen.

I think that our broad perception of these common items has changed as I’ve moved through adulthood.

When I was young, these things were thought of as tools.

Today, they seem to be thought of as weapons.

And that is a truly radical change in perception.

Photo by Ksenia Makagonova on Unsplash

I think it is largely the same with guns.

I’ve written in the past about how guns weren’t feared in my community when I was a teenager. Certainly during deer hunting season, guns made their way to school as most of the boys hunted before school each morning, and the guns went right to school in cars and trucks. They were also seen on the street, everywhere. Stores sold these awesome gun racks that mounted in the back window of pickups, each rack having the ability to hold three rifles. We used to see rifles in those racks, driving down the road constantly. I haven’t seen such a thing in decades.

(In all honesty, I did always question the wisdom of those things, and never owned one. It just seemed like a pretty good way of ensuring that one’s rifle would be stolen. But, they sure were popular in rural areas.)

I think that the owners of guns changed over time, and that the perceptions of society at large changed right along with them.

What was considered an awesome gun when I was a kid is not considered an awesome gun now.

When I was a teenager, my grandfather treated himself to a new Remington shotgun. To my eye, that was just about the most beautiful manufactured thing I’d ever seen in my life. The bluing on the steel was just so deep that one could almost get lost in it, and the gorgeous finish on the fancy wood was truly a sight to behold. It was, and is, finished to such a high standard as to be a piece of art.

After I finished school and began making money, I treated myself to a Browning rifle finished to a similar high standard.

Gun owners don’t seem to want things like that anymore. They seem to want dull black steel that looks like it was spray painted, with black plastic instead of wood.

I remember when guns like this started gaining popularity. I didn’t actually perceive at the time that they were what gun owners wanted, I just thought that they were cheap guns for people who didn’t have the financial ability to purchase nice ones.

I missed it when it was happening, but I think that gun owners shifted from seeing their guns as tools, to seeing their guns as weapons.

And that parkerized, plastic monstrosity surely carried off that look.

Guns disappeared from view, because the average person followed gun owners into viewing these things as weapons, instead of tools.

As a kid, and a young adult, I spent countless hours with family deer hunting. Not to shoot a deer, that was never the point. The point was to spend time together, as men, out in the woods. It was more camping with guns than deer hunting. My favorite tool for the job was a standard old Winchester Model 94 in 30-30. There are much more capable rifles, and I own much more capable rifles, but still today that old Winchester is my choice.

I certainly never looked at that old lever action as a weapon though.

Nor the Mossberg, now Remington that I take on duck hunting adventures.

In the wrong hands (or the right ones, depending on the situation) these things could be extremely effective weapons. But I never saw them in that way. To my mind they were tools. A deer hunting tool, a duck hunting tool. What one needed in order to accomplish the activity at hand.

Guns are divisive.

Some people, like me, love them. For all kinds of reasons. For me it is because they serve as a tangible connection to my father, my grandfathers, even my great grandfather.

Other people despise them. Also for a myriad of reasons.

Everyone has an opinion, and those opinions tend to be complete opposites to each other.

But knives aren’t divisive.

Every home in the world has a knife. Heck, I’ve got two butcher blocks and a kitchen drawer filled with them. They are essential tools for eating and preparing our food.

Like guns though, knives have largely disappeared from public view over the course of my adult life.

As mentioned above, it was extremely common to see that big Buck 110 hanging from a man’s belt. Today it isn’t that fewer people carry knives, they are just hidden within pockets. Visible only by the tiny clips that protrude to the outside of a pocket.

I have to believe this is because knife owners largely followed gun owners into perceiving carry knives as weapons today, instead of as tools.

I’ve got a couple of those Buck 110’s today, and they are truly works of art. A shiny stainless steel blade, housed in a solid and bright brass frame, accented with scales of the world’s finest ebony wood. They are large, heavy, substantial, and beautiful.

Lots of people still buy them from the Buck factory in Idaho, but not for use I don’t think. Rather for reasons of nostalgia, because they are the knives that were carried by fathers and grandfathers.

Popular carry knives today, the ones seemingly everyone wants are marketed as ‘tactical’ folders. Weapons, not tools. With the help of clips and thin geometry they easily hide in pockets.

I own one of these things. An exceptionally good one made in Oregon. It’s scales are made out of some kind of extremely rough composite glass material (I think) so rough that it would never slip from the hand under any normal circumstances. It’s lightening fast, faster opening with its assisted spring mechanism than any switchblade I’ve tried. And it’s sharp. Whittle hair if one desired sharp. But I don’t imagine that with its super steel I could ever re-sharpen it if it got dull. It’s an overbuilt brick of black steel, what many would consider to be the ultimate ‘tactical’ folder.

But, is it?

Not for most people I don’t think. Not in untrained hands. In untrained hands a stout stick would be a more effective self defence weapon. Could some people effectively use it as a weapon? I have no doubt. Those who have been trained to do so by vocation or avocation. But I imagine that those people make up a truly tiny percentage of buyers for knives like this one.

When I bought it, I thought that it was probably the most capable knife I’ve ever seen. But it isn’t. Because it is never taken from the top shelf in my closet. It’s heavy, uncomfortable, and ugly. Utterly impractical for the actual cutting tasks I encounter as I go through my day to day life. It wasn’t designed or marketed to be a tool, rather it was designed and marketed to mimic a weapon, so I guess it isn’t surprising that it’s a bad tool for actual work.

That Buck 110 though? That’s a supremely effective tool. It can easily slice strawberries, it can effectively dress a deer, and it can do everything in between. Odd that it would be almost universally replaced with less effective tools, simply because we are looking for something ‘tactical.’

All of this has me wondering though, has our society become so specialized, and perhaps soft, that we don’t actually need general purpose tools like carry knives anymore?

Do we have so little need to fix, and cut, and pry, and figure things out in the physical world that tools like the Buck 110 have become largely obsolete?

Is that why things like guns and knives that were largely seen as tools in the past are more and more often seen as weapons today?

And is that why knives, like guns, have largely disappeared from public view? There certainly aren’t less of them, they are just hidden now where before they were open.

To my mind openly carrying a knife, as a weapon, marks one as a weirdo at best, a bad guy at worst. But openly carrying a knife, as a tool, marks one as a person who knows how to get things done.

I have to imagine that as carry knives began to be seen more as weapons, and less as tools, that other folks feel the same and that’s one of the primary reasons why those who carry knives moved them from the belt to the pocket.