I’ve had my Buck Knives Ground Combat fixed blade knives for a month and a half now, and wanted to give them a good workout before writing about them. However, this isn’t always the case with many other writers and websites. Many of these writers simply took the Buck press release, that was sent to them – I got it, too – and wrote their articles based on that piece of paper, without ever actually having the knives in-hand to test.

As an aside: One big-name knife company – that I won’t mention by name – once had a new public relations guy, and it was pretty obvious that he was probably fresh out of college. This young man knew just how to do public relations – by the book – not by actually having any hands-on experience. His concept was that writers would do articles on new knives his company was producing, by him simply sending them out a press release and a couple of color slides. Well, that didn’t happen – no one wrote any articles on those knives…it was only a few short months later, when this young man called me – almost begging me – to request some knife samples to write about – he was gone within six months.

To be clear on this, and I’ve mentioned this before, I will never write an article, without having a gun, knife or whatever the product is, without actually having the product in my hands for testing. If a company doesn’t want to send me a sample to use and abuse – to a certain extent – then I’m not interested in writing about their product. It is not fair to our readers, to write-up a review, without actually having hands-on experience with a product.

When I started writing, which has been more than 28 years ago, I took the advice from my long-time friend, and brother in Christ, John Taffin, who is also a gun writer. John told me “never tell lies in your articles, so you don’t have to remember those lies…” And, I’ve lived by that advice. I prefer to report the truth, the facts, my findings, and my opinions. And, don’t ask me what I had for breakfast yesterday – I can’t remember – see, what I’m talking about? It’s easier to report the truth than to make up lies.

Of course, readers can disagree on my findings in my articles, that’s only natural for some folks. That’s okay, I simply report the facts, as I see them, and my opinions, based on a lifetime of being around firearms and cutlery. I used to write for many of the printed gun, knife, and survival magazines – did so for a lot of years, but got sick and tired of spending more time – literally – begging to get paid, than I did testing and writing articles, so I stopped writing for all of them. So now write for SurvivalBlog.com on a regular basis – as a paid freelance writer, and I enjoy the freedom that SurvivalBlog’s Senior Editor, Jim Rawles, gives me to write about just about anything I want.

Back to Buck Knives, and their new Ground Combat fixed blade knives, I first heard about them last December, from my contact at Buck, and she thought they would be a great product for SurvivalBlog readers. I waited anxiously, for the SHOT Show to be over, so I could get my samples – well, it was quite a few weeks after that, before they arrived at my door – although they were well worth the wait. Buck doesn’t come out with a lot of new knives annually. But when they do, I can’t hardly wait for samples to reach me for testing. Buck has been around for more than 100 years. So they are well established as a premier knife making company. On average, a knife has a life span of about three years on the market – that’s not very long, to be sure, after that, the public wants something new and different. However, if you look at some of the cutlery Buck is producing, it has been around 50-60 years – some longer than that, so Buck knows what they are doing.

The Specifications

Buck is producing two different versions of their Ground Combat fixed blade knives, one has a spear point, and the other a tanto point – quite a bit of difference between them. The spear point blade is made out of 5160 carbon steel, where the tanto blade is made out of the same tough steel – very tough steel, to stand up to the rigors you’d use this knife for – be it combat, survival, or just hunting. Both knives have a 5.50-inch blade – I would have loved a blade half an inch longer for hand-to-hand combat, but 5.50-inches will have to suffice. Overall length of both knives is right at 10.75-inches, and the blade thickness is 0.200 inches.Continue reading“Buck Ground Combat Knives, by Pat Cascio”