Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/496918
S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S 6 5 r a f t s m e n C Bob McKinney I t all began with a 10-year- old boy in Kansas who wondered why some hoes and axes needed sharpening more often than others. Apprenticed out to a blacksmith at the age of 10, Hoyt Buck had an active and inquiring mind that belied his fourth-grade education. When assigned to sharpen hoes and other farm equipment, he noticed that some implements had to be sharpened more often than others, so he began to wonder how metal might be treated to make it tougher and better able to hold its edge. Of course, the basic idea of plunging heated metal objects such as spears and knives into various liquids to harden them had been around for at least two millennia but the process was considered more magical than scientific. Bull urine was rated highly, and Roman gladiators back in the time of Christ preferred tempering their red-hot swords by running them through recently captured prisoners—the higher the rank and braver the captive, the better the sword. By the time he was 13 Hoyt had figured out that different steels needed to be heated to different temperatures and then cooled in different ways to produce the best results. The basic implement steel of the day, for example, needed to be heated in the forge until it was the color of butter right before it melts and then plunged into ice-cold water. In what little spare time the young apprentice was allowed, he continued to experiment with knives he'd ground down from worn-out files and rasps. These quickly became popular with local people but there the idea stopped, at least until the eve of America's entry into World War II four decades later. In 1917 Holt left Kansas for the Seattle-Tacoma area where he found work as a salesman, then as a street car conductor, and finally as a deck hand with a boat on Puget Sound. There, he met Daisy Green who became his wife and mother of his seven children, the oldest of which was Alfred Charles who became known as Al. Buck Knives marks its tenth year in Idaho and more than a century of making fine cutlery. An avid sportsman, C.J. Buck is the current president and CEO. Below: The new Brahma Knife represents a unique twist to the company's 119 Special, their most popular fixed blade. The new version features beautiful stacked leather with micarta spacers.