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The Buck 184 "Buckmaster"
SEE MY GUIDE ON BUCK KNIVES & RAMBO KNIVES
Forerunner of the US Military M9 Bayonet
BEWARE OF CHINA KNOCKOFFS (ABOVE)
The Buck model 184, or "Buckmaster", was one of the first "survival" knives to hit the market back in the mid 1980's. It was designed by the same team who did the ORIGINAL RAMBO KNIVES (see my guide), actually it was based on them! It's become a bit of a collector's item lately, and will usually fetch at least a couple hundred dollars on Ebay. This blade was pitched to the military as an issued blade, and after some modifications, Buck won the contract. The modifications included a solid handle (no hollow storage area), and a guard and hilt that allowed it to be used as a bayonet on the standard M16 mounts. The 184 was thus the predecessor to the M9 bayonet (Buck 188), the current issue blade for our armed forces. Eventually, other manufacturers took over the contract including our nation's premier military blade maker, Ontario. Buck made the Buckmaster for several years, but eventually dropped the project.
Buck 188: Commercial Buck M9 Bayonet
The Development of the M9 Bayonet
Qual-A-Tec was a small R&D company which was formed in 1981 to take advantage of a limited partnership tax loop-hole. Fred Schumacher was a high-powered tax attorney who was looking for “acceptable” R&D developers. He met Charles A. (Mickey) Finn and talked him into starting the company. Mickey’s intensions were to develop products in support of the U.S. Special Forces. (This was before USSOCOM was formed.) The shop started in one small bay in an industrial complex at 3204 Production Ave. in Oceanside, Ca. The R&D money flowed well for a couple of years then started to dry up as tax laws changed. Mickey was looking for other markets to develop products for and decided to go into the knife development business. At that time there were several people involved in the company. Wendy Finn (Mickey’s wife) ran the front office. Bob McDonald ran the shop and he and his son produced the prototype knife components. I remember them milling the “hollow grind” in the blades with a rotary table on the mill (no CNC equipment). John Holm did all of the research and kept records for the office. Harry Camphuysen helped work on guns and since he also owned a pawn shop in Oceanside which was a dealer for Buck Knives, he had the ability to arrange for a meeting to show the prototypes knives to Chuck Buck Jr. I worked out of my shop in Indiana and produced all of the drawings and helped in design of several components including the scabbard. The “Rambo” movies were just out and Mickey obtained three of the original knives to study.
SEE MY GUIDE ON RAMBO KNIVES
The saw tooth look was “in” so it was used for the prototypes. Several blade shapes were looked at as well as handle designs and pommels. The design for the guard and the anchor pins used on the Buckmaster came from Qual-A-Tec’s association with the Seal Teams. The desire was for a way to use the knife underwater to anchor the swimmers gear to a pier or other underwater anchor point.With the creation of the Buckmaster and a partenership with Buck all set to go, Qual-A-Tec formed a new company to deal with the license to Buck and to distribute the royalties. That company became Phrobis, Ltd. Buck was looking for a product to spark the dull knife market they were in and the Buckmaster really brought them publicity. They tried to hide the origin of the knife which is one reason the history of the development was kept quiet. Qual-A-Tec also wanted no publicity so the two company’s goals worked together.
When Buck started production, the width of the blade was a real problem. This was before water jets and laser cutters became available so the production options were limited. Their first attempt was a die set that would blank the part from sheet stock. It lasted for only a few hundred blades then they had to abandon that idea. They had some machined out of sheet but they finally went to a forged blade. The forge dies went through several changes as well including having the “BUCKMASTER” logo embossed in later knives.
The third knife development by the Qual-A-Tec folks was the M9 Bayonet. I had found out about the Request for Proposal and drove to Fort Benning to see the people involved in the decision. We took the Buckmaster as a starting point and redesigned the blade, scabbard and changed the handle to plastic and added a steel backbone through it. We originally took M7 bayonet latch assemblies and modified them to work with the new handle. You could see the rectangular hole was drilled out to a round hole that fit over the steel backbone. We went through several iterations of wire cutter and ended up with the one on the end of the scabbard. The first cutter plates were machined from thick plate to leave the bosses on the end. When Buck went to production they had the cutter plate fine blanked which allowed them to displace the button only part way through the plate. This worked so well that if you section one after heat treatment you can not even tell that the button was not built that way. The cutter turned out to be very reliable. The file/saw surface was another matter. The bayonet could not have the broad open teeth of the Buckmaster. Since the sides of the blade are parallel and flat, when you cut through something the width of the cut is the same size as the blade leading to binding. When the first blades were made the saw teeth were milled in and a burr was formed at the point where the cutter left the part. If this burr is left on the saw works well as it essentially makes the saw wider than the blade. Buck built the first few thousand blades that way then eventually changed to a broached cut which left no burr. No burr meant that the cutting went much slower and the required energy went way up.
The scabbard also changed to provide a way to quickly remove the scabbard and knife from the uniform to allow the wire cutter to be used. Again, we looked at several scabbard designs including one from John Bianchi. We ended up using the Bianchi belt clip but went with our own scabbard design.
The new company formed around the M9 Bayonet was Phrobis III, Ltd. We were the successful bidder and went on with Buck to deliver 315,600 bayonets on that first order. It was a very busy first year, getting the entire production going and delivering to the Government a full technical data package.
After about a year of production, we went back to the drawing board to develop an improved scabbard. It had a molded belt clip that swung and a rubber molded secondary catch. (I have one of these prototypes and one of the engraved knives from Buck on the plaque held by an M4 barrel. (I will send photos later.) We also developed a smaller version of the knife and tried to market it as a Seal weapon. Phrobis III folded just a these were produced and they all went to Dan Olson (no relation), an ex-Seal who also worked for Phrobis III.
Buck manufactured the first M9 bayonets for Phrobis in 1987. The first contract was for 315,600 pieces with a couple of 60,000 unit options at military discretion. In total, Buck made about 325,000 bayonets between 1987 and 1989 for the US Army. Buck, without the knowledge of Phrobis III, added their date code '>' to the first 1200 bayonets as shown in the image that follows. This was not in keeping with the Technical Data Package and Phrobis instructed Buck to immediately remove the mark from any subsequently manufactured bayonets for the military.
It is important to note that all military contract bayonets of this period will only have Phrobis Markings. All M9 Bayonets with BUCK 188 Markings are Commercial knives and if the Chevron is on the Buck 188 side of the blade it is NOT one of these 1200 knives and there are a great many Buck 188 knives out there with the chevron mark ( > 1987) !
CHANGES
The majority of the Phrobis 'chevron' marked M9s had been shipped before the mark was discovered. One hundred sixty-six pieces of the 1200 piece run had not been shipped and these were held back. The bayonets were sequentially numbered on the right ricasso with the odd numbered bayonets going to Buck and the even numbered going to Phrobis. Buck sold their bayonets to members of the Buck Collectors Club. Phrobis manufactured an oak presentation plaque with the front end of an M16 rifle attached to it and sold the plaques to collectors as well as presenting them to dignitaries. These bayonets, like all the Phrobis military contract bayonets, had the Phrobis markings on the left blade ricasso and the right ricasso was unmarked.Buck continued to manufacture the M9 bayonet under subcontract for Phrobis until 1989 when the contract was terminated for mutual convenience between Buck and the Phrobis. At the end of the contract there was a falling out between the two companies and as part of the settlement Buck ended up with the rights to the M9 bayonet in the United States. Buck did not buy out or take control of Phrobis III, instead Mickey Finn, the designer of the M9 bayonet and the owner of Phrobis III, still holds the Phrobis trademark.Around the time of the Buck/Phrobis falling out, Mickey Finn incorporated under the name Phrobis Int'l. He had been working on some inproved designs for the M9 bayonets but no longer had Buck to manufacture the blades and component parts. He then turned to the well known firm of Marto in Spain. Marto manufactured the blades for Phrobis Int'l and due to the import laws the blades had to be marked with the country of origin. The patent information was also added to the right ricasso. Marto was permitted to manufacture the M9 bayonet with their name on the blade strictly for commercial sales in Europe.
Concurently to the manufacture of the Military Contract M9 Bayonets as described above, Buck was also manufacturing M9 bayonets for the commercial market. The commercial bayonets were almost identical to the military bayonet in that the left ricasso of the commercial M9 bayonet had the same markings as the military model but in addition it had Buck’s name and model number on the right ricasso. This carried through the length of the military contract that ended in 1989. In 1990, having completed the military contract and having broken ties with Phrobis, Buck moved their company name and model designation to the left ricasso and the right ricasso was left blank.
In 1991, Buck made 5000 units for the US Marines when a contract was put on an open bid and Buck Knives won the contract for a division level field testing order. These bayonets were used by the 2nd Marine Division. By this time, Buck had parted company with Phrobis (early 1991) and were actually bidding against Phrobis for these contracts. This is the only group of bayonets made by Buck that are solely produced and supplied by Buck without Phrobis connection. All the bayonets are of the Phrobis first generation style but have the Buck cutter plate on the scabbard. All of the blades are marked with M9-USMC and a plus (+) mark as this is the Buck date code for 1991. All 5000 of the (+) marked M9 bayonets have the short threaded tang that projects through the crossguard and a standard tang rod.
In 1993 Buck made what some consider the best version of the M9 bayonet. In this contract, Buck made 350 prototype M9 bayonets for the USMC. these are referred to as the "riveted Pommel" bayonets although only half of these were riveted while the other half had the tang drilled and threaded. These M9 bayonets were actually made in three separate and distinctly different styles, two of which were submitted to the USMC for testing and of these knives most were destroyed during the testing. These were made of all stainless steel instead of a mix of carbon steel for the parts and 425 mod for the blade. The marines liked this version,of the M9 bayonet but the military oanted to buy the same bayonets for all services and the Marine version was discontinued.
Buck’s contract to manufacture the M9 lasted for 3 years, the options were not used and the contract was opened to lowest bidder. Buck cut margin to the bone, hoping to make up margin on civilian units but were underbid by LanCay . Buck continued to manufacture commercial bayonets until 1997 when their tooling wore out and production volumes did not justify replacing it.
LATER MODELS WERE MADE BY LANDCAY & ONTARIO
The US soldier complained about the M9 and it's easy breakage compared to earlier WWII, Korea and Vietnam Bayonets. The answer was simple. The older bayonets were "OLD SCHOOL" and built forever. A tank running over these early M-4 & M-7 bayonets didn't harm them. As a soldier, you were to keep that bayonet forever. Today if it's broke, throw it away and get another one. So the M-9 Bayonet is inferior to M-4, M-7 and early WWI-WWII Bayonets.SURVIVAL KNIFE?
I'll take a M-4, M-7 or early WWI-WWII Bayonet.
Guide created: 01/10/08 (updated 10/23/09)
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