Why a $50 Knife Became America's Word for Every Folding Knife

In 1964, a small California company made a folding knife so good that Americans stopped asking for a folding knife and started asking for a "Buck knife" instead. The name slipped loose from the brand and became the word for the entire category. That usually kills a company. Aspirin, Escalator, and the Zipper all lost their names that way. Buck didn't just survive it. They turned it into the one thing that protected them. This is the story of the Buck 110 Folding Hunter: how a self-taught Kansas blacksmith named Hoyt Buck worked out a way to harden steel at thirteen years old, how his son Al built it into the first folding knife strong enough to do the work of a fixed blade, and how a single decision about a patent left the design open for the entire world to copy. We trace the lockback mechanism that started it all, the heat-treatment secret that the knockoffs could never steal, the Forever Warranty the company chose to suffer under for sixty years, the death of rival Imperial Schrade, the brutal move from California to Post Falls, Idaho that nearly broke the company, and the one honest flaw every owner knows about. Made in USA, still, after more than fifteen million knives. If you carry one, or your father did, this one is for you.