Buck Reaper modified

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So a while back I bought a Buck Reaper. I wasn’t particularly pleased with it, so I sent it back, but the other day I saw one at Wallyworld for under $40. It had a “rosewood” handle, so I grabbed it. I always thought there was a nice knife under all the coating and goofy snakeskin handles, and at this price I figured why not give it a try. Straight out of the box it looked like this (note- I forgot to take a pic before I started, so I stole this one off of the internet)

The fit and finish sucked. One scale was smaller than the other so on the bottom of the handle the tang protruded, the scales were both loose, and there were no lanyard holes. The blade is pretty light, so I always wondered what the tang looked like under the scales. They’re attached with a pair of torx screws. I was pleasantly surprised when I removed them. I knew it would be skeletonized, but there was more meat left than I expected. There were also lanyard holes. A little stripper and shazam-

I ground down the finger guard a little to shorten it up, and I made some liners out of a spare Rubbermaid lid. I sanded the silly looking shiny finish off of the wood/diamond wood scales and drilled a hole for a lanyard. The Buck logo was also coated, so I couldn’t etch it, but it stayed visible after stripping, as did the USA logo. The blade finish was great under the coating.

All things considered, I like it much better now than straight out of the box. The handle feels much better with liners to thicken it up, and they balance the knife better. At some point I’ll probably make some micarta scales, but for ~$40 and a little elbow grease, it’s actually a nice USA made knife. I’m looking forward to playing with it at the next campfire.

Thanks for looking!

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