Review: Buck Tempest

Buck has come a long way since its first standard folding knife. I recently got this beautiful assisted knife at R.E.I. and so far, I am quite impressed. This is a lightweight, but sturdy folding knife. In my opinion, it is a little wide for an E.D.C, which is what I will be using it for however I am comparing it to my small CRKT m16-01kz (which I will be doing a review on next week). Okay, back to the knife. The blade is partially serrated, but you can get a straight edge. The knife came razor sharp out of the box and cuts through paper almost with the smoothness of a Benchmade knife. I have yet to find out what the the steel is, I know that it is either 420HC or 154CM. Either way, these are both really high quality stainless steels. I don’t really like the serrations, but that is my personal opinion and good serrations are hard to find. So far, after a week of testing the blade has held up quite nicely and is still sharp. I have to admit, I was surprised at the quality of the blade. Unfortunately, there is no jimping on the back of the blade which would have been a nice feature. The handle of the knife I have looks exactly the same as the one in the picture. Unfortunately, the knife did come very dirty and it is very hard to clean off the grime. There are other colors of the knife, but this is the only one that the store had available. One of the issues that I am concerned about is the blue color because I am afraid that it might scratch. So far, it hasn’t but I will have to test it more. To hold, the Tempest’s handle is light (due to the frame). Another issue I have with the handle is the lock on the back to keep the blade from opening in your pocket. This is a good safety feature but it interferes with the grip, especially if you want to use a reverse grip. As I said previously, I like the safety features on this knife. It has a lock to prevent it from opening, and a liner lock. The action on this knife is very smooth and quick. It has thumb studs and a flipper to open, but I pinched myself when using the thumb studs because the blade opens so quickly. I bought this knife for about $64 and it was worth every dollar so far. The blade is sharp, the handle comfortable, and the action smooth. I only have a few small issues with this knife. My opinion is that the Tempest is a very good knife however, it is not meant to be an E.D.C. (too big and the blade is too wide) or a combat knife. I think this knife is a good folder to carry in the open, or on a trip but it would be hard to carry it every day. It is because of this reason that I have deducted most of the points from the score. Overall, I give this knife a rating of 7.8/10 stars and recommend it for your collection.