Review
Buck Strider/Tarani 882 Police Folder
by Dexter Ewing - Field Editor for Blade Magazine
Buck Knives has enjoyed a long-standing reputation for producing high quality knives for utility, sporting, and tactical use. Further expounding on their tactical dimension, Buck released a folder that was the fruit of their collaborative effort with Strider Knives and Steve Tarani. Mick Strider and Duane Dwyer are the driving force behind Strider Knives, a small California based company dedicated to manufacturing highly specialized fixed blade and folding knives for hard use tactical applications in military and law enforcement. Steve Tarani is an internationally renowned authority and full time trainer in the area of tactical combatives, and is fully knowledgeable about hand-to-hand combat with and without the use of knives and other instruments.
The SBT882 came about as a result of extensive and exhaustive – over four dozen law enforcement personnel interviewed on the qualities they find desirable with a tactical folding knife for duty carry. The information gained from these interviews gave Tarani, Strider, and Buck Knives the necessary input they needed to develop the SBT882 folder and bring it to reality. Therefore, this folder was truly developed from the ground up by those in the line of duty, protecting and serving our rights.
There are many qualities that the SBT882 possesses which makes it unique among other tactical folders. In the handle area, the unique shape allows officers to obtain a secure grip regardless of hand size. An officer with large hands can easily grip the knife as an officer with smaller hands. Speaking of grip, the butt end of the handle is angled and textured in such a way that it seats itself in the palm of your hand for adding extra force behind cutting strokes. As far as the actual material the handle is made from, Buck calls this TACCOM – or tactical composite. The handle surface features a checkered texturing pattern that offers an enhanced grip quality with bare hands, gloved hands, or wet hands. This surface texture is supposed to be easier on the pants fabric and will not abrade it away like aggressively textured materials can do. A steel pocket clip is affixed to the handle to carry the SBT882 in the tip up configuration, and can be easily switched to the opposite side of the handle for left handed users. There is an additional set of Torx screws already inserted into the spare clip holes, which is very thoughtful in case one were to lose a screw. Not too many companies who offer both right/left hand carry features in their folders do this. Nice to see Buck going the extra distance here! Dual stainless steel liners and four evenly spaced spacer pillars provide the handle’s lateral strength. The handle parts are secured together by four pairs of rivets, providing a very tight and secure fit. On the thumb rest portion of the handle spine and on the butt end of the handle are a series of traction notches that are strategically placed to further provide a confidence-inspiring purchase on the handle.
The 3 ½ inch long ATS-34 blade of the SBT882 is of a highly functional and versatile drop point shape. The heat treatment of the blade was performed by Paul Bos, a man whose name is legendary in custom knifemaking as being the best heat treater in this business. Bos has treated thousands of blades for top custom knifemakers, and he is doing the same for Buck with all the Strider collaboration knives. The SBT882’s blade is wide enough to tackle big cutting tasks yet remaining compact enough for the small cutting chores…and everything in between. The blade sports a nice hollow grind halfway up the blade’s width while leaving the remaining upper half full stock thickness for maximum strength. The cutting edge is partially serrated for those tough cutting chores like seat belt webbing, rope, cardboard, and other tough, fibrous materials that using a plain edge blade is simply not enough. An oblong hole in the blade serves as an ambidextrous opening aid, allowing the blade to be easily and quickly deployed with either hand. Dual steel thumb studs serve as the blade’s positive stop in the open position, assisting to provide a secure lock up. The blade also sports what Buck calls P.D.T., otherwise known as positive deployment texturing. The PDT’s stippled surface provides a roughed up area in which the blade can be manually opened with your hand much in the way one opens a traditional slip joint pocketknife. The PDT also assists in opening the blade with gloves on, providing a non-slip surface in which to grab and rotate the blade into the open and locked position. A series of traction notches cut into the blade spine give the user’s thumb a secure placement in which to apply downward pressure on the blade.
Right out of the box, the SBT882 exhibited the usual qualities of a well made liner lock® tactical folder. Fit and finish was excellent, blade was very sharp, grinds were even, action was smooth, leaving one with the impression of a quality made tool. OK…how does this tool stand up to real world use/abuse? To find this out, we enlisted the aid of a couple members of our local law enforcement and EMS staff. The idea here was to subject the SBT882 to the very conditions in which it was designed. We gave the same knife to both individuals and they carried it, used it, and tested it to the limits and wrote up some notes on what they did and what their opinions are of the knife. Sounds interesting? Then read on…it gets better from here!
The first recipient of the pass-around SBT882 knife was an officer with one of North Carolina’s police departments, Officer Wynn Matthews. Due to the nature of his job, he has asked that we not state where he is from or which locale he is assigned to. Officer Matthews’ overall impressions were: the knife was “very comfortable to grip” he begins. “It feels like a solid, hard use tool. Out of the box it was razor sharp. I easily shaved hairs off my arm”. This gentleman put the SBT882 through its paces, some of the tests were bordering abuse but reflected the reality of what a law enforcement duty carry knife would be subject to. He details the tests he conducted with the knife. From slicing up cardboard to hacking on furring strips, from cutting free hanging manila rope to cutting through the rope with the serrated portion of the blade – he happily reported the knife’s edge still shaved through all this. Using a junked car as his “victim”, Officer Matthews proceeded to cut out the roof’s interior headliner and several piece of seatbelt webbing. He noted that the serrations caught up on the material, but they still cut cleanly. The most destructive of the tests he performed was stabbing the knife point first into a car door 100 times followed by similar maneuvers on the hood using overhead and downward thrusts. He duly noted the lock did not fail through any of this abuse and the pivot was still tight without any blade play. Through all the use and abuse that Officer Matthews put the knife through, he was impressed with the edge holding power that the ATS-34 blade has. “I was able to dull the blade beyond razor sharpness, but it still had an effective working edge”. As one of the final things Officer Matthews did to the SBT882 was to placed the closed knife down on the pavement and proceeded to drive over it a couple of times using his full size Chevrolet Tahoe SUV. This vehicle weighs approximately 6,500lbs, but the knife didn’t suffer any damage as a result. Some other items that he cut with the knife included heavy gauge wire screen and Kevlar fiber, both of which gave the knife a very good workout but caused the blade to dull as a result. Quite impressive! Summarizing his final thoughts on the knife, he surmised: “this is a great knife. Overall, I was very impressed with it. It is almost an ideal soldier’s/police officer’s or personal survival/backwoods knife”. However…he did not care for the serrations and said, “I would like to see the knife offered without them”. During his cutting tests, he noted that the serrations would hang up on the material being cut. “In practice, I have never had to cut a seatbelt. They usually still open normally even in major crashes”. He went as far as to inform us that the free seat belt cutting tools that are given out at law enforcement supply stores employ simple razor blades and knives such as the Masters Of Defense Dieter CQD Mk I tactical folder with the built-in recessed cutting hook in the handle are all plain edged. “With a plain edge, I would call [the Buck Strider Tarani 882 perfect”. As a final word, he offered “the lock kept positive security throughout the above tests. The blade remained tight with minimal side movement”.
Blades By Brown and Dexter Ewing wish to thank Officer Wynn Matthews and EMT Spencer Padgett for their kind assistance in dishing out some real world testing on the Buck Strider Tarani SBT882 Police Knife for this evaluation. Thank you, gentlemen, for your dedicated service to your fellow citizens in doing what you do.
The second individual to assist us in field testing the SBT882 was Spencer Padgett, who has had extensive experience working as an EMT and currently serves as a tactical paramedic with the Forsyth County EMS, Winston-Salem, NC Police Department, and the Kernersville, NC Police Department. One of Padgett’s initial impressions of the knife is that it “appears large and awkward closed, but once in the hand and opened it felt well balanced, stout, and amazingly contoured to my hand”. He noted also that the checkering texture of the handle was a bit uncomfortable on his hands because the frequent hand washing he does, as required by his job, leaves his hands chapped and sensitive. “But when wearing rescue leather/Nomex gloves the heavy checkering really afforded me exceptional grip and control of the knife”. Most importantly of all, “I never felt uncomfortable holding and using the knife close to my rescue patients”. Padgett normally carries a Masters Of Defense Tempest tactical folder on duty, and he compared the SBT882 to his knife a few times. One point in particular relating to the sense of control and confidence that the SBT882 instills in its user. “When using the knife hard, I felt like I had better control with the knife than I do with my Tempest”. He says it’s the larger butt end of the handle that comes into contact with the user’s hand to create more friction against the palm of the hand. This is the reason why the butt end of the knife angles the way it does. This seats the knife handle perfectly allowing the user to have precise control and to apply pressure to the cut without fear of having your grip slip on the handle. As far as the partial serrations are concerned, Padgett’s sentiments echo that of the aforementioned law enforcement member. “I was not too pleased with the serrated edge of the blade,” he laments. “It was sharp enough, but I got a lot better and smoother cut using the serrations on my Tempest”.
Above left shows the wear and tear that was done to the blades of the SBT882 during the rigors of testing. The picture on the right shows an off-center liner lock of our test model compared with a new model.
Some of the actual tests that Padgett ran the SBT882 through included rope cuts simulating a situation where one had to cut oneself free of rope, stabbing the blade repeatedly into the dirt and even digging a small hole in his gravel driveway, stabbing the blade through and making cuts into an old tire, cutting clothes off of actual vehicular accident victims, shattering side windows of an automobile using the blade, and cutting seat belts [even though he did not do this in an actual rescue situation]. All throughout, he noted the blade remained sharp and in general, the SBT882 held up fine. “It appears sturdy and powerful” Padgett begins, “within a short period it is easy to see that its form is equal to its function. It is a go-anywhere-do-anything knife that never dulls”. However, he states that the limitations of pocket clip placement, bulk in the pocket, and the rough checkering on the handle scales as being points he discovered to be unappealing. He’d like to see not only left hand/right hand carry clip placement but also a flexibility in choices for tip up or tip down carry…at the user’s discretion.
Following the rough-and-tumble examinations the knife received from these two members of our serving and saving professionals in the community, I received the same knife to examine for myself to verify the condition the knife was in…as well as to have my turn at beating around with the SBT882. Upon receipt of the knife, I immediately noted the liner lock now travels all the way over and hits the other side of the handle. Liner lock® wear-in is normal, it’s just the nature of the design. I noted that the brand new SBT882’s out of the box had their liners hitting the tang around the center. Way too far on over in my opinion for a brand new knife. In order to compensate for this inherent wear, the liner needs to hit at the lower portion of the tang, closest to where the side of the handle that has the pocket clip if the knife is set up for right hand carry.
But examining the pass-around SBT882 closer I noted that while the lock goes all the way over to the other side, there is zero blade play in any direction. In an attempt to try to induce play in the lockup, I did some chopping with the knife, dealing some hard blows on a large tree limb. After a while, I finally hacked my way through the limb completely and then examined the lock. Still no play! I would strongly urge Buck to reconsider using thicker material for the liner lock…and this might also reduce the wear-in factor of the lockup. I find the fact that the liner goes all the way over to the other side to be unacceptable in a production or custom tactical folder. Other than the lock, the knife is still in great condition. The checkering in some places have worn “points”, the blade’s surface finish bears scratch marks from the car doors, car hoods, heavy gauge wire screen, cutting through an old tire, and digging through a gravel driveway. The rivets holding the handle parts together are still tight and withstood the weight of one of Detroit’s finest SUV’s. Aside from the lock issue, the Buck Strider Tarani 882 Police Utility folder is a rugged built folding knife that will withstand the abuse that anyone can dish out.
**The opinions expressed by Dexter Ewing do not reflect those of the staff of Blades By Brown Cutlery**
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