Inviting but edgy

POST FALLS – A log-and-glass foyer is taking the hard edges off of Buck Knives’ new building.

When visitors step into the $8 million factory, they’ll see a 35-foot-tall fireplace, slate floors and Douglas fir logs. Large glass windows look out onto forested hills.

“It’s an industrial plant with a little bit of fluff,” said CJ Buck, president of Buck Knives.

The 128,000-square-foot factory will be a showpiece as well as a machine shop. Up to 150 visitors per day tour Buck Knives’ current facility in San Diego.

CJ Buck expects the same kind of reception next spring, when the company opens its new facility in the Riverbend Commerce Park. With sales of more than $30 million, Buck Knives is one of the nation’s best-known names in sport and utility knives.

“We’ve become a destination and a tourist stop,” Buck said. “We get law enforcement professionals, school kids … people on cross-country bus tours.”

Hence the 8,000-square-foot foyer. The décor will feature a sportsman’s motif. Among the fishing tackle, trophy heads of deer and elk, and a set of woolly mammoth tusks, Buck Knives’ customers will be able to picture situations – ancient and modern – where knives were tools of necessity and survival.

“We’ve always said that knives are man’s most basic tool,” said Tom Ables, company spokesman.

Forty-two massive Douglas fir logs will give the foyer a hand-hewn look. The logs were grown in southern Idaho. With circumferences of five feet, they weigh about 1 ton each.

Behind the foyer, however, the building is all business. Tour groups will watch computer-controlled lasers cutting steel blades, and the hand-finishing work that goes into making the knives.

“You can see the sparks fly….the rolls of steel…and the blend of technological process and hand-work,” Ables said.

Equipment for the plant will start arriving in mid-December. By March, the first knives should start rolling off the production lines. Tours will follow in the spring.

Buck Knives began the tours about 10 years ago. They’ve been a good marketing tool for the 102-year-old company, which was started by Hoyt Buck, a blacksmith.

“Buck Knives is kind of a folksy product,” Ables said.

It’s an image cultivated by both CJ Buck and his dad, 68-year-old Chuck Buck, the company’s chairman. Chuck Buck shows up at sales and trade shows to swap stories with customers, and sign knife blades with an engraver.

“There’s this man, whose name is one the product,” Ables said. “It’s like one of the Fords autographing the hood of your automobile.”