Buck Knives 119 Special 6 inch Fixed Blade Knife - Hoyt Buck's first knife, made from a worn-out file blade in 1902 was a fixed blade. The U.S. Government requested blade donations for the military after the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is then, in the basement of a church in 1942, that Hoyt Buck began making knives by hand. It was a design that was dialed in after 40 years of making knives to customer specifications.