On Steve Peters ebay listings, he makes the comment that a compass will not work with the stainless steel material in the stainless butt caps for the Model 18.
From a listing,
"MODEL #18 STAINLESS STEEL CAP WITH FLAT TOP AND KNURLED SIDES (A COMPASS WILL NOT WORK IN THIS MATERIAL)"
I do see compass's sold in stainless steel cases and got to wondering about this.
Has anyone used a compass in a stainless butt cap on the 18 and noticed a problem with accuracy?

It theoretically would be inaccurate, mind you these button compasses are not renown for their accuracy.

If the steel is non-magnetic (high nickel content),
then compass should not be affected.
Magnetic steels have a greater influence.
Once I could not understand, because of what
the compass sometimes shows differently,
it turned out that the influence was given
by a belt buckle from usual steel

Small button compasses aren't incredibly accurate. Using your watch as hour hand at the sun half way between the hour hand and twelve is south method works as well and is usually faster than whipping out your knife.

Whether the "presumably" magnetic stainless butt cap will interfere with the compass pointing north calls for somebody who owns one to check it out.

There must be a forum member who has one and can enlighten us all.

On the other hand, common sense suggests that if the compass is uniformly surrounded by a magnetic material, and if the earth's magnetic field is not blocked by the surrounding metal, then the compass could detect magnetic north and work just fine. This probably calls for an experiment, which I might run later.

Larry

I bet if they didn't work, RMK wouldn't have been installing them for the past 50 whatever years.

I guess that leads to the question - does RMK install them in the Stainless Butt Caps, or just the Brass Butt Caps?

To be honest I always thought the stainless and pointed skull crusher ones were more of an after market feature than shop supplied.

I thought Floyd Byrd supplied or made them.
He set up at BLADE in 2005 and I bought a walking stick/spear from him for the 18.

Yes I remember seeing a walking stick too. Interesting.