Randall 18 Stainless Butt Cap and Compass

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.

A good point, perhaps the "Randall ordering questions" area of the forum

Still asking if anyone has a stainless butt cap with a compass and if they have noticed it was not accurate?

All I can say is that I have a lot of Randalls with compasses and figure the blade extension would be right under the compass and the direction is correct. Western states have a definite declination that isn't due north, but the idea is for this compass to give one at least a sense of direction in adverse weather situations.

Yup, a.k.a. "north enough"

Not sure about the stainless buttcap in question, but I have owned other hollow handle knives with a compass in a stainless buttcap and the compass worked just fine. It all depends on the type of stainless used. 300 Series stainless is non-magnetic. 400 Series stainless is magnetic.

As for accuracy, not sure about today's button compasses, but back in the day, they were very accurate. When separated from eachother, all of these little guys point to true north.

I have a SAS brass button compass like #4 in the picture. I kind of wish I had one in a randall handle.

Life is all about luck, with that said I feel very lucky my Randall Model 18 Attack has a compass tucked away in the butt cap.

To my knowledge, these two knives are the only Randall knives with NATO compasses installed by Randall--the Shop no longer installs these.

NICE!

Wow I never knew they even offered that. Very cool thanks Steve! They look to be fairly modern too. If I would have known I would have ordered one.

Probably looks best on my favorite, black micarta!

I would like to get another compass installed, too, but the only way is to have someone who is not Randall do it. I believe that would be considered altering the knife and voiding the warranty, so I will not do that.