1095?

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Apr 11, 2010
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I heard 1095 doesnt have good lateral strength, Is this BS or is there some truth to this. I know my ESEE knives and KaBar USMC take a hell of a beating but was wondering if there is merit to this statement?
 
there's a vid around somewhere of one of these almost folding in half before it gave way so BS... anyways what are you going to do with a knife that makes something like that matter :confused:
 
I heard 1095 doesnt have good lateral strength, Is this BS or is there some truth to this. I know my ESEE knives and KaBar USMC take a hell of a beating but was wondering if there is merit to this statement?

This is among the more common alloys used by custom smiths and production houses alike because of it's nice balance of edge holding and toughness. That said, you can ruin any steel with a bad heat treat. 1095 is no more prone to these "user failures" during heat treat than any other steel.

If you want tougher than 1095 drawn with a springy temper and an HRC in the mid-50s, you can always look at 5160 or 9260 "spring" steel, but by the time you need that kind of toughness you are probably making knives so large they could be mistaken for short swords.

Good luck.
 
Here is our heat treated 1095 failing in a lateral strength test. You be the judge: http://www.eseeknives.com/junglastest.AVI

Simultaneously proof positive of the flexibility and toughness of your blades and absolutely terrifying! For anyone who blinks in the last second and a half, the blade appears to get to 90 degrees before it flies out of the vice and across the room (not enough clamping pressure?). Hopefully the poor sod holding the camera didn't have to withdraw the blade from out of his viscera.

Cheers,

-E
 
cool video, I did mean 1095 in general not just ESEE's 1095 or KaBar's. thanks and having 2 ESEE's and a KaBar USMC I cant imagine ever any of them being subject to that kind of punishment. I also posted here cuz personaly I think that JEFF and MIKE and the ROWEN crew proly know 1095 better than any one does.;) and like I said I was just wandering if there was any merit to this statement.
 
Holy crap! Admittedly I am fairly new to knives but I had no idea that 1095 steel was so tough. I'm quite certain that my H.E.S.T. will ever see any abuse like that video, but it's nice to know that it'll survive most other battles.
 
Maybe next time clamp the vise so the camera man does not have to pick 1095 out of his thigh.

Other than that, I'd say that knife did very well.

I wouldn't recommend trying this with the outgoing Ontario RTAK II. The Junglas and RTAK II blades are both in otherwise identical 1095, but the ESEE folks obviously have a much better and more consistent heat treatment process. The cost delta between the Junglas and RTAK II, if this is any indication, appears to be well justified.

-E
 
I was just on site that tests knifes and their steel and the consensus is that 1095 for the most part is crap and inferior steel, seems they were more caught up on infi and 1055 then anything else..

I may not use my blades like most of you here but they are used and I've never had any issues thus far so I call BS.. I don't know much about steels but I know what works for me......yeah there are better steels out there, but someone bashing company's in particular is ridicules...

Rob
 
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The cheater bar is the key too... that was a LOT of leverage. We've snapped grade 5 and 8 bolts, cracked axle housings, etc. with less leverage than that.

Same knife stock in the same vice and a person would likely break themselves trying to get it to deflect so much as 1 or 2 mm! :-)
 
The cheater bar is the key too... that was a LOT of leverage. We've snapped grade 5 and 8 bolts, cracked axle housings, etc. with less leverage than that.

Same knife stock in the same vice and a person would likely break themselves trying to get it to deflect so much as 1 or 2 mm! :-)


very good point, never thought about the cheater bar I guess.
 
There's also video floating about of an rc 3 in a vise. Was bent pretty far by hand, but not to breaking point.

Also every time that video comes up, people talk about safety. Doesn't anyone destroy things anymore? That test was pretty tame on the safety scale. Y'all act like you never improv'd an explosive using dry ice, gasoline, a couple of pop bottles and a road flare...
 
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There's also video floating about of an rc 3 in a vise. Was bent pretty far by hand, but not to breaking point.

Also every time that video comes up, people talk about safety. Doesn't anyone destroy things anymore? That test was pretty tame on the safety scale. Y'all act like you never improv'd an explosive using dry ice, gasoline, a couple of pop bottles and a road flare...

In my misbegotten youth, I did far worse than that. How I managed to keep both eyebrows, the hair on my head, all four (5?) limbs and all digits attached remains one of the worlds great mysteries, at least to my siblings and parents.

However, in my new found maturity, I don't take mortality for granted. When I see blades the size of the Junglas flying across the room, I'm thinking of squishy bits with large blood supplies finding their way into the trajectory of the whirling blade. Don't try to catch a falling knife and don't stand in the way of a flying blade!

I didn't see a lot of protective gear being worn in the video and the vice should have been bashed tight with a mallet. An ABS Journeymen smith taking their master smith exam (doing the 90 degree bend test in a vice, like in the video) could probably be expected to spontaneously fail the exam if their test blade flew across the room, past their examiners.

-E
 
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