1st Terrain Knives Test

First of all, I also was not very suprised when 108kg guy broke "thin" pygmy atak while hanging on it. But the way Kevin McClung cleared up the situation was sort of unkind and ... unhealthy. Public discussion is rather delicate matter especially when the maker is involved. And so is his attitude to customers. Enough of this, everything was said here so no need to duplicate. This is a good lesson and reason for taking many things into consideration, though.

Apart from 'MD's customer service' I wonder if INFI or at least Sr101 would survive hanging test, with the same thickness and similiar design. Suppose to do so, after reading many reviews where harsh-like usage and hostile enviroment came to play... INFI tests on previous website was extreme impressive and many consider it(me too!) as the best knife steel available on earth today. I wonder if breakage in such a test 3/16 INFI knife with similiar or the same(rather not real but let's assume there's that knife)design would be covered by warranty if it DO break of course.

Cliff, you have enormous experience(suckin up to you is NOT my goal! ;) )with many knives, could you post your opinion about my breakin'-or-not pondering? After many of your own tests you can answer that more easily than I do.
 
PiterM said:
That was totally OT on my side, I agree, ha ;)
but you've asked :p
Click to expand...

I tend to forget the old saying "Be careful what you ask for , you may get it." :D
 
I can go one better than that :

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/h_rat_hang.jpg

Here is a picture of my brother (215+ lbs - yeah he doesn't look it but he is ~6'5") hanging from a Howling Rat. I did this yesterday evening as I was curious as to what would happen when it broke (sorry Jennifer I should have had more faith). To be fair to me, I thought it would break mainly because my brother had been using it and he is slightly more than a little extreme with knife use, while I have some restrictions, he has basically none.

Plus the knife had been heavily sanded, if you check the review you will see not only had all of the coating been worn off, the top of the primary grind had been thinned out, the edge had been profiled to a zero-grind (and seen *heavy* hard use). I measured the thickness before flexing and it was significantly below 3/16". Anyway, while he was hanging on it and swearing on me for asking him to do this while he was drunk (he is a barbarian after all and had just got back from pillaging Pouch Cove), I took a few pictures, with the above one being the clearest. You can see little if any flex in the knife.

While the steel is not overly thick (I would not call 3/16" thin), the blade is very short. If the p-ATAK had a 7"+ blade then you could readily see the knife crack as the torque would be very high. But it isn't trivial to break even 1/8" of steel if your leverage is only a few inches, which I discovered when I broke the Deerhunters awhile back. In any case the knife should never shatter into multiple pieces, especially if it is spring tempered in the spine. It should not splinter like that even if it wasn't differentially hardned if it is a carbon steel, assuming of course it isn't a high alloy one like D2, which can break like then when overstressed.

INFI will not shatter like that, it just breaks clean, it will also take *huge* flexes before it breaks. Busse had pictures of the flexes you can achieve on the web. As for the metal and concrete cutting making the knife splinter, just consider what this would mean if it was true. You take your $500 "tactical" knife and are chopping some wood or whatever and hit a few hard contacts (assume you are fighting someone and so a series of hard cuts and smash into a belt buckle), would you now expect the knife to splinter when prying because of the damage done to the edge. You should not - especially if the spine is spring tempered which should prevent cracks from propogating even if you somehow manage to macro-crack the edge, which I have never even done and I have tried to pound knives through hardened steel rods using a framing hammer.

-Cliff
 
Cliff -- thanks for the inside glimpse into Stamp Blade Testing Laboratories (I suppose there are a few custom makers who think of it more as a chamber of horrors, but that's their problem.) I trust your brother carefully records his alcohol intake during testing so as to assure repeatability of all experiments.

I've missed you contributions to this forum lately, but assume you're busy working on the book. True? If you need a volunteer proofreader, or would like an independent pre-review, keep me in mind.

Dave
 
Out of curiosity, I spent some more time with the Howling rat. My drunken brother was far too intoxicated to help so I had a slightly smaller friend (190 lbs) help out. First the Rat was pounded into a tree (22 oz framing hammer) two inches from the tip, and it was stood on. It was difficult to apply full bodyweight however because as the knife bent (slightly) you tended to fall off. The knife was then pounded into the tree higher up and then hung from, again two inches from the tip. This failed to produce a significant flex. It was then pounded in a mere one inch from the tip and again full 190 lbs was applied . This time the blade bent down to 45, but a lot of the angle was induced because the wood was getting smashed down. The blade was still not bending excessively.

Then to test out McClung "shatterized" hypothesis, I found a piece of rock and hacked into it with the Rat 75 times. These were chops hard enough to throw off sparks about a foot long and readily cut a piece out of the rock :

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/rat_rock.jpg

The depression is 0.5-1.0 cm deep. This failed to produce significant edge damage (0.010-0.020" thick). The edge was then hacked right into the same spot a further 25 times and finally successively damaged the edge to ~0.030" deep. Then the prying was repeated at two and one inches from the tip. Again the knife held 190 lbs without harm. At this point it started to rain and I was lsing desire to stay outside so I pounded the knife 0.5 inches into the tree and yanked on it. This just dug a hole out of the tree. I then used pounded it 0.75" and this again just dug a hole out of the tree.

Here is a shot of the knife after the prying (no permanent bend), and no gross edge damage, note the mauling of the laynard hole at the end of the tang. This was a direct result of compression from the hammer impacts (I was in a hurry as it was raining) :

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/rat_edge_rock.jpg

The end of the handle suffered some cosmetic damage, but nothing significant.

[Note I had modified the Howling Rat by thinning out the edge bevel quite some time ago. It had been fully blended back into the primary grind and thus was at less than 10 degrees per side. With the NIB profile it would have taken less damage from the rock]

-Cliff
 
Cliff Stamp said:
Here is a shot of the knife after the prying (no permanent bend), and no gross edge damage, note the mauling of the laynard hole at the end of the tang. This was a direct result of compression from the hammer impacts (I was in a hurry as it was raining) :

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/rat_edge_rock.jpg

-Cliff
Click to expand...

Looks like a knife my brother has used heavaly for the last few years. But I've got to know, what's that line going from spine to edge in the pic? Problem with lighting? bad scratch? :confused:
 
Heh, heh.

Another reason never to buy MD. Nice work, but it all boils down to the attitude from the customer service, even if you're stupid.

I'll take Strider and SRKW any day over MD.

-j
 
ive always looked at maddog knives on one end of the spectrum for "extreme performance". busse has toughness, how much you can beat on them and not have them take on serious damage. mora has cheap cutting ability, their some of the cheapest high proficiency cutting tools you can get. maddog, has material sciences. if your going to be working around a lot of chemicals and corrosive substances/electricity, you may not be able to use any other knife.

even so, its never a pleasent thing when a maker is unneededly rude or abusive towards of his costomers...
 
wildmanh said:
...what's that line going from spine to edge in the pic?
Click to expand...

Marker, most of my knives have lines like that running every 0.5 cm. I use them to cut to specific lengths, or constrain the cutting to part of the edge when comparing blades.

-Cliff
 
I see the the polish folks are reaching out to various forums for support and to disparage Mad Dog knives. This is an unfortunate reflection, as it is done after an agreement that Kevin will inspect the knife they broke. What they are doing is very dishonorable. I've seen one instance of them getting banned elsewhere expressly for this dishonor. You have to ask, are these recent members, or as stated once, a long time member whose first post is very recent? Simply said, they have a bone to pick.

This thread is a love fest between folks who seem to break expensive knives and want to weasel out a free replacement.
 
Boink,

I don't do that... I've tried wapping a steel chair with my DB but I didn't break it and I wouldn't ask for a free one if it did.

But I do consider Kevin's reply to be extremely rude and textually abusive, even if the customer had a bone to pick.

He surely has every right to do so, but in seeing that, I find that I'm turned off his product.

-j
 
I really dont know why the amount of posts is so important for you. I dont care about this. Your suggestion that we this confusion was made only to get a free replacement from Mad Dog is very touchy for us. As you could maybe see all discussion on Tacitacl Forums became a personal attack on us. We decided to make it stop, because we are not a wild horde from East which cares only about to be famous. I really do not understand why you try to start this discussion again when there was made a agreement between us and Mad Dog. Im really dont interessted to take apart of this. If you want to discuss about our test I will be glad to see you sharing you opinion just like everybody's else no matter how many posts did this person post. Your personal opinion about me and other persons taking apart of this test are not in my range of interests.
Wojtek
 
War, if you choose to go public in various forums with your complaint, expect criticism from those who don't agree. If it's not writing you agree with, you are not interested in it. That is understandable.

Forget the fact that you or your friends stabbed a knife in a tree and hung your full weight onto it. Had I had a problem with a knife, I would have taken it up in private with the maker. But that's just me. Instead, you go on his site and chose to discuss it in public. Therefore, in public you will receive reponses from happy owners. And you also put the maker in a defensive spot - where he had the opportunity to hear your situation and make a value judgement knowing what the knife was exposed to, and a repsonse that your boys bristled at. Then members of your group go on the site chiding him about how they are all let down as to the warranty. AFAIK, a deal was struck to inspect the knife, so one would figure that sleeping dogs would lay for a while, but no. You and yours go on various sites and continue to pound your point home in a very ungentlemanly and, dare I say, sneaky and weasely manner. This is the truth as evident in the original thread, but you don't want to hear about it. It is not in your range of interests.
 
Boink said:
War, if you choose to go public in various forums with your complaint, expect criticism from those who don't agree. If it's not writing you agree with, you are not interested in it. That is understandable.

Forget the fact that you or your friends stabbed a knife in a tree and hung your full weight onto it. Had I had a problem with a knife, I would have taken it up in private with the maker. But that's just me. Instead, you go on his site and chose to discuss it in public. Therefore, in public you will receive reponses from happy owners. And you also put the maker in a defensive spot - where he had the opportunity to hear your situation and make a value judgement knowing what the knife was exposed to, and a repsonse that your boys bristled at. Then members of your group go on the site chiding him about how they are all let down as to the warranty. AFAIK, a deal was struck to inspect the knife, so one would figure that sleeping dogs would lay for a while, but no. You and yours go on various sites and continue to pound your point home in a very ungentlemanly and, dare I say, sneaky and weasely manner. This is the truth as evident in the original thread, but you don't want to hear about it. It is not in your range of interests.
Click to expand...

Boink said:
Watch that Polish crowd as they go to various forums to disparage Mad Dog, all the while trying to weasel out a free knife. They go around doing this, even as Kevin has agreed to inspect they knife they broke by sheer abuse. Very dishonorable. Some of this group has already gotten themselves banned elsewhere for such dishonor.
Click to expand...

I have to write that in my knowledge McClung was the first one who posted about problematic knife on his forum by copying e-mail and show it to public. "Polish crowd" as you called that was in defensive position at the beginning.

The second matter I want to take up is the fact I am also from Poland and don't like your sweeping, generalizing and unpolite style of calling things. If someone from Poland was obtrusive and tried to be famous by posting MClung's response on every forum, then should he be banned and end of topic. Do not move it to bombastic level of concepts- it is definitely NOT gentelmen's behavior at all...I am individual and speak only for myself and such a statements can offend me.
 
Kevin McClung is a egotistical rump roast waiting to be cooked.

The guy has had so many business failures its not funny and he has a terrible reputation when it comes to warranty claims on his knives.

He has Lied swindled and cheated his employees out of hundreds of thousands of dollars and still he continues to blame his whoas on someone else.


I wouldn't use one of his knives to cut butter with much less use for a real job.
 
big daddy, please tell us how you really feel about Mad dog PRODUCTS, But now, please DO US A FAVOR AND HAVE YOUR HEAD OUT OUT YOUR ASS
WHEN YOU WRITE. I'll say it again, you guys need to get out and get hobbie.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top