I have had my AK for awhile now and had been meaning to test it ever since I got it. The tang failures finally got me off my lazy but to do it and I was very impressed with the results I got yesterday.
Now what I did wasn't exactly strenuous or anything but it gave me a good idea of the blades strength and power.
I first began by dong some light hacking on an old board about 6 feet long in my dad's garage. The board was very seasoned and tough. When doing the chopping I used pretty short hard swings and the AK would bite in every time. Because the board was so hard it would penetrate at maximum an inch on a swing but then again I wasn't swinging as hard as I could or with a very large swing so I am sure it would have bit much deeper if I had. My dad got better results but he is stronger and had seemed to find the sweet spot of the blade. I gave up chopping after a short while though as the baord was so brittle. On a lot of swings large pieces of the board would just crack out. In fact when I had made it halfway through one section of the board I took one more swing and the board just cracked in half do to the AK's weight and the brittleness of the board.
I wasn't done having my fun yet though so I laid the remains of the board flat on the two saw horses and then began slamming the tip into them to try and split the wood. The wood was 3/4 of an inch thick. After a few practice stabs I got the hang of it and the amount of force needed which was moderate on my half so with I would say the fifth stab the blade went right threw the wood and split it completely in half lenghtwise. I got a nother board and tried it again with teh same results. Both pieces werre about 3 to 4 feet long.
Third I did some splitting of the wood with the blade. The weight of the blade falling on the end at a height of about 4 inches wasn't quite enough to get the blade to lodge in the wood but with a little swing on my part it would lodge in solidly and then I could easily split the piece.
Now throuhgout this all I hardly exerted myself and nor did I use much strength or I am sure I could have gotten even more impressive results. This was just some half ass testing on my part.
After this was done though I inspected the edge and it looked like new (despite having hit some knots during chopping). There was no indents or anything and the blade would still take hair off my leg. The actual blade looked perfect except for a few light marks.
As I was enjoying myself I decided to test the blade as a machete and so took some swings at the local 3 foot high weeds. It sliced through well and I was very impressed. I really liked poping the flower tops off of these one weeds with just a little swing. The blade would also cleanly slice throughsome pine tree branches less than a half inch thick which showed me just how sharp it still was (as sharp as the day I got it that is).
Finally, there was a little tree growing in the weeds with two limbs about 2 inches thick each. The first one went down with around 5 hits but I must say I was stretching myself from the ede of the weeds so I really couldn't get and accurate hit or with very much strength. On the next limb my first two chops didn't do much as once again i hit it at a bad angle and with little strength becasue of where I was standing. On the third stroke though I swung with just about all my strenght and hit it at a good angle so the next thing I knew I had a very branched tree limb falling around me. I have used my Ontario SP-8 on similar sized branches and it would have take a lot longer and a lot more hits--a lot more.
Now at this point the edge was still fine but I decided to put the secondary bevel on it now which was a disaster do to my low sharpening skill. I scratched the edge of the blade but pretty bad doing this in fact and the edge is very uneven. I changed angles many times you see and so I even have trouble telling where the edge begins on some parts of the blade becasue it just blurs in with the scratches and grind marks from the angle changes but the good news is after working on it yesterday and this morning I can feel where the edge is with teh stone even though I can't see it real good among the scracthes. That may sound weird but its the best way I can describe it. In fact I have even got the edge to shave hair and bite my thumb well but it just looks like hell. I know this all sounds weird but you would have to see the edge to understand. BTW I used some DMT pads on the main curve and a diamond rod on teh recurve adn some ceramic rods to finish it off.
In fact to test it I went and did some more weed clearing with it this morning. It worked just like before.
I am glad though that Mr. Stamp turned me on to steeling because if I had to sharpen it every time with a stone I would end of grinding away the blade or turing it in to a mass of scratches. The chakma works good in fact. I just tried it a minute ago and I can easily find the edge with it so I will probably be using it (or a large butchers steel if I get lazy) to sharpen from now on with a ceramic rod for touch up as the rod doesn't scratch the blade very easy.
Anyways I know if I had to take just one blade with me into the woods I would take my 20in AK. I just love it and I know it will perform better than any other blade I own.
thanks for listening and take care
collin
P.S. Any one know of something I could use to polish out the scratches so I could maybe see the edge better.
Now what I did wasn't exactly strenuous or anything but it gave me a good idea of the blades strength and power.
I first began by dong some light hacking on an old board about 6 feet long in my dad's garage. The board was very seasoned and tough. When doing the chopping I used pretty short hard swings and the AK would bite in every time. Because the board was so hard it would penetrate at maximum an inch on a swing but then again I wasn't swinging as hard as I could or with a very large swing so I am sure it would have bit much deeper if I had. My dad got better results but he is stronger and had seemed to find the sweet spot of the blade. I gave up chopping after a short while though as the baord was so brittle. On a lot of swings large pieces of the board would just crack out. In fact when I had made it halfway through one section of the board I took one more swing and the board just cracked in half do to the AK's weight and the brittleness of the board.
I wasn't done having my fun yet though so I laid the remains of the board flat on the two saw horses and then began slamming the tip into them to try and split the wood. The wood was 3/4 of an inch thick. After a few practice stabs I got the hang of it and the amount of force needed which was moderate on my half so with I would say the fifth stab the blade went right threw the wood and split it completely in half lenghtwise. I got a nother board and tried it again with teh same results. Both pieces werre about 3 to 4 feet long.
Third I did some splitting of the wood with the blade. The weight of the blade falling on the end at a height of about 4 inches wasn't quite enough to get the blade to lodge in the wood but with a little swing on my part it would lodge in solidly and then I could easily split the piece.
Now throuhgout this all I hardly exerted myself and nor did I use much strength or I am sure I could have gotten even more impressive results. This was just some half ass testing on my part.
After this was done though I inspected the edge and it looked like new (despite having hit some knots during chopping). There was no indents or anything and the blade would still take hair off my leg. The actual blade looked perfect except for a few light marks.
As I was enjoying myself I decided to test the blade as a machete and so took some swings at the local 3 foot high weeds. It sliced through well and I was very impressed. I really liked poping the flower tops off of these one weeds with just a little swing. The blade would also cleanly slice throughsome pine tree branches less than a half inch thick which showed me just how sharp it still was (as sharp as the day I got it that is).
Finally, there was a little tree growing in the weeds with two limbs about 2 inches thick each. The first one went down with around 5 hits but I must say I was stretching myself from the ede of the weeds so I really couldn't get and accurate hit or with very much strength. On the next limb my first two chops didn't do much as once again i hit it at a bad angle and with little strength becasue of where I was standing. On the third stroke though I swung with just about all my strenght and hit it at a good angle so the next thing I knew I had a very branched tree limb falling around me. I have used my Ontario SP-8 on similar sized branches and it would have take a lot longer and a lot more hits--a lot more.
Now at this point the edge was still fine but I decided to put the secondary bevel on it now which was a disaster do to my low sharpening skill. I scratched the edge of the blade but pretty bad doing this in fact and the edge is very uneven. I changed angles many times you see and so I even have trouble telling where the edge begins on some parts of the blade becasue it just blurs in with the scratches and grind marks from the angle changes but the good news is after working on it yesterday and this morning I can feel where the edge is with teh stone even though I can't see it real good among the scracthes. That may sound weird but its the best way I can describe it. In fact I have even got the edge to shave hair and bite my thumb well but it just looks like hell. I know this all sounds weird but you would have to see the edge to understand. BTW I used some DMT pads on the main curve and a diamond rod on teh recurve adn some ceramic rods to finish it off.
In fact to test it I went and did some more weed clearing with it this morning. It worked just like before.
I am glad though that Mr. Stamp turned me on to steeling because if I had to sharpen it every time with a stone I would end of grinding away the blade or turing it in to a mass of scratches. The chakma works good in fact. I just tried it a minute ago and I can easily find the edge with it so I will probably be using it (or a large butchers steel if I get lazy) to sharpen from now on with a ceramic rod for touch up as the rod doesn't scratch the blade very easy.
Anyways I know if I had to take just one blade with me into the woods I would take my 20in AK. I just love it and I know it will perform better than any other blade I own.
thanks for listening and take care
collin
P.S. Any one know of something I could use to polish out the scratches so I could maybe see the edge better.
