5/32 or 3/16" S30v blade too thin?

R

RobertHankins

Joined
Jun 10, 2001
Messages
1,385
5/32nd or 3/16" blade in S30V too thin for a good tactical Blade?

Many of the blades coming out as Fighter/tactical are coming out in 1/4" thick blades. Which IMHO are just plain heavy albeit very rugged.

What are your thoughts...
 
I prefer thinner blades. 5/32" or 3/16" seems fine to me. Many people want to be able to pry open manhole covers with their knives. This is not important to me. My preference is for knives that cut better, and thinner knives do just that.

S30V is pretty tough and those thicknesses should be just fine. Ask Jerry Hossom.
 
It all depends,I prefer 1/4" stock for any SS combat knife,some folks dont and rightly so. I think your best bet is to just make the knife in varying stock thickness and see which one in particular gets the most positive feed back.
 
Personally thickest I have is a 3/16" (Cold Steel Recon Tanto) and one in my truck now is 5/32" or so(can't remember quite where it ended after grinding, as was actually a file, not ground stock).

But I agree that 1/4" is generally too thick.

Bear in mind that I tend to only get and make knives in high carbons, not in stainless, so I don't know anything about S30V and that might make a difference. My .02
 
Robert,
Unless your making knives for Operators or SWAT members, the thinner stock should be fine IMO.
I personally prefer thinner stock these days because I'm finding I prefer the higher cutting performance a thin edge, thinner stock blade provides.
It may be a different story if I were still active USMC(boy was that a long time ago:rolleyes: ) and needed a combat blade. Even then the Ka-Bar has always been 5/32" stock IIRC.
 
Personally, I never use anything thicker than 3/16", especially in S30V or CPM-3V, even in swords.
 
Jerry I started out using 1/4" stock and 1/4" pins just inexperience.
I now find that Flat grinds and thinner stock and high quality steel work much better than 1/4" stock for everyday cutting chores.

The knife manglers out there who use and abuse there tools will still need heavy stock blades.
But hey everybody has there own definition of how a knife should perform and what it should be capable of doing. I make no judgements here.

I think Strider makes some of the coolest designs out there and they use heavy duty steel. It does stand up to whatever you throw at it.
 
Originally posted by RobertHankins
5/32nd or 3/16" blade in S30V too thin for a good tactical Blade?

Many of the blades coming out as Fighter/tactical are coming out in 1/4" thick blades. Which IMHO are just plain heavy albeit very rugged.

What are your thoughts...
Click to expand...

I prefer a thinner blade, if I want to pry on somthing I'll use hammer claws or a pry-bar. I have one blade of 1095 that's 5/32" thick and a full 31.5" long and it's plenty stiff enough to cleanly stab or slice completely through the diameter of a watermellon, a pumpkin, or three two-liter bottles filled with water, with a single stroke. That's plenty stiff enough to suit me!
 
IMHO a fighter should be a slicer as well as a sticker. I've spent a lot of time in museums around the world and most fighting knives are 3/16's or even thinner. I have a Randall No. 1 from 35 years ago that was my combat knife. It's still hard to beat. Even though Randall's claim 1/4 inch thick that really means it was hand forged from 1/4 stock. The finished product is more like 3/16's and that only in the thick part of the spine.

Some might argue that smiths of old went thin to save steel but I doubt that a customer who was depending on a blade not a gun would have chosen thin steel just to save money.

I find the current trend to heavy "choppers" with thick spines all the way to the tip to be a bad compromise between a knife and an axe. Of course the logical argument could be that a chopper replaces a knife and a hand axe and why do I need a fighting knife anyway?

To each his own. I believe thinner fighters would sell well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top