A metallurgical question

S

Stephen Hamilton

Joined
Aug 18, 2000
Messages
312
Let's say, hypothetically speaking, that one was contemplating a slash at a chain link fence with, let's say for argument purposes, a villager Khukuri. Would it cut easier or harder on a freezing cold winter night? Why?

Just wondering, you understand, not that anyone I know would do such a crazy thing.

(Brrrr! it's cold out tonight!)

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Hmm ... will the steel fence and the steel khukuri be at the same temperature? Or can we freeze the fence on a cold night and warm the khukuri indoors and rush out to hastily hack at the fence before the blade warms up, running back inside to warm it up again for more chopping if necessary?

Regardless ... it's not going to make much difference unless it's *very* cold -- like below zero Fahrenheit. The blade is steel, the fence is softer steel but still much harder than most things you cut with a khukuri. The blade will cut through the fence but it'll be dulled considerably ... if you want to keep cutting until you make a hole big enough to crawl through (just to pick a hypothetical goal) ... I think that khukuri is going to be sadly in need of sharpening by the time you're done. I think you'll make it through, though.

If it's very cold steel gets a little more brittle and you might conceivably break your blade ... but I doubt it, not on a chain-link fence; it'll give too much; it won't be a shock like hitting a rock.

If you know in advance you're going to encounter that obstacle you could put an obtuse edge like a cold chisel on that khukuri -- that would hold up better. Or if you were really smart you could bring a hammer and chisel instead ... or a pair of wire-cutters....

You know, when Cliff Stamp sees this he's going to have to go out and chop through a chain-link fence ... he's not going to sit in his armchair and speculate like I did ... not him! Sheesh ... people have no pity for the poor guy ... and since you asked about the effect of temperature he's going to have to do it several times at different temperatures, too....

-Cougar :{)
 
But what about a good, solidly set barbed wire fence with posts to use as a cutting board. What if it were electrofied?
 
Oh, $%#&! Come to think of it I'd just pull out the revolver and shoot the wire in half. Be easier to clean it than work out an edge impaction.
 
Have you guys ever heard of bangalore topedoes?
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For the particular steels that are under consideration: The temperature will have no effect on either the fence or the khukuri, at least untill you get in the -40 to -60 degree range. ATS-34 on the other hand gets reallllly britle at those temperatures. At least that has been my experience knife wise.

Now as to the fence chopping business......you will work up a sweat in any temperature with the above stated plan. Bolt cutters work much better
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Dan
 
Dan had to fix my last attempt at going after a chain link fence with a villager - course I went after the fence post...Duh
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From what I can tell it makes no practical difference. I didn't want to cut up a perfectly good fence so I used 2 1/2" common nails, a coathanger and some barbed wire. They were cut up at room temperature (20), outside (0), in the kitchen freezer and in the basement freezer.

I used the Machax from Camillus (khukuris were all out on loan), and did the cutting in 4 different spots which all had about the same edge angle (roughly, 1-3 degree variation). About 4-6 cuts were made at each temperature for each piece of metal.

After it was done I visually looked at the four spots and tried to tell if the progression in damage was clear. It was not. I could not really pick one as being worse than the others. There was some variation but it looked random which I owuld expect given the difference in material composition of the bits, angle of cut, force etc. .

It would be interesting to see the effect of really low temperatures, I have some liquid N2 that I might fool around with later on. You are not going to see this in nature however.

So in short it seems that while I would expect the damage to increase as the temp drops, from what I have seen it seems that the difference in behavior is not going to be that significant unless you really drop down the temperature.

I'll freeze the blade and do some work with it later on to see how the blade handles the cold as well. It will get that cold here anyway. I just don't have the patience to wait.

-Cliff

[This message has been edited by Cliff Stamp (edited 12-21-2000).]
 
I've been told if you put a piece of steel in liquid oxygen for a minute and fish it out (with tongs) and drop it on the floor it'll shatter like glass.

Of course you won't encounter liquid oxygen when you're out camping ... not on this planet ... who knows who might be reading this forum, though....

Sgt. D has a good point about bangalore torpedos. Unfortunately Uncle Bill can't supply us with those ... the Post Office won't ship them ... they have some idea such things are hazardous; I can't imagine why.

Anyway you can only use a bangalore torpedo once -- you can use a khukuri over and over, on all kinds of things. (Although bangalore torpedos are pretty versatile, too. It's probably best to keep a few of both in your toolbox and use whichever seems best suited to the task at hand.)

-Cougar :{)
 
My 2 cents or maybe my only cents ?

Bring it over here and I will pull the chain down to about -200 degrees with a promise
that the Villager will go right on cutting
after the chain pops. I wouldn't want to
put the new edge on the Kuk , but it will
fair better than the chain.
biggrin.gif
Jerry

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I left the blade and some more nails in the basement freezer overnight and chopped them up in the morning. This did seem to give the greatest amount of damage, but it was not a large increase. At the worst it was still easily sub .5 mm in depth. A crude estimate would place it from .1 to .3 mm when both are warm to .2 to .4 when both were hard.

This difference is pretty small, it could have just been because of harder nails or me just making a harder hit. I would want to chop up a lot more nails to estimate the damage increase to any degree of certainty. About 20 at warm and 20 when cold should allow a decent estimate. I may do this later on. If I do I'll update the thread.

-Cliff
 
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