abused and broke my CS SRK, thoughts?

That's very suprising to me. I have heard of someone using the SRK as a pinion while rock climbing without a problem other than fudging up the handle a little. And I have always heard, even from Mr. Stamp, that Carbon V had a better reputation for toughness than Ontario's 1095 steel...

Whether you like LT or not, CS knives have gained world wide acclaim for excellent performance. ...I agree with the idea that hitting the spine of your knife with a hammer = extreme abuse but still. Could this have been a fluke?

:confused:
 
Hitting you knife with a hammer is knife abuse, but it shouldnt break the tang. Check out the Swamp Rat forums for a pic of one of their D2 blades that had a run in with a hefty sherrif and a hammer.
 
I've beat a CS SRK and a few other blades through wood with a hammer. I must have been lucky, had no breakage problems. It just removed some of the blade coating from blade spines. Check out the results at the two links below.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=191387
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=191388

As Cliff noted, tool steels (properly heat treated) shouldn't break. As others stated, differential heat treating will render even greater toughness to the spine while leaving the edge hard for abrasion resistance. It's worth noting that Swamp Rat differentially heat treats their larger blades (Camp Tramp, Battle Rat, etc) to get impressive levels of performance out of them.

Here's a link to the D2 torture testing pictures that Dr Thor referenced:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=322561
 
I am ordering a Busse or Swamp rat, soon.

busse 327 $$$$ (camp tramp or Ratwieler and Battle rat)
ratwieler 200 w sheath not sure about handle shape, not infi
camptramp 130 tang a little thin, prefer straight micarta
battle rat 150 ditto
or
Strider MLT or BN @325 $$$$
 
Anybody can do it the easy way, lol, I suppose you would use a knife to skin a deer, instead of fingernails.
 
Cliff Stamp said:
A knife of that type, tactical/survival should not be in the same class as glass in regard to impact toughness. -Cliff
Click to expand...

I'm glad you feel that way as I own a SRK and I would like to think it could take a hell of a beating. :) Maybe his knife had a fracture in the tang from the factory that was missed by QC. Could have been a bad HT, or whatever. Then when he hit it with the hammer the fracture lead to it breaking completely?

So he may have a complaint with the knife, but would cold steel replace the knife if they knew he took a hammer to it? When I got my SRK they were $35, when they first came out. I would think at that price it wouldn't be out of the question for some of them to have poor quality control, bad heat treats, etc. Unless they didn't make any money or took a loss on the first batch. I got it when they first came out and it was a special price.
 
I second what Cliff Stamp has already said - properly HT-ed carbon steel, full tang or hidden tang, should be insanely difficult to break.

This experience lends credibility to the many bladesmiths who have sometimes been criticised for being over-the-top for insisting on taking care of the numerous areas that would potentially have prevented such catastrophic breakage.

Issues such as - differential hardening or differential tempering, minimising grain growth in the HT, contouring out all junctions that could create stress risers on the blade, tapers in both directions, choice of steel that allows ALL the above to be applied on the one blade. (Having the tang spring tempered or totally annealed with rounded / graduated junctions could have saved the blade.)

I can bet you if you didn't throw the broken knife away, many bladesmiths would be now asking you to take photographs of what the broken ends looked like... ;)

Although it shouldn't be routine for a knife-oholic to be beating on their favourite blade with a hammer, I'd argue that a well-HT-ed carbon steel blade would put up with that sort of work any day. An edge-hardened blade with annealed spine would probably mushroom out quite a bit. A fully hardened blade with a spring tempered spine would mushroom out less if hammered on the spine, but it takes a more skilful HT technique to ensure that the temper is just right for this sort of ABUSE.

My 2 cents worth. Jason.
 
It seems odd that the SRK broke. I used my Recon Tanto and a hammer last weekend to split a few 2x4 sections with zero problems. Perhaps you just received a knife that had some sort of steel flaw making it brittle.
 
have had my srk for years and have had no problems with it but when useing it like that I use wood not steel, mine has taken a beating all around and not even had any damage to the edge that a good sharping will not fix. I would have to say that the steel must have been cracked from the heat treating,my grandfather did his own smithing and sometime the steel will crack so that the human eye cannot tale seems like what may have been the reason to the break.
 
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