Abusive testing: value?

[busselover]

Testing to failure is called "destructive testing". In engineering circles, it has a long history. There are more products on the market today that have been tested to failure than those that have not....

 

[Guyon]

After viewing youtube destruction of a Busse Battle Mistress FFBM, i would like to know if there is any incentive in the "custom" knife community to make knives that equal this level of extreme tolerance for abuse? (and, if So, what comparisons can be made?)

As someone in your first thread mentioned, this is an apple and orange scenario. On the one hand, you have a production knife that is designed for such tolerances, both in terms of its steel properties and its geometries. On the other hand, you have custom knives, many of which are designed with other goals/tasks in mind (aesthetics, functionality as cutters, edge retention, task-specific employment, etc.)

As for incentive, it would be interesting to hear from makers and collectors/users within the custom community. I have a few customs, including custom choppers, but I don't consider myself enough of an insider within that community to speak as a member. I can only speculate here, but given the contrast I sketch out above and given my occasional forays into the custom subforum, I don't have a sense that many of these folks idealize the aforementioned tolerances for abuse. I'm sure there might be exceptions though.

And, would anyone like to further comment on the Busse Battle Mistress example, after watching the youtube videos? -- it made an impression on me, it is a stubborn quitter!
David

It is a "stubborn quitter" because it is designed to be a stubborn quitter. The FFBM (Fat Fusion Battle Mistress) is thick, coming in at .320". From the shop, my FFBM had relatively (relative to my custom choppers at least) obtuse edge geometry. The knife also has a thick tip that is well suited for digging and prying.

Do custom makers want to mimic these design attributes? Well, if they did, I suspect we'd be seeing more claims coming directly from the makers--claims about tolerance for abusive actions. We'd also be seeing more knives designed to survive such trials. However, a lot of custom makers choose not to go this route since they have other ends as priorities.

That said, some makers do create thick, functional knives and do a good job of it. Jeremy Horton, for instance, makes some knives that, because of their geometries, I suspect would hold up well to abusive actions similar to those in the videos you reference. I own one of Jeremy's .270" A2 "Camp Blood" knives (see below) and like it very much as a chopper/splitter and general camp knife.

I would not normally choose this thicker Horton to prep camp food or fillet fish though. Jeremy is currently making me a smaller .150 D2 blade that would be much better suited to those kinds of tasks. But I doubt it would hold up as well to abusive actions because of its design.

 

[Broos]

The Busse Battle Mistress in these videos showed to be nearly indestructable. I'm not saying it is the end-all, be-all of testing procedures, or even what constitutes "testing". I found it showed what one guy could dish out to tear up a blade. And, i was very impressed how it held up.

How did that blade survive so well?

This highlights the difference between a review and testing to me.
A review is where you guess why something happened in your use of the product, or you give reasons for why you like it. A test is supposed to tell you something about it - if you do destructive testing, and are no closer to knowing why something broke or not at the end of the "test", don't expect anyone who is familiar with real life testing (where you have to defend your conclusions) to agree that they are tests!

The reason any mfg does testing is to improve their product or its safety - if at the end of the "testing" they have not learned anything about how to make their product better or safer, then whoever came up with that test is going to get a pink slip.

There is one sure fire way to make a knife survive being beat on with a hammer, and that is to make the blade or spine softer. And you pretty much know this before starting the test, so the only quantification you can gleam off a video of random beating a knife is to keep making it softer until the knife survives XX minutes of random bashing (without a clue of why it broke or survived, and without a clue of the magnitude and location of the particular strike that broke it). Hardly a great forward leap for knfedom if this is what is learned from a "test".

A WHOLE lot more than this is learned by the tests devised by those in charge of real destructive testing.

 

[2knife]

.......

 

[Ramm9]

And what is the heat treating process like on the Busse knives?

Here you go, from the horses mouth so to speak.

Busse has been doing cryo since the early 1980's. Back then it was a very primitive process involving an old cooler, dry ice and about a gallon of acetone. Process: pack the blades in dry ice, pour the acetone over the ice to speed the evaporation process, and hit somewhere around the -190 degree mark. Do a normalizing temper (approx. 350 - 450) and voila! Prehistoric Cryo!

In the late eighties we began the employment of a deep cryo treatment (-300/320 degrees) which was done in a dry, controlled, atmosphere. This process allows us to take our blades down to temp. over the course of 10 hours hold them at temp. (-300 degrees) for approx 50 hours, and then bring them back up to room temp. over the course of the next 10 hours at which point they receive 3 more, individualized, oven tempers. This is the same process that we employ to this day.

Some makers are out there just plunging their blades into liquid nitrogen which can shock the steel so dramatically that microscopic cracks and fissures can form that could cause massive blade failure in the field under heavy and/or light use. That is why it is crucial that the blades be cooled slowly and brought back to room temperature slowly and then normalized with a few oven tempers for stress relief.

Of course there are also some makers that I know of who claim to employ cryogenics because they stick their knives in the freezer over night. Scary! Alway ask the maker to give as much detail of his cryo process as possible.

Knowledge is power! Arm yourself!

Yours in Nuclear Cryogenics,

Jerry Busse

 

[Guyon]

Guyon,
Thanks for your input. How much, in your opinion, is due to the thick design of the blade in this case, geometry, vs. how much attributed to toughness of the INFI steel?

I cannot attribute proportions with any degree of accuracy. I have never chopped concrete, brick, rock, porcelain, or metal with my Busses. My favorites chop a good bit of wood, but that's as intense as it gets. I do not abuse my knives. I only have read a lot of second-hand reports that INFI resists chipping out and will tend to deform or roll when beaten against an unforgiving material. In the case of the FFBM, however, I think common sense suggests that the thickness does play a significant role in the blade's ability to withstand abuse.

 

[mhawg]

I believe the destructive tests made on the Busse knife and others are for entertainment value only. That said, if it can take that abuse and hold an edge it is truly a knife to be reckoned with.

 

[Vivi]

I don't like to intentionally destroy things, but I do enjoy finding out what the limits of things are.

 

[jbombelli]

Personally, I like to see abusive/destructive testing. It lets me know how much that knife can REALLY take before failure. I may never have to use a knife to hack my way through the door of my overturned truck, or chop/hack my way through a pile of cinderblocks, or chop down a 12" tree, or baton my way into a bank vault, but it's nice to know my knives can handle those tasks just in case.

 

[antonio_luiz]

I'm interested to see how tools perform for their designed purposes. These so called 'destruction tests' for their dubious entertainment value are simply abuse of tools by fools. Unless the test conditions are rigorously conducted under controlled scientific conditions with known parameters so they can be consistently reproduced they are only indicative and ultimately meaningless.

I don't thinks it's rocket science to figure out that a Battle Mistress is going to take a lot more abuse than a Leek, but not too many people EDC a Battle Mistress to open packages and peel apples.

 

[jbombelli]

I'm interested to see how tools perform for their designed purposes. These so called 'destruction tests' for their dubious entertainment value are simply abuse of tools by fools. Unless the test conditions are rigorously conducted under controlled scientific conditions with known parameters so they can be consistently reproduced they are only indicative and ultimately meaningless.

I don't thinks it's rocket science to figure out that a Battle Mistress is going to take a lot more abuse than a Leek, but not too many people EDC a Battle Mistress to open packages and peel apples.

Not too many people carry a Leek out into the woods to cut firewood, or chop up branches for a shelter, either.

I personally know of a guy who had to chop his way out of an overturned jeep, miles from anywhere. You never know what life is going to throw at you, and thinking you'll ALWAYS have the RIGHT tool for the job at hand is foolish at best.

Or do you suggest everybody carry an axe, hatchet, big knife, small knife, medium knife, multitool, saw, machete, shovel, and trowel when they go backpacking? Me? I just use a knife, so I like to know that the knife I take can handle serious abuse that knives are not normally intended to take. I dig with them, I chop with them, I baton with them, etc. Doing my research ahead of time into what knives can handle what would have saved me a lot of aggravation.

For example... the destructive tests I saw of Kabars would have saved me from buying and breaking Kabars by batonning hard wood. But I saw those tests AFTER I broke TWO of them.

We don't all use our knives just for opening packages and peeling apples.

 

[philwar]

Not too many people carry a Leek out into the woods to cut firewood, or chop up branches for a shelter, either.

I personally know of a guy who had to chop his way out of an overturned jeep, miles from anywhere. You never know what life is going to throw at you, and thinking you'll ALWAYS have the RIGHT tool for the job at hand is foolish at best.

Agreed. You cannot plan for every eventuality, and most of the time knives will be used according to their purpose and design, but who hasn't used a knife for something it was never designed for? It's not all that inconceivable that the knife you have on you may one day be called upon to do a task way outside its design parameters.
It would be nice to know how that knife will perform under those circumstances. Abusive testing at the very least gives us an idea.

 

[Ankerson]

Not too many people carry a Leek out into the woods to cut firewood, or chop up branches for a shelter, either.

I personally know of a guy who had to chop his way out of an overturned jeep, miles from anywhere. You never know what life is going to throw at you, and thinking you'll ALWAYS have the RIGHT tool for the job at hand is foolish at best.

Or do you suggest everybody carry an axe, hatchet, big knife, small knife, medium knife, multitool, saw, machete, shovel, and trowel when they go backpacking? Me? I just use a knife, so I like to know that the knife I take can handle serious abuse that knives are not normally intended to take. I dig with them, I chop with them, I baton with them, etc. Doing my research ahead of time into what knives can handle what would have saved me a lot of aggravation.

For example... the destructive tests I saw of Kabars would have saved me from buying and breaking Kabars by batonning hard wood. But I saw those tests AFTER I broke TWO of them.

We don't all use our knives just for opening packages and peeling apples.

Exactly, you just never know what you might be in for so why not carry a knife that can do much more than some said others.

When I go out in the woods I carry one of my Busses and a Strider.

Agreed. You cannot plan for every eventuality, and most of the time knives will be used according to their purpose and design, but who hasn't used a knife for something it was never designed for? It's not all that inconceivable that the knife you have on you may one day be called upon to do a task way outside its design parameters.
It would be nice to know how that knife will perform under those circumstances. Abusive testing at the very least gives us an idea.

Thats true, without testing people won't know what the knife can really do.

I wouldn't want to be stuck up in the Mountians in the winter time with just a small weak folder or a cheap fixed blade that will likely snap after a few mins of use.

 

[sodak]

I think destructive tests have their place, as long as there is a purpose to them, not just random slamming on a knife with a pipe or hammer or whatever.

Cutting up a concrete block, which is always ridiculed for some reason, gives me a good idea what will happen to the blade when I'm swinging close to the ground and hit a rock. BTDT. I couldn't care less how my Doziers respond to rock impacts - it should never happen!

I think it is good to see these tests, and the user, us, can determine if they are appropriate for what they are looking for. Everyone who wants to be a master in the ABS has to destroy a blade as part of the testing, so it's obviously appropriate for custom makers who want the designation.

 

[Ankerson]

Cutting up a concrete block, which is always ridiculed for some reason, gives me a good idea what will happen to the blade when I'm swinging close to the ground and hit a rock. BTDT. I couldn't care less how my Doziers respond to rock impacts - it should never happen!

I have BTDT too with a number of knives over the years and nothing sucks worse than to have a huge chip out of the edge when you hit a rock or even a cracked blade.

 

[seth]

i'll chime in here from a hobby smith point of view, ive made about 10 knives, and still only have the first one i made (that i promised myself i wouldnt destruction test) why is this??? im gonna keep testing every knife i make to destruction (documented procedures of course) until im happy with my combination of thickness/ht/edge geometry/toughness.

all of the abs smiths have destruction tested more than their fair share of high quality custom knives, each one with many many hours of work put into it, and u wont hear many people complaining about the quality of the end result, which is, when you buy a knife from a smith who has destruction tested possibly hundreds of knives, your buying a knife that was designed to peform to the best of its ability for its intended tasks.

i'll keep breaking the knives i make, because so far, each one has taken just that extra bit more to break, my first knife broke after throwing it into a tree stump maybe 50 times, the last one? i got tired of throwing.. very similar point geometry, just imo a better heat treat. however the handle i made for it worked loose too quickly.. it'll probly get batoned until its dead, and bingo, another knife i put hours into is gone, but ive got ideas on making the next one stronger already

 

[ishiyumisan]

As far controlled scientific test go..... I'm still eating salada
Boy never happens
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[Gator97]

Scientific and controlled tests do have their place, but as Sal Glesser pointed out, lab tests often get invalidated by field experience. In other words, once the average user takes a knife in his/her hands things change compared to CATRA and any other machines.

Point is, even if you try real hard, you won't be able to match any machine. And that's IF you try... Now, consider that more or less often you just want to cut through or chop through the damn thing and that "precision testing conditions" go out of the window real quick, I'd say within first 2 swings

 

[Broos]

But despite how one may use or abuse them, somes knives are stronger than others, some will cut better than others, & some will hold an edge longer than others. And the same knife that holds an edge longer as concluded by a good machine test will hold an edge longer when you use it. And if you want some way to consisently and uniformly quantify or rank them, you have to come up with a test that can do that, and then test them.

Which knife anyone prefers is a mix of factors unique to the individual, with technical advantages often trumped by personal preference. And while you can't test for personal preference, you can test for edge retention.

Just make sure you do your destructive tests after the non-destructive tests.

 

[Kaizen1]

Does anyone know if Noss has "tested" any knives that were as thick or thicker than the FBM?