Battle Mistress breakage?

Cpl Punishment said:
OK, thanks, guys. Like I said, lately there's been a rash on several forums (not all knife-dedicated) of supposed "brute" knives breaking, always doing simple woods chores -- chopping, batoning -- and I don't mean chipped, I mean snapped in two.
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i don't want to stir any pots, but my curiousity is killing me on this one and I can't send private messages as a non-gold member. what knives are you speaking of?
 
I break mine all the time..........
.
.
.every seventh day they get a break.:D



Seriously, you can intentionally break any knife, but you have to try. If you do a search under battlemistress or search under my name for threads started by me, you will find tons of stuff.
 
Last Visible Canary said:
i don't want to stir any pots, but my curiousity is killing me on this one and I can't send private messages as a non-gold member. what knives are you speaking of?
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A couple of CS Trailmasters, an Ontario Marine Raider bowie, a Ka-Bar USMC (NOT the tang, the blade). All posted in the last month on various forums.

No Busses, but blades that are usually considered monsters.

ETA: And an HI Chiruwa Ang Khola ont he HI forum here.
 
that makes a lot more sense then. I thought you mean kershaw, spyderco, mercworx, bark river, any of the big name well known high end and semi high end makers.


-the trailmasters have an inherent flaw in the corner at the handle tang, almost a guaranteed break point because of the 90 degree stress riser. if you meant the blades are snapping, I'd assume it's something to do with the steel and heat treatment. cold steel farms out all of their work, so I'd have to know what manufacturer was making the line to determine it's likelihood of q.c. problems.
-the ontario marine raider bowie is subject to ontario's large batch quality control (when you test 1 out of 50 blades, some bad ones are sure to get through)
-and the kabar... I don't know about kabar. the one I owned did not feel "beefy" or "hard use" at all. the only thing that made it hard use was the very, very low saber grind. from what I remember, I could have hammered the blade an inch into a tree and snapped it with full shoulder strength, not needing full body strength. if it was 1095 at 55-57rc, it is what it is.


now if you had said a bark river a2 blade snapped, my ears would have perked way up.
 
There was a thread over on BB that showed an Extreme Ratio KH kukri failing badly. While it did not snap in two I think that wouldn't have been far off if the the test had gone on longer.

LINK
 
Cpl Punishment said:
A couple of CS Trailmasters, an Ontario Marine Raider bowie, a Ka-Bar USMC (NOT the tang, the blade). All posted in the last month on various forums.

No Busses, but blades that are usually considered monsters.

ETA: And an HI Chiruwa Ang Khola ont he HI forum here.
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Thanks for the info. :thumbup:

Well, the older Ontario models at least have been often criticized for weak quality control and rather too common failures resulting from said quality control, so the Marine Raider doesn't surprise me. The Ka-Bar USMCs really aren't all that tough, and they are produced in enormous numbers so it's easier to find a faulty one. The CS Trailmasters are, well, Cold Steel, and also produced in rather large numbers, so it's easier to find those inevitable faulty specimen.

The Ang Khola is a bit surprising, but then, the way they are made is very primitive, and sometimes the kami makes a mistake or there's a problem with the steel used.

All of these, though, I'd file under "sometimes you get a bad one, good thing there's a warranty". I would bet money that somewhere out there is a Busse with some sort of manufacturing hickup that would make the knife break in even regular use - but the knife might be a safe queen in someone's collection, and Busses aren't produced in the kind of numbers they make Ka-Bars or Ontarios, so it's harder to find the inevitable duds, and then of course there are differences in quality control, too. But as we can remember from the Scrapyard Dog Fathers with air bubbles in the steel, this kind of stuff happens to every manufacturer sooner or later - it's just impossible to have 100 % foolproof quality control with no faulty knives ever getting out. Such quality control would require ridiculous levels of testing for each individual knife, and still someone would inevitably make a mistake and some knives would slip past the testing and might be duds. Just one more reason for me to like the great Busse warranty. :thumbup:

But the Extrema Ratio kukri case surprises me. I mean, two of their kukris fall apart exactly the same way? Either the user was chopping something that really shouldn't be chopped (rock, iron?) or he got very unlucky and got two faulty knives, or perhaps the ER kukri design just plain sucks. I don't know - have never owned one.
 
Cobalt said:
I break mine all the time..........
.
.
.every seventh day they get a break.:D



Seriously, you can intentionally break any knife, but you have to try. If you do a search under battlemistress or search under my name for threads started by me, you will find tons of stuff.
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Cobalt has tossed his Battle Mistresses into rivers, into metal brackets, etc. He knows what he's talking about.

SHBM.jpg
 
This one was Cobalt's originally. I throw it occasionally just to show it some love.


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090.jpg

091.jpg
 
Elen said:
Thanks for the info. :thumbup:
The Ang Khola is a bit surprising, but then, the way they are made is very primitive, and sometimes the kami makes a mistake or there's a problem with the steel used.
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ya... I've seen enough random snaps at the sweet spot that you take it part of the deal. your supposed to take the blade and hit it on the flats a couple times on whatever wood your going to be chopping just to make sure the heat treat is solid. I've had one chip out of a 20" siru, but so far I've been pretty lucky.

Elen said:
I would bet money that somewhere out there is a Busse with some sort of manufacturing hickup that would make the knife break in even regular use -
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I would bet against you :D Busse does surface dye testing, as well as other tests on every single blade. the initial runs of shbm's were 62rc, but even then they do just fine at abusive tasks. Busse is in a unique position of making only hard use knives, in a semi production situation where quality control can be a high enough priority to ensure a super small chance of qc mishaps.

I've only seen one problem knife, and that was a swamp rat battle rat that did something similar to the extrema, but even worse. the person was chopping wood at night and noticed when he went back to camp that his knife was now a giant saw :eek:

Elen said:
But the Extrema Ratio kukri case surprises me. I mean, two of their kukris fall apart exactly the same way? Either the user was chopping something that really shouldn't be chopped (rock, iron?) or he got very unlucky and got two faulty knives, or perhaps the ER kukri design just plain sucks. I don't know - have never owned one.
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they're using a stainless for a khukuri that has a full flat grind. I've never handled the knife, but from the looks of it they put a really thin edge on the forward section, a cutting edge as apposed to a "chopping" edge like you would expect to see on most nepalese style khukuries. stainless+high torque+thin=bad news.
 
I would bet against you :D Busse does surface dye testing, as well as other tests on every single blade. the initial runs of shbm's were 62rc, but even then they do just fine at abusive tasks. Busse is in a unique position of making only hard use knives, in a semi production situation where quality control can be a high enough priority to ensure a super small chance of qc mishaps.

I've only seen one problem knife, and that was a swamp rat battle rat that did something similar to the extrema, but even worse. the person was chopping wood at night and noticed when he went back to camp that his knife was now a giant saw :eek:
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Well, yeah, I know that Busse is a special case, only making knives for the kind of hard use that most other manufacturers would say "voids the warranty." :D Still, though, I know of no-one that has 100 % effective quality control. The Scrapyard Dog Fathers that broke, and that Swamp Rat you mentioned, are proof enough that it happens to everyone. The case of the Dog Fathers with air bubbles in the steel is a good example of how hard it is to avoid this kind of thing. To notice the flaw in the steel would've required a ridiculous lot of testing on each individual knife, I believe - such as taking every knife and chopping it hard against some good tough wood for a while to see if the edge blows out. So, if there isn't a "dud" Busse out there yet, there will be some day. It's a statistical certainty, pretty much. Of course, with the kind of qc Busse does, the duds will be much rarer. And since there's always Jerry's warranty, any possible duds would just be replaced no questions asked. :) To me, the idea that any maker can and will eventually make some faulty knives by accident is mostly a reminder to test my blades before taking them out in the field. I've certainly tested all my Busses... and obviously haven't ever broken or even damaged one. Most likely I never will. :thumbup:


they're using a stainless for a khukuri that has a full flat grind. I've never handled the knife, but from the looks of it they put a really thin edge on the forward section, a cutting edge as apposed to a "chopping" edge like you would expect to see on most nepalese style khukuries. stainless+high torque+thin=bad news.
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I thought it was carbon. :eek: Oops. I guess the black coating fooled me. But if they made a kukri out of stainless steel, and even put a thin edge on it, that sounds like a pretty good recipe for disaster to me. I find it pretty interesting that ER offered to replace the second broken kukri with their smaller knives of equal value - felt a little like they didn't have full confidence in their own kukris.
 
Elen said:
The Ang Khola is a bit surprising, but then, the way they are made is very primitive, and sometimes the kami makes a mistake or there's a problem with the steel used.
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That blade had a good life. It was nearly 10 year old and, from what I understand, heavily used.
 
Elen said:
The case of the Dog Fathers with air bubbles in the steel is a good example of how hard it is to avoid this kind of thing. To notice the flaw in the steel would've required a ridiculous lot of testing on each individual knife, I believe - such as taking every knife and chopping it hard against some good tough wood for a while to see if the edge blows out.
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I think they'de have to do some kind of radiographic test on it, since that's a porosity issue from the steel manufacturer. one of the things a company will do to try to avoid that is get a piece of cut off or scrap from the steel manufacturer specifically to do a series of destructive and non destructive tests on the steel to make sure that that particular batch is up to specs. but yes, a lot of time money and effort for that. I don't know that scrap yard would go that far because of the cost required, but I also don't know just how far busse goes. infi is a pretty specialized steel, and there may be such tests done on every batch they order.

:confused:
 
Cobalt's here!!
Which mags did you put on your Ride?
Howz that Gorgeous wife? :D
 
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