I'm fortunate enough to own a small hoard of Becker's, I have chipped the blade on two but that was easily removed, I've heard some folks say they're too hard and break easily, I've only seen 1 picture of the sort, any stories out there? also do you see these blade gaining value, thanks, G..
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BK&T breakage
- Thread starter galen59
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Cobalt
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They are good solid knives with nice hard edges at excellent prices. The steel is not a super tough one, but if you use them for cutting such as knives were meant for, they should be fine. Prying will break them only because they are thinner than other big knives. But a small knife like the Campanion is about as tough a knife as you will find anywhere. It is solid and thick and should take any use you need to use it for. Values will rise on these knives
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I'm guessing the incident of a Becker being broken that you heard about was a test of a BK-9 Combat Bowie, which can be found on cutleryscience.com. If you read the whole review, the tester still had many good things to say about the Becker line (including a BK-7 also tested) and didn't particularly fault the knife for breaking.
Echoing what Cobalt said, 0170-6C steel -- Camillus' proprietary name for 50100B -- used in the Becker line is a simple tool steel like 1095, with small amounts of chromium and vanadium added. In my experience these knives are heat treated to be quality pieces of cutlery with good edge retention, rather than to be used as prybars. But the steel should still be plenty tough for almost any reasonable purpose; remember, being tool steel, they should still be far stronger and tougher than any stainless blade of the same thickness. FWIW I run the edge on my BK-9 at 12 degrees/side, same on my Becker Neckers, and they hold up just fine.
Echoing what Cobalt said, 0170-6C steel -- Camillus' proprietary name for 50100B -- used in the Becker line is a simple tool steel like 1095, with small amounts of chromium and vanadium added. In my experience these knives are heat treated to be quality pieces of cutlery with good edge retention, rather than to be used as prybars. But the steel should still be plenty tough for almost any reasonable purpose; remember, being tool steel, they should still be far stronger and tougher than any stainless blade of the same thickness. FWIW I run the edge on my BK-9 at 12 degrees/side, same on my Becker Neckers, and they hold up just fine.
0170-6c is of course carbon v and is somewhat different than 50100b as far as i know it's the only steel in the world that had a seven step heat treat method which is the main difference in it's edge holding abilities when compared to other carbon or tool steels. No one knows better than Phil Gibbs therefore i would suggest going over to the camillus forum and directing questions to him about this steel.
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Yeah, it would be nice to have this clarified, although I strongly doubt it ever will be, due to CS's involvement, as Phil describes here:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showpost.php?p=4301656&postcount=17
As I said, 0170-6C is a good cutlery steel, IMO ... however I've never seen any evidence that it performs significantly better than other simple tool steels run at comparable hardness, using conventional heat treating methods. Makers references to secret, proprietary heat treats always put me off, I guess, and CS especially is known for exaggerating things a bit.
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Ethan Becker has struck a deal with Ka-Bar to start producing his designs again. This thread contains most the news and developments:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=499678
It sounds as though Ethan may be hoping for the BK9 Combat Bowie and BK11 Necker to be the first models released -- my two favorites.