Breaking knives

[JimMLa]

Amiga beat me to posting about wet wood. Without going into the axe vs. knife debate, even the dry wood down here is wet.

 

[runningboar]

Its the unknown you want your blade to get you through.

Skam

Like what? Prying boulders off your leg?

 

[Rescue Mike]

I broke a couple knives when I was a kid, but they were swap meet specials. The "Rambo" knives with the big bubble compass.

That's my favorite knife!!! Except I call it my "Mall Ninja Special Ops Custom Survival Tool".

Calling it a knife is an insult to real knives everywhere.

 

[Codger_64]

If they are breaking like that they are not good knives, seems obvious.

Every one of these was broken by using them as a prybar, even the flat ground fillet blade. Only the one with the gouge in the edge is different. It was used to chop something it shouldn't have. To me, this is obvious.

For the record I have skined and butchered dozens of game with cheapo chinese folders with little damge ever. This does not mean I would trust my life to it by any means. Its the unknown you want your blade to get you through.

Skam

I trust my life to no tool. Anything you can own can be lost, broken, stolen or wear out. I trust my life to my knowledge, training, and creativity. After more than half a century of "adventuring", I am still alive. A knife is simply a simple tool, nothing more or less. A self sufficient human should be able to make a simple tool. Or devise a field expedient substitute.

Codger

 

[akennedy73]

So I guess my question is how do yall break your knives that you need knives so tough? Chris

Pointless knife-destruction videos for posting on youtube, how else?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bl1Cuj7JKDs

 

[mog555]

I'd like to meet the guy who used the fillet knife as a prybar :jerkit: Cool shots Codger.

I busted a knife not too long ago, a Chinese Marbles folder, one of the pen blades. First time I had a blade break, I think it was just a bad blade, they fixed me up with a new one and I haven't had problems with that one.

 

[Fieldtestornothing]

Hmmmm....

This sounds like an interesting discussion and I don't know if I can add anything ground breaking here. Just my opinion.

Skill means everything. Someone who is experienced in the ways of the woods will be capable of improvising tools to accomplish the task at hand. Thus their knife is a tool to create others. Given of course the time, experience/skill, lack of injury/conditioning and other factors.

Unfortunately, in my opinion those factors don't always come to our favor. It may be then that with your strong arm broken, soaking wet, with snow coming down in heaps you have to make a shelter. NOW. Or you will be dead. Your unbelievable skill has always given you to carry a mora, which is a excellent bushcraft knife. Your core is dropping and the world doesn't look like it once did when you were warm, rested, and fed practicing those skills you hold so dear. You are unable to delimb using a baton with a broken arm so you start bashing on 1" limbs to begin a framwork for your shelter. Obviously, your mind isn't in the right place. Your carelessness breaks your knife. Just one senario. Unlikely: Oh definately, possible yes

It is for these reasons, that I believe in carring high quality. Something that can do all of the cutting that you demand and still have the strength necessary for the unseen.

 

[ilbruche]

Let's say for instance your leg is pinned between a rock and a sizable fallen limb, if you are carrying your Ranger/Busse/SwampRat/Scrapper/etc. you might be able to pry it up enough to escape. It ain't gonna happen with the Mora or the Buck 110.

Forget the prying. Cut your arm off like Aron Ralston did any you can get all sorts of cool hand attachments, like the ice axe. You could get a Battle Mistress and stick it over your stump. And you can write a book, do speaking tours and be set for life. Isn't that worth the price of a hand?

 

[Tolly]

Dude, he cut his hand off not his leg...I would like to think I have the nads to do it if I had to but I would rather try prying it off first. But like others here have stated, I could instead ask the tree to let me up for a minute so that I could go and whittle up a proper prying limb, and then I could go back, reinsert my leg, tell the tree to reapply pressure, and use my "proper" prying tool to get myself free..Some of these guys just don't get it. I was just simply trying to show a situation where a hell for stout strong knife might be able to get you out of a situation where a blade with less backbone couldn't given you weren't able to move or reach any other equipment. I agree that the situations are few and far between, but they do exist, and refusing to believe they exist just because they haven't happened to you is just foolishness!

 

[Guyon]

Like what? Prying boulders off your leg?

That's pretty much the main factor I look at when I'm choosing a knife. I want it to pry boulders. I can't count the number of times I've thought to myself, "I sure would like to pry that boulder," but all I had on me was a SAK. Sometimes, I've tried to pry with sticks, but they just break and leave you frustrated. It's not really a good time out in the wilderness unless you can pry a boulder or two.

I also like to pry doors off of tanks, but they're getting harder to find where I hike.

Seriously, if you want to chop and pry and dig, take a thick-assed chopper that's not going to break. The extra backbone will give it some nice momentum when you're chopping. If you want to slice, take a thinner, smaller knife that's easy to manage with slicing chores. If you think you might need both, pack both. I do. There's no "magic bullet" knife that's going to do it all well. You can split the difference and carry a 6 to 7 inch knife with a slightly thicker spine, but it's still going to be a "jack of all trades, master of none."

No matter what the case though, I prefer to buy from companies with a reputation for quality and from companies that will back up their product if it fails. For me, that's meant Busse, Swamp Rat, Buck, Victorinox. FWIW, not all Busses and Swamp Rats are overbuilt boulder pryers. I own a few of those, but I also have some damn nice thin slicers from both companies.

 

[barrabas74]

I have broken a knife while chopping, but I used the wrong knife for the wrong job and it was when I was ignorant and did not know about steels, grinds or blade designs. Though these types of "bullet proof" knives may not be needed, some people want them. I have many knives that I could shoot with a gun and have complete confidence would take it. Why? not sure....cuz I like em? They dont always slice well with the stock grind but most I regrind and take the edge back and they do just fine. I like many of my choppers for the heck of having one..even though I know I would probably be carrying a flat ground 4" blade most of the time. Diff strokes for diff folks.

I do know where your coming from runningboar and I agree, there are many knives out there that just dont slice very well, and even after they have been reprofiled will be bested by knives that are just thinner. But as long as there is a demand there will be a supply, and I am not innocent in any of this.

 

[runningboar]

I have said many times on this forum, feel free to research it, that wanting something in most cases is plenty of justification for buying it. I love custom expensive knives and loath cheap pieces of shit, so don't try to twist my words into I like only cheap knives.

What I don't like is people trying to convince someone that they need a big rough tough he man knife in the woods. Or any knife that cost less than 100 dollars is not worthy to "stake your life on" or "you might be willing to stake your life on cheap disposable knife but I certainly wouldn't" or "I only carry quality gear and custom knives".

If you want to only carry idiotic Ray Mears or Bear Grylls bushcraft knives that cost 500 dollars plus, that's awesome, I am sure that they will work great for whatever you want to do with them. But don't try to convince me that I NEED them or because my favorite knives cost less than a 100 dollars on EBAY and are made out of 1095 that they aren't up to the task or I must not know what I am talking about. Chris

 

[coote]

I've broken more than one knife. Cant remember all the details, but I have broken a couple of the respected Mercator lockblades, and one old IXL pocketknife blade. And at least one fixed blade. All of them would have broken when I was doing something other than cutting.

I used to carry a Mercator when I was working as a fitter. Sometimes I would use it as a chisel or a punch to make a hole in sheet metal. Oddly I don't recall smashing a blade while driving the knife through 24 guage sheet steel with a hammer, I think it was more when I was using it as a lever.

The incident that sticks out the most in my memory was the goat hunting debacle. I was quite young, and had taken a single barreled shotgun into a bit of bush where I probably should not have been. I was loaded with a Brenneke solid slug, and I saw a goat. I shot the darn thing as is was quartering away. A fairly good shot too. But the goat fell without dying. I walked closer and shot it again, this time with some ordinary shot...maybe #4 which I thought would have done the trick at just a few yards. But no.

I didn't want to fire again and attract too much attention. I took out my Mercator folder and cut its throat. This would have killed it, but in my zeal to make sure the end was quick, I also tried to break the neck. It wouldn't break, so I inserted the blade of my knife between the vertebrae, levered a bit, and snapped the blade off. I then picked up a big rock and bludgeoned the poor animal. Cant remember how I gutted the animal now....I might have used the broken stump of the blade.

It seems that there is a trade-off between edge holding ability and toughness. Well at least with the common tool steel that I am familiar with. Hardness goes fairly much hand-in-hand with brittleness. If you look at a tempering chart, springs and crowbars are tempered to a higher temperature (made softer) than knives. Some old tempering charts show a softer temper for big blades and harder blades for pen knives. It makes sense.

I can see why folks like to have a big 'lever/chopper' blade. But dang they are a nuisance to carry...and hopelessly difficult to use for the tasks that I do with a knife 99% of the time.

In ancient days a bit of finely flaked obsidian (natural glass) would have been regarded as the best quality knife. Nobody would have dreamed of using it as a lever. Bigger rocks were used for chopping, and I'm making an educated guess that levering was only ever done with strong sticks.

I have a heavy 'golok' that I think was made for British troops serving in Malaya. Sometimes I take this with me when I am setting traps etc. Good for chopping and maybe a bit of digging. Dunno if I could lever a very big log with it though. I don't think there is one bladed tool that can do everything well.

This isn't a good picture of the golok, but it is the only one I can find:

 

[ilbruche]

Dude, he cut his hand off not his leg.. I agree that the situations are few and far between, but they do exist, and refusing to believe they exist just because they haven't happened to you is just foolishness!

Then you could get a peg leg that could hold your PSK.

I have said many times on this forum, feel free to research it, that wanting something in most cases is plenty of justification for buying it. I love custom expensive knives and loath cheap pieces of shit, so don't try to twist my words into I like only cheap knives.

What I don't like is people trying to convince someone that they need a big rough tough he man knife in the woods. Or any knife that cost less than 100 dollars is not worthy to "stake your life on" or "you might be willing to stake your life on cheap disposable knife but I certainly wouldn't" or "I only carry quality gear and custom knives".

If you want to only carry idiotic Ray Mears or Bear Grylls bushcraft knives that cost 500 dollars plus, that's awesome, I am sure that they will work great for whatever you want to do with them. But don't try to convince me that I NEED them or because my favorite knives cost less than a 100 dollars on EBAY and are made out of 1095 that they aren't up to the task or I must not know what I am talking about. Chris

I know where your coming from. There is a huge difference between the knife you need and the knife you want. There are a lot of awesome sub $100 knives out there that can do pretty much whatever you want. I guess it all depends on how you use your gear and how much you expect from it.

I'll use a truck analogy here. My truck does what I want it to and takes me where I want to go. Of course I'd like to have a rock crawler with 4 wheel steering and over 20 inches of travel. But do I need that? No, not really.

Buying anything based on paranoid hypothetical situations is pointless. More often than not your ability to use your tools will save you, not the tool itself.

 

[ashtxsniper]

Basically I want to be prepared for the worst case scenario. I have seen Murphy's law in action to many times.

 

[David E]

For the record I have skinned and butchered dozens of game with cheapo chinese folders with little damge ever. This does not mean I would trust my life to it by any means. Its the unknown you want your blade to get you through.
Skam

That's the whole point, isn't it ?

Butchering game animals isn't the "serious survival use" a knife might be put to, so using that as an example misses the point.

.

 

[KiljoyKutlery]

Double bingo!

Broke and or bent at least 5 in my time through various hard use but never throwing etc. Yes, I did climb that learning curve and now sit on top to stay.

Despite what some people believe on this entire forum there is major differences in steel quality, construction and durability.

What you have to decide as an individual is how much value do you put on a blade to keep you safe and alive if thats your blades goal. If it is important to you then pony up for a quality blade and not settle for one that has merely just "worked for you in the past" under normal conditions.
When you need it to perform under stress many blades that have gotton you through in the past may not under new and desperate stresses you force on it.

All my top quality gear costs $ and I can abuse it and count on it.
My pack is $200+, my boots $350, my GPS $400 etc... why in the world would I settle for a $50 blade.

It confuses me that some will blow $200 on a weekend bender and carry a POS blade in the back 40, it mistifies me.

Bottom line, whats your life worth as it could come to that.

Skam

Hey man, are you talking about me in the last part of your post???? No, I totally agree.... I have broken knives both in use and in testing, just broke a good knife 2 days ago...I was bummed, but I know what I can do and not do with that knife now...I would rather test a knife at home and break it, than have it test me when it breaks in the wild....Oh...I have broken the bank over booze on more than one occasion as well

 

[KiljoyKutlery]

Not to chime in for any argumentive reasons...I own knives ranging from $20-$350, and I like them all, and would bring them with me in the woods..I f didn't feel they were good knives...I wouldn't own them...I guess what I'm saying is..there is no real answer in the knife world. As long as there is 1000's of knives, and even more people using them...you will get a different answer and reason for that answer each time. I guess I mean that if you know what your doing, and have a feel for what your blade can do...you can best use the tool you have with you...and thats my 2 cents, love ya, one and all...Gene

 

[David E]

I hear a lot about "good" woods/survival knives, knives that won't break, that are bullet proof, will take abuse, knives you can trust your life on...so on and so on. What the hell do yall use your knives for?

What is wrong with a "bullet proof knife?" Do you automatically assume that they are too thick to perform their intended function?

So I guess my question is how do yall break your knives that you need knives so tough? Chris

Knives break when they can't handle the task they're given.

.

 

[ashtxsniper]

You wouldnt use a scalpel for camp chores would you?