Broken full flat ground during batoning

EngrSorenson said:
Again, Full Flat Grinds aren't to blame. It's possible to design a very tough FFG knife, but everything from surface finish, to blade steel, to heat treat, to profile/shape/features has to be considered.
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Stress riser > blade cross section.

Every time, all the time. As soon as crack propagation starts, it's game over. Crack propagation is caused by surface defects + force.

Bridges collapse...
 
The True North said:
I believe the idea is that a large knife is generally lighter than those things, more versatile in other uses, and CAN be used to split wood in a pinch.
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My axe weighs 11 oz, vs 17 for a BK9.....Its smaller, lighter and is pretty versatile if you know how to use it properly.

Using a knife to split clean bits for kindling is one thing, bashing it through big knotty logs with a mallet just because is something entirely different.
Any knife whose main selling points are that it has a sharp blade and a sheath with belt loops is questionable at best.....
 
Arathol said:
My axe weighs 11 oz, vs 17 for a BK9.....Its smaller, lighter and is pretty versatile if you know how to use it properly.

Using a knife to split clean bits for kindling is one thing, bashing it through big knotty logs with a mallet just because is something entirely different.
Any knife whose main selling points are that it has a sharp blade and a sheath with belt loops is questionable at best.....
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Agreed.
 
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VorpelSword said:
I have never quite understood the need to beat a knife down into some heavy piece of wood with a club.

Doing so will, for sure, prove or disprove the durability of that blade . . .but so what?

Use an ax, hatchet or entrenching tool instead.
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You know there's nothing wrong with just doing some batoning on a piece of wood you know is going to split easy to make kindling. It's easy and convenient, but of course there's no machismo in it.

It's when people are trying to make firewood with batoning a knife designed for cutting on a gnarly piece of wood that regardless they would be out of breath trying to split with a 8 lb splitting maul.

Then it becomes a useless endeavor for anything besides entertainment which is fine until we want to complain about why it's not working as if we didn't already understand it was woefully the wrong tool for the job.

I think the biggest problem is too many folks get lost into batoning for the sake of batoning.

It's like its own sport.

Surprised nobody brought up a froe yet


pXb4kiG.png


27 doll hairs and it will outperform any knife you can think of for hammering giant pieces of knotted wood if swinging an axe is not your thing.

Can save a ton of money skipping cutting blades and moving over to blade shaped objects.

However, that would be a solution to a problem and when we are batoning gnarly pieces of firewood for sport it's not because we have a firewood problem needing a solution; just doing it for fun.


I think what is fun about a froe is it does this batoning task without any advanced steels.

Geometry, geometry, geometry.



Yet, these threads constantly ignore geometry and just keep pushing "You need to try Brand X or brand Y" or this steel or this heat treatment blah blah blah blah blah.


I'm half tempted to buy a froe and start a thread to complain about why it's not cutting and sharpening very well.

Balance things out a bit from the endless destruction threads.

Maybe my froe is not cutting because it needs to be in CPM 3V?

If only we knew.

Probably make a cool episode on unsolved mysteries.
 
TC said:
Stress riser > blade cross section.

Every time, all the time. As soon as crack propagation starts, it's game over. Crack propagation is caused by surface defects + force.

Bridges collapse...
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and yet ESEE's have jimping and a finger choil and can withstand beatings.
It's possible to design a knife that incorporates stress risers that is still robust enough for OP's needs.

In fact... to your point about bridges... that's why engineers design to a "factor of safety". do the math that meets the needs, then overbuild 3x what you needed.
 
DeadboxHero said:
You know there's nothing wrong with just doing some batoning on a piece of wood you know is going to split easy to make kindling. It's easy and convenient, but of course there's no machismo in it.

It's when people are trying to make firewood with batoning a knife designed for cutting on a gnarly piece of wood that regardless they would be out of breath trying to split with a 8 lb splitting maul.

Then it becomes a useless endeavor for anything besides entertainment which is fine until we want to complain about why it's not working as if we didn't already understand it was woefully the wrong tool for the job.

I think the biggest problem is too many folks get lost into batoning for the sake of batoning.

It's like its own sport.

Surprised nobody brought up a froe yet


pXb4kiG.png


27 doll hairs and it will outperform any knife you can think of for hammering giant pieces of knotted wood if swinging an axe is not your thing.

Can save a ton of money skipping cutting blades and moving over to blade shaped objects.

However, that would be a solution to a problem and when we are batoning gnarly pieces of firewood for sport it's not because we have a firewood problem needing a solution; just doing it for fun.


I think what is fun about a froe is it does this batoning task without any advanced steels.

Geometry, geometry, geometry.



Yet, these threads constantly ignore geometry and just keep pushing "You need to try Brand X or brand Y" or this steel or this heat treatment blah blah blah blah blah.


I'm half tempted to buy a froe and start a thread to complain about why it's not cutting and sharpening very well.

Balance things out a bit from the endless destruction threads.

Maybe my froe is not cutting because it needs to be in CPM 3V?

If only we knew.

Probably make a cool episode on unsolved mysteries.
Click to expand...
I only buy combat froes.
 
The True North said:
Had to look it up.

Actually looks like a half-decent design for making big kindling into smaller kindling for the shop stove.
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I have a couple of them. even one that was broken and sent back for warranty and Joe H. turned into a combat style knife for fun and gave it to a friend of mine to finish it and he sold it to me.....

20200906_170041.jpg20200906_170004.jpg
 
EngrSorenson said:
and yet ESEE's have jimping and a finger choil and can withstand beatings.
It's possible to design a knife that incorporates stress risers that is still robust enough for OP's needs.

In fact... to your point about bridges... that's why engineers design to a "factor of safety". do the math that meets the needs, then overbuild 3x what you needed.
Click to expand...

A finger choil has a large enough radius not to be a stress riser, IMO. Likewise, jimping can be implemented intelligently to minimize such. Like the CRK I mentioned.

I cringe when I see what often goes on under the pretty handle of an otherwise well-finished knife - sharp right angle cuts in the tang with no radiusing or bevelling etc. I.e., asking for it.

I should have made it more clear, though, that I primarily wanted to point to surface defects (from sloppy manufacturing or misuse) that will lead first to crack formation, and then crack propagation, followed very rapidly by failure. It is the nature of how defects and displacements travel through the grain structure of metals under load. (I have observed these phenomena in real time with an electron microscope, many, many years ago.)

Surface damage to a steel I-beam can lead to bridges collapsing... that's what inspections are for, to catch deterioration in good time.

Why then inspections, if 3x overbuild is good enough? Because that overbuild just stretches the time-to-failure into a more favorable future time window.
 
TC said:
A finger choil has a large enough radius not to be a stress riser, IMO. Likewise, jimping can be implemented intelligently to minimize such. Like the CRK I mentioned.

I cringe when I see what often goes on under the pretty handle of an otherwise well-finished knife - sharp right angle cuts in the tang with no radiusing or bevelling etc. I.e., asking for it.

I should have made it more clear, though, that I primarily wanted to point to surface defects (from sloppy manufacturing or misuse) that will lead first to crack formation, and then crack propagation, followed very rapidly by failure. It is the nature of how defects and displacements travel through the grain structure of metals under load. (I have observed these phenomena in real time with an electron microscope, many, many years ago.)

Surface damage to a steel I-beam can lead to bridges collapsing... that's what inspections are for, to catch deterioration in good time.

Why then inspections, if 3x overbuild is good enough? Because that overbuild just stretches the time-to-failure into a more favorable future time window.
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I’m not sure what your point is.
 
I have a BK9 that I’ve been trying to break while batoning, for about 10 years now and I have failed miserably.

VorpelSword said:
I have never quite understood the need to beat a knife down into some heavy piece of wood with a club.

Doing so will, for sure, prove or disprove the durability of that blade . . .but so what?

Use an ax, hatchet or entrenching tool instead.
Click to expand...
You don’t understand because it’s a relatively new thing since the dawn of the net. 3rd world countries, particularly in Asia, have been batoning fixed blades for many centuries now. Batoning is much safer than using an axe or hatchet. Just ask EngrSorenson EngrSorenson . I can harvest more wood with a folding saw and a large fixed blade, than you can with just a axe/hatchet alone. If I can’t baton with a knife, then it’s no good for me. Take this for what you think it’s worth.
 
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