Bush knife failure

C

ChuckB_III

Joined
Jul 5, 2007
Messages
48
I don't know how many of you guys have ever been in an actual survival sit. where you've had to survive in the wild, but i know some of you have, and I was wondering, has anyone had an experience where their folder/bowie/axe/cutting utensil has failed completely (blade snapped, handle fell apart, etc.) in the bush,and if you have, any advice on what to do (if it was your only one) thanks.

Please don't be shy, i enjoy reading long posts.:)
 
it's never happened Yet.... BUt I always have a spare folder to back up my fixed blade The key element to the longevity of a knife is to know it's limits and not ask it to do more... Ie I wouldn't dig for tubers with my knife but use it insteda to carve a digging stick...JMHO
 
Not yet, but I will admit when I feel I am starting to work a knife to the point of almost breaking, I back off and think of a better way.
 
Uh ... Adapt and overcome? :confused:

Sorry, but I think anybody who breaks his knife is using very poor judgement. Just don't do that!
 
Not really, once I lost the blade of my folder when the pivot screw backed itself out and the woods swollowed it. I had my Leatherman and was close to home so it was no big deal at all.

I've never given the company another dime.
 
If you take a solid knife into the bush with you, you should walk out with that same solid knife. That means, the only failure you are likely to encounter, is operator failure.

Sure, the unexpected like a poor heat treat, bring about a snapped blade can certainly happen, but it's never happened to me, nor anyone that I know. In fact, the only time I let myself down in the edged tool department, is when I lose my knife and that has happened more than once in my younger years.

Operator failure is using the knife as it wasn't intended to be used. So, choosing the knife for the particular jobs you might encounter and your particular skill levels, is the first and most critical decision you will make when buying your knife.

Don't buy because you think it looks cool. Buy because you've researched here and on other sites, what others are using, how they use it and how well the knife stands up to the tests of survival.

Once you have your knife, practice with it a lot. The last thing you need to do is cut your leg while chopping. Keep safety in mind when developing your skills and tecniques. Once you have that knife and it's uses down, get a smaller knife and do the same jobs, by modifying your skills, to accomodate the knife, but never try to adapt your knife to your present skills, because it may fail.

For instance, my primary go to knife is a Swiss Army Knife (SAK). I've tailored my skills so that I can accomplish the same chores as a guy using a 10" x 1/4" bladed survival knife. It requires much different methods, but the end result is always the same and I havn't broken one yet.

However, if placed into a different environment, my choice would probably be different.
 
One of the first things one needs to understand about bush skills and survival in general is that your blades need to be taken care of, and you should understand what they can take and not take so you don't needlessly abuse them. I see people doing things like batoning their knives with a rock and just shake my head.

When I can, I always bring a 2nd primary knife. I consider the blade on my multi-tool to be only an emergency backup vs a dedicated knife to be used for backup, like a Buck 110. Your knife is a cutting tool, use it as that first and foremost.

For example, I've gone some remote places with a folder, a multi-tool, and my hatchet, which is a typical setup for me. I'll usually toss a 2nd folder into my pack as a backup. If I'm carrying a fixed blade, like my Mora, I'll still toss a folder into my pack as a backup.
 
It's easy to think about these things sitting at a keyboard, but the typical cold-hungry-tired-and-rained-on situation is when tools get abused and chopping slips off the log and onto the leg.

Keep a focus on how you're feeling, how well you're dealing with conditions, and you won't have many problems with your tools.

I definitely agree that practicing with a variety of tools and backups under controlled conditions is best. A dayhike is always a good time to bring 3 or 4 knives along and play at whittling and batoning.

There's always the defective equipment or the unexpected circumstance, though, which is why a SAK or an Opinel or Mora should always be somewhere on your person, not in your pack.
 
I've been fortunate to only bent a knife (my fault-being dumb). Luckily, it was in my backyard, where I tend to test my stuff before taking anything to the woods.
Any time I have been outdoors camping/hiking, I have had quality stuff that I trust and know well.I drag around a Swamp Rat folder and a Becker Necker. Either is pretty sufficient for the bulk of my outdoor chores, heck for the indoor ones too. I have a Swamp Ratmandu in my BOB and a SAK in the car. I know each knife well and use them only as far as they can handle.
I agree with above posts that you need to practice and know how to achieve results with what you have.
I know I have a ton to learn, which is why I hang out here.
 
A good mora or Opinel paired with my gerber saw is a fairly safe bet for minimizing the chance of operator failure.

The right tools for the job often tend to be tools that are far easier to use without failure.
 
I have never broken a knife in the bush, mainly because I don't abuse them and I have never been placed a position that I have had to do anything so extreme with a knife that I would come close. I'm not saying it couldn't happen. I have had machetes get pretty bunged up, but I carry a file for that.

The most common way to wind up without a knife is just to plain lose it. That can happen to anyone so make sure you carry your knife in a secure manner.

I lost a folder from a jacket pocket once.

I had a vine strip off a folder clipped to my pocket. In that case I heard a faint metallic click, in the midst of hacking through brush with a machete. I stopped after a few feet and looked back to see my Endura hanging there as an offering to the bush gremlins.

Know your knifes limits, none of them are indestructable. None of them float either. If you are going to put yourself in a position that you could lose gear overboard then secure it. Carry a back-up. Be systematic, when you stop using your knife put it in the sheath. I catch guys setting things down all the time that should always be secure, knife, lighter, whatever. When moving through rough country make a habit of checking your knife to make sure it is in your sheath.

My brother once shot an antelope with his bow. The hit was high in the lungs and the antelope took off. He followed (long walk) and got close to launch another arrow at it and missed. It took off and he repeated the process until he was out of arrows and the antelope was just walking away from him, at that point weak from the first hit. He kept following. Long story short he tackled it and went for his knife... it had bounced out during his long jog. The guide showed up once he had it on the ground and he dispatched the antelope with the guides knife. The guide later said, "Yeah, you were down to just your teeth!"

If I had a knife break my best bet would be to use whatever was left of it to make a cutter, blade stub on handle or snapped off point held in a split branch. Mac
 
Then only time I've ever broken a knife was in my backyard doing some light chopping. This was 7-8 years ago and the knife was a HI BAS khukuri. Bill Martino replaced it and the new one has been used a lot without a problem. I don't really know why it broke but I was only doing light chopping and it snapped in two at the bolster.
 
It happens. That's why the guys at HI always say to test a new knife. Learn its balance and check for flaws. You can have so much more confidence in a knife once you see how much it has already beeen able to do for you.
 
It happened to me once on a three day trip when backpacking. I had a new synthetic handled hatchet snap on me, just below the neck of the blade. I was not pleased. There was no misuse of the hatchet, either. I was able to get by just fine with my fixed blade. It took a lot for me to buy the fiskars hatchet based on this experience, but I am glad I took the plunge.

Either way, having something on your person at all times is a good idea. Keeping your gear as simple as possible is a good idea. Testing your gear before trusting it is a good idea. Redundancy is a good idea.
 
I broke the tip off of my Buck 119 on a car camping trip. I was batoning firewood and had a particularly tough log. I was stupid and kept going at it instead of moving on to another piece and broke the tip trying to pry the thing apart after it was mostly split. Pure bad judgment on my part. . . it was before I really knew anything about knives. Anyhow, if it HAD been a survival situation, I would have still had plenty of straight blade, just no tip and not much belly, so it wouldn't have been a total loss. I have a much better understanding now of a knife's abilities and limitations.
 
remember the military quote is"one is none, two is one, three and you have one for a buddy" this is the theory i work on, keep redundant systems that are essential for your wellbeing whether it is a critical medicine or a knife, or a fire starter. so secure your gear and keep a backup. i have not seen a failure even when hunting in some third world countries where the cheapest knives have and still are the norm. most likely if the knife failed it is operator error, as you have asked too much of the tool. i asked a similar question on jeff randals forum and he has not had a knife fail either that he could remember. so keep your tools sharp and secure and dont ask more from them than they are capable of.

alex
 
i have owned two different second generation kbars that i used for camping chores and general bumming around both began to come apart/seperate where the tang went into the guard. they never really failed but that widening gap made me nervous. they cost appx. $100 and i only used them for general cutting and pretty light chopping. i returned the first one and traded off the second one when it started doing the same thing. i also have broken the blade on a folder by doing some light prying on some bark. i think it was a sharp or buck. i believe it is possible to have a knife that wont fail under any reasonable use/abuse. thats why i saved up and bought a busse. although there are more specialized tools for some applications i could chop down a tree with it or pound it into the tree and tie off to it and hang there without damaging it. after using it for over seven years now i cant imagine damaging it without some type of mechanical means. a leatherman charge rounds out my camping knife kit.
joshua
 
I agree that I would probably lose a knife before breaking one. Just because you lose a knife doesn't mean you're going to die, but it's going to make it a little harder to live. You still have rocks and sticks and, hopefully, brains.

I carry some backups, down to a couple single edge razor blades, a wire saw, a couple Xacto knife blades, and a small multi-tool or SAK Classic in my PSK. Knives like SAK's are handy to snap onto a lanyard looped around your belt and dropped in a pocket.

I lost a nice Spyderco Delica on a bus when it was clipped into the level pocket on pair of carpenter jeans.:mad:
 
I believe in backyard testing before field testing. There I can test my knives slicing, battoning and chopping without being miles from home.
 
Some good insights in the above posts!

I've had pocketknives fall out of my pockets more often than I can count. One thing I did that kept me from EVER losing my Scout knife while in Boy Scouts was to take a long shoelace and loop it through the bail/lanyard loop on the knife, tying the ends together. Thus, I had maybe a two-foot lanyard on my knife. I would then run my knife through one of the front belt-loops on my pants, and then back through the loop, which had the effect of tying the knife to my belt-loop with about a two-foot length of strong string attaching it there. Not a tough knot to undo, but that long length of string meant that I could use the knife for almost any purpose without untying it. If I dropped it (only ever happened when it was closed), it would end up hanging in the air somewhere below my knee. To stow it, I'd just roll the knife up in the shoelace and drop it into my pocket. A little odd, but I never lost a knife that way.

I think that a key aspect of any knife is to be able to test that individual knife rather strenuously before relying on it for survival purposes. That puts a premium on unconditional warranties such as what Himalayan Imports offers, and (maybe) Busse, Ranger, and Swamp Rat. (Any others? Correct me if I misstated on any of the above names.) With Himalayan Imports (the only brand from the above that I've owned), I always take each new knife out into the yard, and, at a minimum, chop it forcefully into a heavy log and tug on it side to side. The goal is to see if it's going to snap off under heavy use. I have NEVER had any Himalayan Imports blade fail under such testing. Note that there are an awful lot of good-reputation knives out there that you don't DARE test that hard, just because if they actually DO fail, you're probably going to be out the $50 . . . $100 . . . $150 . . . whatever you paid for the knife. Me, I'd be a lot more confident going out into the woods or desert with a $65 Himalayan Imports khukuri that I KNOW can handle being forcefully leaned-on by a 180-pound man, than with a $100 knife that I've never tested because I know I'd be sitting there with only a $100 pair of scrap-metal pieces if it broke. I wonder: how many guys who carry Ontario Bagwell 400-series-stainless Bowie knives, or Cold Steel Trailmasters or Laredo Bowies, or even Becker knives, have actually subjected them to heavy testing before adopting them for carry for potential "depend-on-it-for-your-life" applications? Might you not be better off with an Ontario Old Hickory butcher knife that you have actually determined will throw you back across the room if you clamp it into a vise and lunge against the handle, than with a $150 blade that you've never even used to chop a 2 x 4 because you can't afford to chip the blade of such an investment?

The one knife I've had catastrophically fail was an Ontario FF6--a vaguely small-Bowie-like knife with an 8" blade. I was doing light snap-cuts against a soft-wood pole when the tang snapped about 2/3 of the way into the handle, and the pommel went flying off into the night. The inch-wide blade narrows abruptly to 1/2 inch wide where the ricasso meets the tang, and continues at about 1/2 inch until it is again abruptly narrowed to about 1/4 inch for the last couple of inches of the tang. That 1/4-inch section is threaded, and holds the pommel on by being screwed into it. (The pommel is a roughly-mushroom-shaped piece of steel, the stem of which fits into the Kraton handle material; there's a threaded hole in the stem which accepts the threaded 1/4-inch end section of the tang.) Obviously, a lot of force in any blow is going to be concentrated on that 1/4-inch-wide piece of threaded tang, with a lot of leverage right where the tang enters the pommel--and that's where it broke. The blade itself didn't wind up flying away--though, with the pommel gone, it would have come out after not much more use. By way of full disclosure, I had removed some Kraton from the sides of the handle in order to make it more grippable (even my large hands have trouble getting a really, really good grip around the round, baseball-bat-like handles of some knives.) I didn't return the knife to Ontario, because (1) I think the problem is a design problem, and I just don't trust any knife built as that one was built, so I don't want a replacement; and (2) actually, the way it broke, there is still enough 1/2-inch-wide tang that I have plans of someday just making another handle that works with the tang, and put the blade back into use.
 
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