- Joined
- Jun 17, 2006
- Messages
- 4,091
Disclaimer: No, I'm not noss4, although his voice sounds a lot like mine.
I bought a handful of Byrd knives from Sharp Phil a couple of months ago, one of which was a stainless Cara Cara. I was stringing a course of barbed wire yesterday when I needed to top a 2" locust that was growing up in the fenceline. I didn't have my chain saw in the truck and it would have been a lot of trouble to go through all the gates to get back to the house and pick it up just for one little tree. The only knives I had with me were the stainless Cara Cara and my Benchmade Pinnacle. I also had my 3 lb sledge that I use to drive steel posts. I decided to see what the Byrd would do.
I used the sledge to drive the blade deep into the tree and then pulled it out as straight as I could, circling the tree and taking out chips as I worked in toward the middle. It took about three minutes, but eventually I weakened it enough that I could snap the top off. Hammering didn't seem to hurt the blade at all, but the particular shape of the Cara Cara blade doesn't really lend itself to hammering.
I was very careful to hit the blade squarely and I never applied any force to the handle with the hammer. I hit only the blade and held the handle loosely to minimize the stress on it. Still, in wiggling the blade loose from the cut a few times I severely loosened the blade. You could easily see where the scales had pried away from the blade and the pivot pin was below the surface of the scales on both sides. I took it back to the shop and used a peening hammer to tighten it back up. I tried to peen the ends of the pivot pin to keep the scales from just doing the same thing again the next time there is any lateral stress on the blade, but who knows how well that will work?
Here's my point: in looking at different models of knives you often made decisions about their ruggedness based on factors that don't actually end up mattering. You look at those big solid stainless scales and think how strong they must be, but the friction fit pivot pin makes the scale strength almost irrelevant. Those big beefy scales might take a lot of vertical stress, but it didn't take much lateral stress at all to seriously compromise this knife. Contrast this to a G-10 or FRN version of the same knife which has an adjustable barrel pivot. The 'cheaper' FRN knife would have been a much better choice for this particular task even though FRN is technically 'weaker' than stainless. I doubt it would even have loosened at all, but if it had then a few seconds with a Torx driver would have brought it right back to peak performance. I should have been carrying the Raven instead of the Cara Cara--even though it's a FRN liner lock it would have stood up to this particular task much better.
This little experience has made me look at some of my other knives, especially my stainless Endura and Delica in a new light. I'm feeling a real urge to break out the center punch and flare the ends of the pivot pins on both of them because that seems to be the first point of failure for a knife of this particular construction.
Please understand this isn't a slam on Spyderco or a complaint about the quality of the knife. I freely admit that I was horribly abusing the knife by driving it into a tree with a hammer. I made a conscious decision to do something that I knew I shouldn't be doing to a folding knife. I'm just posting this to elicit some discussion about friction fit pivot pins vs. adjustable barrel pins and to share my experience with the mode of failure the knife experienced. I thought the blade might break, the lock would fail or the pin would shear from the hammer impacts. I never dreamed it would fail laterally just from my wiggling it out of the cut.
I bought a handful of Byrd knives from Sharp Phil a couple of months ago, one of which was a stainless Cara Cara. I was stringing a course of barbed wire yesterday when I needed to top a 2" locust that was growing up in the fenceline. I didn't have my chain saw in the truck and it would have been a lot of trouble to go through all the gates to get back to the house and pick it up just for one little tree. The only knives I had with me were the stainless Cara Cara and my Benchmade Pinnacle. I also had my 3 lb sledge that I use to drive steel posts. I decided to see what the Byrd would do.
I used the sledge to drive the blade deep into the tree and then pulled it out as straight as I could, circling the tree and taking out chips as I worked in toward the middle. It took about three minutes, but eventually I weakened it enough that I could snap the top off. Hammering didn't seem to hurt the blade at all, but the particular shape of the Cara Cara blade doesn't really lend itself to hammering.
I was very careful to hit the blade squarely and I never applied any force to the handle with the hammer. I hit only the blade and held the handle loosely to minimize the stress on it. Still, in wiggling the blade loose from the cut a few times I severely loosened the blade. You could easily see where the scales had pried away from the blade and the pivot pin was below the surface of the scales on both sides. I took it back to the shop and used a peening hammer to tighten it back up. I tried to peen the ends of the pivot pin to keep the scales from just doing the same thing again the next time there is any lateral stress on the blade, but who knows how well that will work?
Here's my point: in looking at different models of knives you often made decisions about their ruggedness based on factors that don't actually end up mattering. You look at those big solid stainless scales and think how strong they must be, but the friction fit pivot pin makes the scale strength almost irrelevant. Those big beefy scales might take a lot of vertical stress, but it didn't take much lateral stress at all to seriously compromise this knife. Contrast this to a G-10 or FRN version of the same knife which has an adjustable barrel pivot. The 'cheaper' FRN knife would have been a much better choice for this particular task even though FRN is technically 'weaker' than stainless. I doubt it would even have loosened at all, but if it had then a few seconds with a Torx driver would have brought it right back to peak performance. I should have been carrying the Raven instead of the Cara Cara--even though it's a FRN liner lock it would have stood up to this particular task much better.
This little experience has made me look at some of my other knives, especially my stainless Endura and Delica in a new light. I'm feeling a real urge to break out the center punch and flare the ends of the pivot pins on both of them because that seems to be the first point of failure for a knife of this particular construction.
Please understand this isn't a slam on Spyderco or a complaint about the quality of the knife. I freely admit that I was horribly abusing the knife by driving it into a tree with a hammer. I made a conscious decision to do something that I knew I shouldn't be doing to a folding knife. I'm just posting this to elicit some discussion about friction fit pivot pins vs. adjustable barrel pins and to share my experience with the mode of failure the knife experienced. I thought the blade might break, the lock would fail or the pin would shear from the hammer impacts. I never dreamed it would fail laterally just from my wiggling it out of the cut.
