Chris Reeve Green Beret Video Desrtuction Test Completed

[Justabuyer]

Noss4's result is the end of the S30V hype as far as toughness is concerned.
Franco

That is absurd. He also tested the Strider S30V blade and it kicked serious ass. The end of CRK perfection hype maybe. S30V toughness.... I think not.

 

[Evil Eye Earl]

I spent my money on a new Chris Reeve Green Beret 15 minutes ago....gun store next door had one on the shelf NIB 2004 .... pics later battery dead on camera.
She will not be abused

 

[the possum]

looking at the above, why would anyone even bother making a tough knife, unless it was S7 or CPM3V or A2?

Note that 5160, L6, and S5 are not on that chart, nor any of the 10xx series. And A2 is only in the same neighborhood as O-1; a steel not known for crazy impact resistance.

 

[CaptInsano]

Wow, I got to see a guy break a $300.00 blade. Learned squat.

It's OK. Some people learn more slowly than others.

 

[Franco G]

That is absurd. He also tested the Strider S30V blade and it kicked serious ass. The end of CRK perfection hype maybe. S30V toughness.... I think not.

I do not think it were absurd. Look at this - do you recognize the Strider BT and Cold Steel G.I. Tanto?

The following comments are in order:

1. It would be a premature to conclude something from just one experiment. It would be necessary to have, say, ten results and then make a conclusion. That would be a science.

2. The Noss4's result does not mean that every GB would break. It means that it COULD happen relatively easily.

3. Again, as you can see from the table in my previous post S30V is NOT very tough compared to steels such as 3V, S7, 9V, A2, etc. The table is originaly from Crucible site, and S30V is a PRODUCT of Crucible (CPM).

Have a nice day,


Franco

 

[CaptInsano]

I think I will trust the tests used to select the knife initially versus peeling apples and wacking it with a hammer.

Can you post these tests for us to look at so that we might learn to trust them as well?

 

[Hard H2O]

Can you post these tests for us to look at so that we might learn to trust them as well?

I quoted someone else that I trust. I do not have the tests at hand. I will google and see what I can find.

I didn't find the test data but I did find a related thread.

From this thread:
Chris Reeve Green Beret?

Up until now I have be somewhat reluctant to post any discussions on forums such as this. I am Dick Barber and I developed S30V while at Crucible. The development of this material was carefully considered and took many thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours of research and development time. Prior to embarking on this project I personally consulted many people in the knife industry to learn what they liked and did not like about the materials currently available in the market place. In addition to working closely with Chris I also consulted makers like Sal Glesser, Ernie Emersion, Tony Marfione, Phil Wilson, Bill Harsey, Mike Jones, Steve Ingrim, Tom Mayo, Jerry Hossom and Paul Bos. I also met with hundreds of users at various knife shows on both coasts. The general consensus was as follows. The current top dog in the stainless knife world was BG42 and they wanted something that was more corrosion resistant, tougher and better edge retention than BG42. We used this as our benchmark as well as 154CM (BG 42 without the V additon) and 440C.

At this point it is important to understand that in alloy development when materials are evaluated the testing is done using standardized test methods and sample preperation. In this fashion you are comparing apples to apples so to speak. One proplem I have seen in knife postings in general is the lack of standardization in testing and the subjectivity of the evaluations. In evaluating edge retention the most scientific methods and disciplined approach I have seen was by Sal Glesser at Spyderco. He has a standard blade design he calls a mule and will use that blade design to evaluate materials. Most of the other tests I have seen or heard about evaluate not only the material but also the edge design. Even with sample standardization you still have heat treat and fabrication variables to consider so it becomes very difficult for the layman to objectively evaluate a knife material.

Back to the alloy design question. One comment made during the data gathering phase of S30V's development really hit home with me. While talking with Ernie Emersion he said one thing "The knife can't break because if it does the wrong guy might die" I took this to heart and the manufactuing methods used make the S30V as tough as you can make a staniless steel which is capable of being used in the low HRC 60's and hold an edge. We were concerned with no only longitudional toughness but transverse as well. This is why we used the CPM process to get as close to homogenious properties as possible. 25 years of steelmaking experiance has told me that processing variables in steelmaking will have a big affect on end use properties.

With respect to corrosion resistance we looked at alloy balance and in particular some tricks that have been used in other stainless steel families to improve corrosion resistance and in additon to the common Cr and Mo alloying we also added Nitrogen which not only improves pitting resistance but also heat treat response. This enabled us to greatly increase the breakdown potential in annodic polarzation testing versus our benchmark alloys.

With respect to edge retention replacement of Mo and Cr carbides with V carbides allows considerable abrasion resistance improvement which will show up in a controlled test such as the CATRA testing done by people like Spyderco and Benchmade.

Another consideration given was fabricability for the knife maker. Since many exotic alloys require extreme heat treatment cycles we had to be sure to design S30V so the average maker could use it. To this point I worked with Paul Bos to see what his capabilities were and we designed the alloy so Paul could successfully heat treat blades with existing equipment.

One complaint which was made for some of the higher alloy materials like S90V was the difficulty in grinding and this was corrected by lower carbide volumes so the average maker could make a knife and still sell for a profit.

All in all many things were considered in alloy design and according to the objective testing which we and other people have done we were successful. It is important to remember that it is possible to create conditions where any manufactured item can fail. These can be through improper design, fabrication or use. When you need a hammer you should use a hammer and when you need a knife you should use a knife.

i hope this is a helpful post.

RTB

From the same thread:

(Bill Harsey here),
First, Mr. stamp, thank you for joining us here. I do appreciate your enthusiam for the world of hard use knives. I was wondering about the above question, just curious, nothing more.

I am the primary designer of the Yarborough Knife, known to the civilian world as the Green Beret.
Just a couple points and question,
This will be an incomplete response because of the restrictions of time.

First, since you know something about secondary carbide precipitation and it's relationship to stainless ability, we do not temper in the heat rang that causes that to happen. The ability to resist stain is critical to the knifes ability to hold an edge for long periods of time in adverse conditions when it is being carried far away from whatever base is.

The Green Beret knife by CRK has been subjected to a long duration salt atmosphere test by the United States Navy Testing and proving facility. It came back with a written PASS.
This facility may be almost as good as Sal Glessers.

Mild steel DOES NOT hold up when making a game animal of any size into usable food when used from the kill to the finish work that puts meat in the freezer. That statement is simply naive.

I have no and by this I mean absolutely NO interest in testing any other makers work. How they do stuff is none of my business. I do my own work and come to my own conclusions and take full responsibility for them by backing up my work 100%. I am willing to make a single exception that will be explained at the end of this post.
I have worked with virtually every knife steel available over the last twenty five years of making and settled on what i use now for all the reasons I've already stated, it works.


The Green Beret knife was chosen from among about 100 other commercially available candidates by 25 members of our Army Special Forces. When the knife was initally submitted no written information was supplied with the knife. A group of 25 current active duty Special Forces Soldiers, hand picked because of their field and combat experience, were involved in making the selection. The "Green Beret" was chosen for having features that were desired more than any other knife they reviewed.
Neither Chris Reeve or myself knew or had any previous contact with this group of men who made the selection and to this day they have never been indentified to us.

The knife was chosen on the strength of it's blade, sharpness and ultimate strength. The knife has to be able to perform a very broad range of tasks, some of which may be unique to a soldier.

Mr. Stamp,
At the beginning of this thread You have already posted (published) a "no go" opinion on this knife and that's certainly your right to make that judgement. I will do nothing to try and change your mind but a positive thought has occured to me.
Since you have such a vast expertise in the field of knives, alloys and testing procedures you should do the knife world a service and start producing your own line of knives. After reading your comments, I'm sure they would be vastly superior to anything else being produced and sales would be good among your loyal followers.
I do have one small favor to ask, when your up and producing, could I purchase a knife from you for testing?
Many Thanks, Bill Harsey

 

[noss4]

Look. I tested the Green Beret on some basic stuff to test function first as I always do. I peeled an apple. I chopped some wood. I batoned some wood with wood. I cut some 10,00lb webbing. I gave the knife high marks for most of this.

Now I begin to move into the toughness and strength phase of the tests. This is where the Green Beret failed.

Many knives have performed well at cutting and chopping and batoning. They have also excelled in the toughness category and a few have excelled in the strength category.

I do not provide numbers (except on the flex test) but I do provide a visual video record of all tests so people can see what I am doing.

 

[zman308]

I owned one for two weeks and sold it. I was not impressed with it. It looked weak. I know this is not very scientific but it reminded me of the M3 trench knife.There are better cheaper knives. Just because it has the Special Forces imprimatur does not make it a wonder knife. If my life depended on a knife, the Green Beret would not be that knife. Get a Busse or Randall.

 

[theonew]

I quoted someone else that I trust. I do not have the tests at hand. I will google and see what I can find.

I didn't find the test data but I did find a related thread.

From this thread:
Chris Reeve Green Beret?



From the same thread:

Frankly, neither of those posts seem very substantive.

Barber's quote basically says we spent a lot of time and money and did a lot of research in developing this steel. Its edge rentention abilities will show up in Catra testing, though no results are actually referred to. And oh yeah it had to be easy for makers to work with.

From Harsey we know that it got a PASS in long duration salt atmosphere testing (now that's tremendously helpful). The knife was chosen by 25 active duty Special Forces Soldiers, though no information is given on the tests or criteria used in the selection process, other than the salt atmosphere test. And his last comment, about C.S. making his own knives, seems in poor taste.



The whole thread is an interesting read with the steelmaker and the designer chiming in frequently. Barber mentions S30V as "capable of being used in the low HRC 60's ", but doesn't mention anything about Reeve using it at 55-57. Now if only Chris Reeve would take up a chair at the table.

 

[Broos]

Broos: Do you remember this post of yours ? You were defending Jerry Hossom's his hammer and nail test against Cliff Stamp. You tried this yourself.

Yeah, I remember that - Cliff said it was "trivial" to cut a nail in half, and my results did not confirm that. I do not remember saying I would never buy another 440C knife (that knife is 440C) because the edge chipped, or say I would never buy another nail because the nail was not "tough enough", either. I have also stated in posts that toughness is often overrated in normal use of a knife.

So Broos and all the others that bemoan how Noss tests aren't relevant. Be sure to post the results of your relevant scientific tests OK?

I'm not bemoaning crap, but I do think you are just whining about my criticism of this demonstration. I just disagree with some of you about the relevance of this test. Buy me a CATRA machine, and I'll be happy to post some test results, and I'll even defend the results using that strange brew called science.

I think this is closing your eyes to the obvious. Sure if you break one knife with a single stroke of a hammer and the other one doesn't and you do not do anything more than that, the test is not going to tell you much, maybe you hit one a bit different or used more force. However, if you take a look at the full testing program that Noss is putting the knifes through than it is obvious that the toughest ones are undisputably tougher than those that didn't far so well. The fact alone that you have to hammer one knife probably more than a 100 times to break it, is a measure. Putting your bodyweight on the blade is a well defined measure. Bending will all your strength is a fairly well defined measure. I mean, we are not haggling over a few pounds, we talk about a vastly different performance!

I think my previous post stated that this test may give you a general idea of the knife's toughness in whatever axis you are beating on it (not necessarily the steel toughness). But even this assumption depends on what factor did cause the knife to fail.

I wouldn't want to distinguish between the knives that fared similarily well. But there is such a vast discrepancy between what some knives can withstand and what others can not, I fail to see where that leaves any room for argument?

That is the issue I speak of - there is room for argument - because you do not know whether what caused the knife to fail was a factor that relates to only that knife (void, crack, bad HT), a factor that relates to the design/model (stress riser, steel, specified heat treatment), or was a factor relating to the test (hammer, force of hit, temperature, something stuck on the vice jaws or hammer head creating a stress riser, etc.). It would not surprise me very much if the same test was done on the same model knife, and different results were achieved. My point is that no one has any idea which of these factors caused this knife to break. That is my point.

I do not have a problem with Noss doing these tests, and never said that nothing of value can be taken from them - what I question is how many conclusions you can really make based on one knife failing after clamping it in a vice, and beating on it with a hammer as done here. I guess it shouldn't surprise me that this upsets some of you. No hard feelings.

 

[Bors]

There is always someone who will contest your methodology and conclusions. After all there were scientists that said we could not fly and that we could not break the sound barrier.

Noss could buy you a CATRA machine and you could do all your little tests however, someone would contest your procedure, the calibration of the machine , your conclusions, your qualifications etc etc....

Noss provides a valuable service for those of us who expect a lot from our tools. He is willing to push tools to the limit and beyond. The average user will find this little more than entertainment however, for others it helps us from buying tools that will not meet our expectations.

 

[Bors]

I spent my money on a new Chris Reeve Green Beret 15 minutes ago....gun store next door had one on the shelf NIB 2004 .... pics later battery dead on camera.
She will not be abused

Use it just don't push it or expext a lot from it and you will be fine. It's not designed for extream use however for general use it will serve you well :thumbup:

Post pics when you get new batts....

 

[slipfirep40]

What I find funny, is that the $300 made in the USA Chris Reeve got outclassed in every category, with the exception of chopping performance, by a $30 made in china Smith and Wesson el-cheapo, and in every category by a $40 made in china ka-bar. If thats not funny, Then I don't know what is.

At least you get a nice sheath....

 

[ehhh]

I don't think the true value of noss's tests is in what he does (though I feel it's informative), because a lot of the stuff he does is "abusive." He plays rougher than most would with their knives, but I don't doubt some other people out there do the same.

Anyhow, the value in his tests is the comparison between knives. He does pretty much the same rough tests to everything he gets his hands on. Sure there will be variation in the force he uses and in the manufacturing of the knife, but I don't think it can't be argued that valid information can be gathered from comparing the tests to each other. Can you really argue that hitting one knife on the spine with a steel hammer is significantly different than hitting another knife on the spine with that same steel hammer? I think it would be hard to argue that.

Pretty clearly there is information to be gained about how different knives compare to each other, and their breaking points (whether or not you ever reach them).

 

[a2d2]

What I find funny, is that the $300 made in the USA Chris Reeve got outclassed in every category, with the exception of chopping performance, by a $30 made in china Smith and Wesson el-cheapo, and in every category by a $40 made in china ka-bar. If thats not funny, Then I don't know what is.

At least you get a nice sheath....

keep in mind that smith & wesson use fairly soft steel. i've never seen one that could hold an edge for very long. try snapping a butterknife in half.

 

[Kiah]

What I find funny, is that the $300 made in the USA Chris Reeve got outclassed in every category, with the exception of chopping performance, by a $30 made in china Smith and Wesson el-cheapo, and in every category by a $40 made in china ka-bar. If thats not funny, Then I don't know what is.

At least you get a nice sheath....

The Ka-Bar USMC and Warthog are US made and the Bowie is made in Taiwan.

The S&W impressed me. I assumed it would go quickly, but it took some punishment. It's only failing was a design flaw inherent to all knives of this style (It did outlast the Ka-Bar). In the end, it was still in two pieces, which is a lot fewer than most of the knives noss has tested. I know I'm going to get flamed for the following, but oh well. If you ignore the scores and watch the videos, the S&W outperformed the Scrapyard on the concrete chopping and held it's own against the Busse. It didn't have as much weight behind it, but it did have a thinner edge. A lot of people list their complaint with S&W knives as not trusting the HT. Unless this knife was a fluke, somebody knows what they're doing.

 

[Kiah]

keep in mind that smith & wesson use fairly soft steel. i've never seen one that could hold an edge for very long. try snapping a butterknife in half.

It seemed to hold it's edge pretty well in the vids.

 

[a2d2]

It seemed to hold it's edge pretty well in the vids.

maybe so. i can only speak from personal experience. i don't watch his vids.

 

[Cobalt]

not sure why anyone would be surprised at this test. S30V is not tough and making it soft like reeves does only adds little toughness with great loss of edge holding.

I don't think Noss needs to test another As Cliff had already broken a few and had similar opinions as noss.