Joe :
Sometimes Cliff's test results are different from what I experience in the real world, e.g., his Ontario machetes falling apart in testing ...
The Ontario's broke during the worst kind of wood working, limbing dead branches in sweeping cuts, which is one of the worst things you can do with a knife period. They handled lots of other wood work fine, and can handle dead branch trimming when done in a less stressful manner, this is where skill and power come into play. I am at odds on how to handle such issues. It isn't something that I would ever do task wise (I would rate it as far more abusive than chopping into a concrete block) but it is common technique now. To clarify, my problem with the Ontario machetes isn't that they failed, any knife should have problems with that task, unless they are vastly overbuilt for wood working. Its the way in which they failed, huge edge blow outs. The machetes don't have the toughness of something like the Martindales which will just see edge rippling under the same work. However, I had QC problems with Ontario, some were too hard and others too soft. My two machetes may have just been over hardened.
Medusaoblongata :
That guy has made more enemies in the knife world than just about anyone else, and it doesn't seem to phase him at all.
The vast majority is from people selling over hyped products. It is the expected behaviour so it doesn't bother me. Of course it doesn't happen in every case, on occasion people will admit there is a problem. For example, recently on rec.knives Kyocera was blasted by Steve Bottorff :
... the incorrect and misleading information about ceramic knives found on your websites (and copied without modification on many of your dealer's websites) is tarnishing your image.
Now, how do you think Ron would react if I used this line on him (check past posts for the answer as I have said similar things), or see how Randall reacted when I commented that his webpage on the RTAK was misleading. I supported Steves comments as did several others. Mark Murphy from Kyocera came into the discussion and kept it to a debate on the issues (not on the people), and in the end was discussing how to rewrite the info on the website to be more accurate.
In regards to the Recondo, yes, some of the work done was fairly extreme, though at the limits of what has been suggested by many to be in line for "tactical" knives (weapon vs weapon impacts), and it was only a part of the review. In perspective, the usage of the the Basic from Busse Combat was more extreme, as are aspects of other reviews (chain impacts on khukuris for example). The Recondo review is actually one of the ones I send to makers/manufactures when they ask about work that I do. Not because I think it is one of the better ones, I think the newer ones have improved, however it allows me to see if they can see past the extreme parts and discuss the review in a practical, and unemotional, manner. Some can, and some can't. As long as there are those that can, there really isn't any need to be concerned about those that can't. The manufactures that do extensive R&D have seen piles of broken and mauled blades. Unlike Ron who commented
(recondo review thread ) :
It's never settling seeing a knife in that condition ...
to them its just another piece of data, not something to get emotional about. And again, this is just one aspect of the reviews, and in fact, is not even close to being the majority of the work done.
I have read allegations that Cliff gets paid to do some of his tests. I haven't seen any evidence one way or the other. I would like to see some evidence or at least to hear Cliff respond to this allegation ...
No, I don't, in fact I am usually out more money in paying for duty and shipping than I actually spend on knives (about 1000$ US last year). Some makers/manufactures will send me knives to look at free of charge, which could of course be seen as payment. This is one of the reasons that I started breaking knives in the beginning. It prevented me from going too light on a knife because I wanted either to keep it, give it as a gift, or sell. If I knew in the end it would always be destroyed I was never concerned about keeping it in pristine condition or reluctant to do anything with it. It is also a good way to keep a certain class of makers/manufactures away.
As of late I have backed off on intentional failure testing on some products (beyond normal use for me) and am developing a network of extended users which will allow a multi-perspective review which I think is more beneficial. The intentional destructive testing will eventually be performed, but it will take a lot longer. I started this a few years ago (some of the older reviews were collaborations with two or more people), but only seriously started it again recently. The Martindale machete project will be the first large group effort. It should be interesting, there are still some problems to be worked out, mainly concerning modifications to the blades and restricted use which I know may be a serious problem based on past experience.
Keith :
Cliff not only studies knives, he studies knives by using them. Maybe he tends to do most of his using while he is testing knives, but he hacks up more lumber, clears more brush and limbs more trees than anybody else I know of.
This is one of the more ironic arguments that crops up - "its all just lab testing, I want real world results.". This is solid in theory as if you didn't actually use a knife for regular work, you could have some very odd impressions about what is necessary for quality and thus do some very odd controlled tests. This is actually the case for a lot of manufacturer tests. The lock strength ones being one of the worst examples as they don't correlate at all to actual lock stress when a person is using a knife. But they do generate some really high numbers which are great for promotion.
Some people are under the impression that all I do is controlled testing, mainly because I don't post about the regular work I do very often. For every hour of controlled testing that the reviews describe, there is about 10 hours of just regular knife work done by me (and repeated by friends) to see how it correlates to normal use, making sure I didn't overlook something significant. For example, in regards to large blade use, so far this year, I have cut down about 15 truck loads of wood, all with hand tools (axe, large blades). Here is a shot of the first pile :
http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/wood_front.jpg
When the weather is fine, I spend about 20-40 hours in the woods a week. Until the next years wood is cut, this is just all just felling, no real comparative cutting just using the best blades I have. Once I get enough cut, I relax and do a lot of stock testing. Usually I take the rotted and/or infested wood and buck it up with various saws or blades to examine the relative performance. It is usually either burned on site to keep the bugs away, or I split and cut it up very fine, again looking at relative blade performance and just experimenting with fire burn rates and heat and smoke production (and as of late thanks to Jimbo primitive stove experiments).
In regards to repeatability, this is another myth, usually taught in an introduction to science in elementary school and never meant to be used at anything beyond this very basic level - "It is fundamental to science that an experiment be able to be repeated in any place by any individual and get the same results". This is false for many reasons. The best take on this I have seen was by Feynmann in "Six Easy Pieces" where he vigerously tears into this myth, and the people who push it. This myth actually violates many principles of science and statistics and is a gross oversimplification of reality (again the ironic part). Like all myths, there is some basic truth to it, which is why it is introduced (like you can't take the square root of a negative number) and many of the finer points can be ignored on the scale of which we are talking about here (knife use).
There are two broad classes of people who make such complaints. Those that do so to complain, and those that actually want to learn and thus want to figure out how to deal with such problems. For example I was discussing tip testing on wood with an individual awhile back and he could not figure out how to compare his results to mine (we didn't have any of the same blades to use as benchmarks) and factor out the influence of the wood used. I bought a few lengths of 2x6, cut them into sections, kept a dozen selected at random and X-pressed him a dozen. As for the work in general, I can bound all the results and have done so in the past when this information was desired. It was of course ignored as it is red herring argument anyway. For example, for all Ron's complaints about the unscientific nature of the extreme testing, he has also stated quite clearly that no such testing which would cause a warranty concern should be performed regardless of method. Thus his argument isn't coherent, just negative along any lines possible even contradictory ones.
As for criticism, factual or personal, by all means fire away, though I would prefer factual as the other part has no information content, and no you don't need to do any knife work to voice a complaint though it generally makes for a more useful one. The only problem is with the personal attacks which can generate the reaction that stjames described. We lose valuable information that way. The above tip work won't be presented publically for that reason. This of course is one of the goals of the attacks from the makers/manufacturers. The other is to simply muddle the facts with personal arguments to cloud the issue and hopefully prevent further discussion.
-Cliff
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