Cringeworthy Blade Misuse

vanadium said:
Why is that their job?
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It isn't, I understand that I greatly inconvenienced someone by doing this and that there's nothing redeeming to this story, but it happened. I thought it fit the post and I wanted to share it. It makes me feel just as guilty as anything else stupid that I've done. I don't really have anything else to say.
 
I have quite a few stories of knife abuse, but two that stick out to me.

The first was with some of my friends when we were going on a camping trip. We’d brought minimal supplies and planned on building our shelter from pine boughs, and hunting small game for food. On the first day, I lent him my good pocket knife at the time—I think it was a Camillus with vg-10 steel. To my dismay he decided to shove the blade in the ground between cuts. Luckily I had two other ones for the trip so it wasn’t the end of the world, he just didn’t get to use my knives the rest of the trip.

The other knife was not mine. A professor for a machining course in college showed the class his knife. Apparently a previous student thought he was good at sharpening (he wasn’t) and tried to sharpen the knife on a pedestal grinder. The knife was overheated at the edge to the point that the steel was purple, and so much material was removed that the tip was proud of the scales when closed. It wasn’t a very nice knife, but it was absolutely ruined after that.
 
I gotta stop reading threads like this. It’s giving me bad vibes/karma.:p

In the last few hours, I dropped my Spyderco Matriarch on the side of my foot (only a few inches, but a bit of blood) and cut my finger with my Cold Steel Recon 1 (also just a small cut). Both knives are new today too! :mad:
 
I want to play along with this thread, but also wish that I couldn't. Each story exists only because a knife got injured. Here goes:

When I was 16 I was enamored with a CRKT M-16 I picked up at a convention. Not the best knife, and I definitely bungled my attempt to convex the chisel grind, but it was the right knife for that stage in my collection. One day I was assisting a fellow scout at his Eagle Scout project by re-paving and painting a parking lot. One of the adult leaders came up to me and asked to borrow my pocketknife, knowing that I was always eager to showcase my knives. Assuming the best in everyone, I quickly handed him my beloved M-16 then watched in horror as he proceeded to open it (without using the flipper...), bend down and scrape through a 10 ft strip of painters' tape against the concrete parking surface. I swear I could hear the edge scream from 30 ft away. Somehow I bit my tongue and stood stoically, fighting the urge to yell, as the offender joked about being "too old to figure out how to close this fancy locking thing" and handed my crippled knife back to me. Definitely taught me to never lend a knife without asking exactly how it was going to be used.
 
I once lent a Spyderco Native to a co-worker only to watch them stab the blade nearly through the base of their palm while trying to open a plastic clam shell package. I washed the knife in a bleach solution after that happened.

I later lent a Kershaw Rake with cpm-d2 steel to my old boss for an afternoon. I later learned he was using it to pry up stripped screws and I got it back with catastrophic chips along the blade and it's tip missing.

I don't lend knives anymore.
 
Really, really wishing I didn't have this story;

A few years ago, I was with some friends for the evening, and we were removing some hardware in one particular friends computer, at his house. For one reason or another, this old computer had certain parts held in place with zip ties, so when he asked me to borrow my knife, I didn't think twice about handing it over to him. He had been in scouts, owned his own folding knives, so I didn't think anything of it. As you can guess by the theme of the thread, he ended up cutting clean through the zip tie-- and into his hand. That ended the night with his girlfriend taking him to emergency to get stitches. Luckily, partly due to how clean the cut ended up being (freshly sharpened knife), the wound healed nicely and now he only has a small scar left!
 
Didn't make me cringe, but others did.

Rob Criswell Wakizashi or Katana and used to cut cans (soda/beer) in half top to bottom on picnic tables or cable spools at get together's in back yards. Sideways too and other containers of course. People seemed to think it was magic that there was never any damage to either swords edge lol. Tried to explain A2 tool steel vs aluminum but ya know...
 
I have a few but no major stupid abuse.

A few years back a coworker hauled a bunch of our wire scrap to the recycler, and while dumping it in a bin, he saw a knife in the bottom of the bin. He managed to fish it out, and asked the workers if it was theirs. It didn’t belong to them and they said nobody had used that bin in weeks, so he put it in his pocket and brought it home. He was telling me it seemed like an ok knife, and asked me to look at it. Turns out it was a Spyderco Caly3 with CF scales and the ZDP198 laminated blade. I told him it was a fairly expensive knife with very good steel. The same afternoon he comes back and shows me the knife with 1/4” of the tip missing. He was trying to pry/cut heavy zip ties off something and snapped it the first day. I regroups it for him and saved it but it still made me shake my head.

Last Christmas I sold a hunting knife I made to a lady who planned to gift it to her husband. As always after the sheath was finished up, I sharpened and stropped it to a wicked shaving edge, did my push cut tests etc, another strop, and boxed it up. A week later I get an email from her saying it’s beautiful but asking why the knife isn’t sharp. I was baffled. I asked if she had tried cutting something because it was certainly sharp when it left my shop. As expected, she hadn’t tried to cut anything, just thumbed the edge a bit. “When her husband sharpens knives she can feel the scratchy sharp edge”. I explained that it was stropped and has no burr which she is used to feeling likely, but to try to cut something, shave something, or just give it to her husband and let him check it. If anything was wrong I would make it right. Well on the afternoon of Christmas Day, I get an email from her. She says “I’m sorry I quenstioned your sharpening haha, my husband loves the knife and so did everyone else, except my sister. Everyone was checking out the knife and she ran her thumb down the edge. We just got back from the hospital after getting her 4 stitches. You were right, it certainly is sharp”

I also had a customer this summer bring back a knife because the steel was “coming apart, Like pieces are falling out”. This made no sense to me, it was a monosteel blade in 1095, how could it be coming apart? When I saw the knife, it was rusted all to hell. Apparently it was used, and left wet and bloody in the leather sheath in the door of his truck where it stayed for several months. The pieces of steel “falling out” of the blade were pits, from rust eating INTO the blade. I ended up doing a regrind to fix most of it but it just blew my mind that someone didn’t understand that it was rusted from abuse and neglect. He honestly seemed to think that the steel was just somehow falling apart with little dots going missing. The fact that it was brown and orange would have been my first clue.
 
I use to know a knife dealer that had a guy working for him. The friend would get great deals on all kinds of cool knives. Well, he got a great deal on an early Microtech auto. He showed me the knife one day and it looked like it had been abused. I asked him what happened and he told me he got bored at work and was using it as a throwing knife and sometimes it didn't stick in the board he threw it at and would land on the cement floor of the place he worked.
 
Wow. For some reason I love this thread. Some of these stories are brutal.
I know someone who bought a cold steel rajah III and then took it fishing.

He then decided to do a spine whack test against a tree, because he knew how strong the lock was. Well his index finger actuated the lock on the second strike and the blade bounced off of his index knuckle slightly to the right. The knife was essentially brand new and when I saw the cut (I was with him) I saw white. So I assume it went through skin and tendon and bounced off the bone. It took a solid 15-45 seconds to start bleeding, but boy did it bleed. He didn't get stitches due to embarrassment and you can still at the scar to this day.

On to one of my cuts. I was sharpening a kitchen knife I had made for a customer and setting the 20 degree edge. I had previously sharpened on my grinder and the edge was already extremely sharp. Using a lanky diamond system to get the edge at the correct angle. Well long story short I missed the edge of the knife with one of the strokes and tagged the part of my middle finger between the knuckle and fingernail.
Took a chunk of skin clean out. Still have the scar. Also learned that ZFinit gets razor sharp in a hurry.
 
oldmanwilly said:
One of the adult leaders came up to me and asked to borrow my pocketknife, knowing that I was always eager to showcase my knives. Assuming the best in everyone, I quickly handed him my beloved M-16 then watched in horror as he proceeded to open it (without using the flipper...), bend down and scrape through a 10 ft strip of painters' tape against the concrete parking surface.
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And this person was a scout leader? I thought knife care was a topic covered in the Scouts. o_O
 
oldmanwilly said:
I want to play along with this thread, but also wish that I couldn't. Each story exists only because a knife got injured. Here goes:

When I was 16 I was enamored with a CRKT M-16 I picked up at a convention. Not the best knife, and I definitely bungled my attempt to convex the chisel grind, but it was the right knife for that stage in my collection. One day I was assisting a fellow scout at his Eagle Scout project by re-paving and painting a parking lot. One of the adult leaders came up to me and asked to borrow my pocketknife, knowing that I was always eager to showcase my knives. Assuming the best in everyone, I quickly handed him my beloved M-16 then watched in horror as he proceeded to open it (without using the flipper...), bend down and scrape through a 10 ft strip of painters' tape against the concrete parking surface. I swear I could hear the edge scream from 30 ft away. Somehow I bit my tongue and stood stoically, fighting the urge to yell, as the offender joked about being "too old to figure out how to close this fancy locking thing" and handed my crippled knife back to me. Definitely taught me to never lend a knife without asking exactly how it was going to be used.
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Oh no, that Irritates me and it wasn’t even my knife. How could anyone not know any better than that? Why would a grown man even remotely think you would be ok with him grinding your knife across concrete then hand it back like nothing happened? My blood pressure is climbing I need to stop.
 
Really cringe worthy stuff here, keep it coming :p

Some of the stuff makes me cringe (injuries and whatnot), and the others just make me mad (people destroying knives and just returning them as if nothing happened....especially the scout leader who should have known better!). But it's certainly an entertaining and sometimes educational topic :D
 
My Bark River Gunny Hunter is my work knife these days. I cut a lot of cardboard, plastic and rubber, and occasionally fiberglass or foam pipe insulation. I use it hard, no question, but as long as I use it as a knife and not a pry bar I know it's sturdy enough to take it, and a little work gets it right back in shape.

Until my cow-orker (who I thought was a knife guy - at least he was always showing me pictures of his collection) asked to use it. As always, I asked what for, and he said "cardboard". Ok, fine. Few minutes later I turned the corner and there he was, cutting cardboard, laid down flat on a sheet of steel plate.

Grr. (Fortunately, aside from being a doofus, he was a stand up dude; he paid for the spa treatment after I finished calmly and politely remonstrating with him regarding appropriate cutting surfaces...)

That's not the worst though. At least in that instance the knife wasn't permanently damaged and no one got hurt.

A few years ago, after an extended-family holiday dinner, a well-meaning but clueless relative was helping clean up in the kitchen. At some point, she put all but one of my set of Shun kitchen knives in the dishwasher and ran it. :(

I wanted to cry. All of the edges were notched and pitted. I've since had them repaired, of course, but they weren't ever quite the same...
 
SharpieB said:
I gotta stop reading threads like this. It’s giving me bad vibes/karma.:p

In the last few hours, I dropped my Spyderco Matriarch on the side of my foot (only a few inches, but a bit of blood) and cut my finger with my Cold Steel Recon 1 (also just a small cut). Both knives are new today too! :mad:
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Let me guess,

You got the new knives and were excited so continued to play with them past your bed time?

Then you dropped the knife on your foot?

Yeah I have two scars on my foot, same story.
 
My first knife was a cheap little "stainless steel" jackknife that I got for selling a certain amount of popcorn in boy scouts. I lost it sometime in the fall, after having it for about a year. I assumed it fell out of my pocket during a camping trip, and that I would never see it again. The next spring, while I was mowing my front lawn, I looked down and I saw my knife for the first time in a couple of months. It spent at least 3 or 4 months sitting under snow and mud, but I washed it off in the sink, and there wasn't a spot of rust on either "stainless steel" blade. I continued to use that knife for another few months, until it had been sharpened so much that the tip was exposed when it was closed, and it was more of a friction folder than a slipjoint. A family friend who was in the Army and collected knives gave me a Griptilian after I asked him for a recommendation to replace that cheap little knife.

On my first summer camp with scouts, one of the older boys (I think he may have already completed his Eagle project) was making shavings from a small stick for a fire demonstration. He had his index finger against the stick, parallel to it, while he was making long shavings. He ended up shaving a layer of skin off like he was peeling a carrot, right in front of all of us young scouts and the troop leaders. After that incident, the troop leaders took away all of our knives and made us re-take the safety test to get them back.
 
Lapedog said:
Let me guess,

You got the new knives and were excited so continued to play with them past your bed time?

Then you dropped the knife on your foot?

Yeah I have two scars on my foot, same story.
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Caught me. :cool:

Actually, my wife remembered I had a package delivered earlier in the day while I was watching TV in bed. She grabbed it for me and I opened it right away. No fondling of knives though, just dropped the damned Knife right after I opened it.:thumbsdown: The other knife bit me while I was fondling it in the kitchen. :p
 
cashville said:
A handed one of my coworkers my opened Sebenza Insingo to cut a piece of pizza. She held it upside down and applied a lot of pressure directly to the cutting edge with her thumb. When I looked down, it was already too late. She was bleeding pretty badly but didn’t need stiches.
Note to self: Knives aren’t self explanatory to everyone, especially ones with non traditional blades.

I used my Busse Boss Jack as an ice pick to clear out a ton of ice buildup in and around the freezer compartment in my mini fridge. I don’t know if that’s technically considered misuse for a Busse, though.;)
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I have yet to witness a story end well that began with "I handed my coworker my Sebenza"
 
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