CS Recon Scout Fails Miserably

[Cliff Stamp]

I'd rather cut smaller branches that won't dull my knife

As noted, smaller branches can be soaked/frozen through, you need thicker wood to get dry heartwood. And as noted, my knife would not break because I would be carring a suitable one.

Now if I had to use a friends and all he had was one with shody QC then I'd face a difficult decision. Deciding to chance the knife would depend on just how cold it was, chance of rescue, ability to walk out, etc. . Having a usable knife and being frozen the next day doesn't do you much good.

In such a situation what I would do is work into the knife gradually splitting it piece by piece, avoiding knots, and going slow and using wedges carved before hand with the knife. All of this however takes time and energy so again, buy better tools.

Of course there is always a chance that knives break, I have seen high end custom knives get ruined just chopping through a piece of wood, no batoning or hammering just chopping, and that is why you buy such knives, you can't argue a 1/4" camp bowie should not be used to chop wood.

By the way, lots of axes will fail on that class of wood as well, as will many khukuris and other large chopping bowies. I have seen numerous examples of all of them, and as noted, simple $5 Mora's that easily handle it.

do you mean you test a particular knife, say, by abusing it enough to get a confidence, or, do you test a particular type of knife, e.g., you test Camp Tramp and say Camp Tramp knives are OK.

I use knives to descruction, more so than most mainly because I don't pay for a lot of them, so it doesn't cost me anything, and second this gives me a reputation which keeps a lot of the junk at bay, so when I go buy a knife a lot of the hype falls away.

That being said, for the knives I depend on, often ones I buy another of, I will redo some of the non destructive tests, meaning the things that should not have damaged if it the quality is as good as the previous ones. Just because a knife did well doesn't mean the QC isn't in the toilet on the next one, no maker can guarantee 100% perfection.

In addition I never depend on just one tool and always have fallbacks, like I always carry a SAK + saw and decent multitool, solid folder and have multiple fixed blades and folding saws + an axe in my car, and a solid fixed blade on me just out walking around and always more than one when seriously hiking.

If I actually expect anything probable or serious use, I usually have a similar amount of knives as the bald dude on Lost. I have not used the Ratweiler, but the guard is much more pronounced than on the Safari Skinner and that is very secure when stabbing.

As for wood and small branches, I have seen such wood fail to light after being soaked in gas, the gas burnt off and the wood remained. You first need to supply enough heat to phase change the water to liquid and then vaporize it. This is a lot because the heat capacity and heat of fusion for water are both high, then you have to heat the wood up to the ignition point all while the air is trying to suck it back down, this is much harder at -30 than at room temperature..

The question remains why buy inferior tools. Yes there are lots of knives that will break under the above conditions, just like there are lots of ropes that will break if you try to climb with them, and lots of boots that will fall apart if you go hiking with them. So buy gear that can stand the intended use. If a $5 Mora can stand it, its kind of silly to call it abusive - again unless its stainless, or you have a radically different knife like a S90V fillet blade, but the RS is a *very* robust design.

-Cliff

 

[ras]

Survival is about PREPAREDNESS, not IMPROVISATION.

Actually, survival is usually come-as-you-are. Sometimes that means you need to be prepared to improvise. Survival exercises, what-if situations in a controlled setting are good to help folks learn to think out of the box. If all they're taught is that it takes an axe or a saw to make firewood and don't risk your only knife, they may die because they don't have the "proper tools", when in reality, the tools they had were good enough. When something unforeseen happens it's come-as-you-are time.

 

[crossada]

many people have asked what you would do if you batoned the blade in and you had no more blade to hit? i have seen this happen and what works best is to start chopping like normal. grab onto the handle and drive the log down hard and the force will split the log.

this thread just prooves once again that cold steel quality is really lacking :grumpy:

 

[4 Ranges]

And as noted, my knife would not break because I would be carring a suitable one.

Now if I had to use a friends and all he had was one with shody QC then I'd face a difficult decision. Deciding to chance the knife would depend on just how cold it was, chance of rescue, ability to walk out, etc. . Having a usable knife and being frozen the next day doesn't do you much good.

Agreed.

In such a situation what I would do is work into the knife gradually splitting it piece by piece, avoiding knots, and going slow and using wedges carved before hand with the knife. All of this however takes time and energy so again, buy better tools.

Totally.

In addition I never depend on just one tool and always have fallbacks, like I always carry a SAK + saw and decent multitool, solid folder and have multiple fixed blades and folding saws + an axe in my car, and a solid fixed blade on me just out walking around and always more than one when seriously hiking.

Preparedness, I'm with it.

The question remains why buy inferior tools.

Well, they're inferior for certain jobs, but not all jobs. Personally, I've handled the CS RS, and based on what I know of CS, and how it felt in my hands, I passed. Don't get me wrong, it'll still cut, slice, etc.

But if I had to absolutely chop a 20" diameter piece of wood, I wouldn't go with a CS RS. In fact, I wouldn't go with a lot of 7" pieces. You may know of 7" knives that can do this, but I don't. Like you, I'd have a back-up, and I'd go with my khuk or axe. Yes they can fail to, but they failed while doing what, IMHO, they ought to be doing: chopping.

 

[SteelDriver]

Take one more close look at the log in the first pic. The "facet" on the tip side is clearly flat. My guess is that a knife (possibly the RS in question) already split off at least two pieces from the log. Perhaps Nutnfancy can confirm or deny this. If the RS blade is 7.5" from tip to guard face, it looks like around 5" of the blade is engaged in the wood. The smart way to baton a log this size is just as you see it: taking off facets from the sides. Even a 20" log can be batoned with a 7.5" blade given enough time, for whatever reason you would want to do this.

Take another close look at the fracture. It begins at the lower corner of the tang-blade juncture. I strongly suspect that this stress riser was the beginning of the fracture. When a crack forms at a stress riser, it doesn't matter if the steel is 5/16" or 1/8" thick; very little shock is required to propagate that crack further and cause catastrophic failure.

It's common knowledge among metalworkers that stress risers from these sharp corners are weak points in the structure. Cold Steel deliberately ignored this risk when designing the Recon Scout. We don't know if the knife was heat treated properly. Carbon V is not particularly tricky to HT compared to most stainless steel, but even if the steel were too hard/soft it would still break at the stress riser before anywhere else (barring the tip) in a batoning application. An inclusion or impure batch of steel may be to blame, but these would just compound the problem: poor design.

If we could examine all the RS's that have ever broken, they would probably all be at the tip or at these stress risers.

On the other hand, many posters have stated that 7.5" blades and smaller/thinner can be batoned, even through knots. The question is not whether a knife of this size is capable of such baton work, only if it's "appropriate."

 

[Cliff Stamp]

The stress on a knife gets lower when the wood gets larger. It is tougher for a knife to cut through small diameter woods.

It would take a *long* time to cut through a piece of 20" wood with a knife, hell even with an axe that size wood isn't going to be trivial to handle, I would want at least a couple of decent wedges on that. Larger wood can have larger knots, but I have seen axes buckle on ring knots in 4-6" wood while sailing through 8-12" wood all day long. Then again most of the smaller wood around here is black spruce and the larger wood is pine, so the comparison is a bit type biased as well.

By inferior I mean in steel, there are lots of quality choices in blades that will offer exactly what CS has in ergonomics, cutting ability, etc., vastly surpass it even. Of course they may be more expensive, but are your survival tools where you want to cut costs.

-Cliff

 

[Ebbtide]

Back to page 1 and the picture
Does any part of the log look like it was split from top to bottom?
To me it looks like the knife was knocked in and yanked out sidways. That would explain all of the 'tears' above the bark.
But I don't know if that is the case since Nutn' hasn't been back.

As far as the guy hanging off the RS in the video...I saw that and if you look closely the knife is snugged up in the clamp as far as it would go. This way there is only a short end sticking out. The tester applies his 200 pounds evenly and somewhat gradually. No shock in the application of the weight.
Do you think that handle would have held if a 200# wt was attached to the handle via a slack cable and the weight dropped?

And if you guys can see a stress riser in that photo on page one...
please point it out to me. All I can see is where one could form.

Round and round we go until Nutn' comes back.

 

[ras]

I'm also interested in lateral stress applied to the blade. Batoning is one thing, prying is another.

 

[4 Ranges]

Man I'm tired...

 

[Temper]

This is, by far, the best thread on this forum in a long time.

I just think this particular RS was a dud. I have hammered (with a 2 pound lump hammer) an Ontario Spec Plus fighter (7" or so of 1095) to split a log larger than the one in the picture. What we dont know is the hardness of log and therfore how much vibration it was creating, compounded by the low temp.

I wonder if the original poster remembers any resonance whilst it was being hit.

Anyway, great thread and some insightful discussion.

 

[shpshooter]

I would like to add a few things:

1. I don't consider batoning abuse. It is something a knife should be able to handle. If you had a knife that you knew would always break if it was use for batoning or "extreme carving" chances are that wouldn't be your first choice for a survival knife where you never know what you might come across.

2. Again, survival is improvising with what you have. I don't know about you, but I am much more likely to have a knife on my person then a full sized axe, therefor I would practice as much as possible with my knife to see what I can do with it. That way if I am faced with an obsticle I know that I may be able to handle it with my knife.

3. This was a "controlled" training enviroment, the best place to have a failure. Lets say that the knife had an invisable fracture in it. If so chances are it would have broken later, maybe doing something no one would see as abuse, possibly at a very bad time. By practicing with the knife and having it break on him he now knows the knife may have been defective or not the best for his needs and requirements. Again, a good thing to know before you need it.

4. If a knife survives for a few years doing the things you personally expect a knife to do then you know the tools limits, you know your limits, and you know that you have a piece of gear you can place some trust in as long as you continue doing the same things and don't increase your expectations. That is why when someone is trying out a new tool, they will suppliment it with the old one until they can place in it the trust they have that it will handle certain tasks the old tool did/does.

My thought is, something great happened. You learned something. A lot more is learned from having a tool fail, then having it succeed 100% of the time. If you had something that worked 100% of the time you would never learn to to do the task another way, which could save you is a worst case scenario. What was learned is worth the price of the broken knife. Now there is another chance to try something new, with the knowledge of the old. Best of luck.

 

[Ebbtide]

Temper got me thinking about that piece of wood.
Was it beach?
Was it birch?
Or just a good looking piece of ash?

 

[ras]

In additon to the knives, we also used a 10 oz Sawvivor backpack saw to cut down a 40' dead fir tree that we split with the knives.

nutn's 2nd post in the thread. Fir usually gets harder and stronger as it dries.

 

[Blue Sky]

The stress on a knife gets lower when the wood gets larger. It is tougher for a knife to cut through small diameter woods. -Cliff

Classic Cliff statement for effect. Stress is defined by force per unit area, so while it is true that a larger contact area would spread out an equal force more than a smaller contact area, therefore generating less stress, the underlying assumption that the forces would be equal in both cases is false. Resistance from the wood has as much to do with the stress generated in the blade as the blow. A larger piece of wood has more contact area, true, but also generates more resistance. Therefore more force is required to penetrate the wood an equal distance and of course the stress level rises along with it. Taken at face value (and to extremes), his statement would lead one to believe it is tougher on a knife (whatever that means, exactly) to cut through a .06" dia oak toothpick than 6" dia oak log . I don't think so.

 

[Andrew Lynch]

For me, this is the bottom line:

Should a 5/16" thick carbon steel bowie knife purported to be the toughest knife in the world by the company break in half when used to baton-split wood?

If that is acceptable to you, I can understand why you don't see it is a problem. It is not acceptable to me, and thus I think Cold Steel should do something about it (new knife!). If you ask survival instructors/experts this question, I can almost guaruntee it won't be acceptable to them either.

 

[Thomas Linton]

Taken at face value (and to extremes), his statement would lead one to believe it is tougher on a knife (whatever that means, exactly) to cut through 6" dia oak log than a .06" dia oak toothpick. I don't think so.

Geez! Now I am REALLY confused. I would have thought the 6" oak would cause more stress (whatever that means) than a toothpick.

 

[DaQo'tah Forge]

Oh, I dont know,,,,I bet it's a Great Knife,,,,,kinda crappy log-splitter,,,but a great knife!

 

[Greg Covington]

Here's another of my two cents on the RS.....

If I were to go out to the shop and make a blade identical to the RS....in any steel.....properly heat treat it....(and have it one hardness from the tip to end of the tang).....I would expect it to break exactly where the RS broke when put under stress....abuse or not.

I think that any bladesmith or knifemaker would look at the angle where the tang meets the blade and see the same....a huge potential for a heat riser even in the best heat treat.

Bad design in this area and it is covered by the handle.

I always kinda liked the RS though.....with a different handle it made a really good knife.

 

[Cliff Stamp]

the underlying assumption that the forces would be equal in both cases is false.

Yeah, the assumption is that you split the smaller wood faster than the big wood. The force you apply should be based on an efficiency perspective, for survival you either :

a) work at a pace which you can continue for a long time, this is moderate, well under maximum, here your recovery rate essentially matches your exertion rate, for example I can jog at twice my normal walking speed for a long time, however if I ramp it up to 3x as fast I can be out of breath and tired in < 5 minutes

b) go all out because it is an emergency, something that needs to be done *NOW*

If I am batoning wood outside like I was yesterday, I work at a pace which I can handle comfortablely and did it for over an hour. The smaller wood got the same effort as the larger wood, and it thus split faster whereas the larger wood took longer.

Now of course I could really lighten up on the smaller wood so that it took just as long as the heavier wood so that I kept the stresses equal, or hell, I could have relaxed even more and taken longer to split the smaller wood than the larger wood and make the stress less.

Note that if you have this perspective, knots are no more stressfull to cut through than clean wood, seasoned oak is no more stressful than fresh pine, etc. as you can always go lighter until the stress is equal., not a lot of people do that around here though, it must be a NL thing.

As for lateral forces and prying, a seven inch blade of 1/4"+ thick carbon steel will *laugh* at 200 lbs, even if the guy put his full weight on the blade sideways (which you can't do) it would not bend significantly in that manner let alone break unless it had a very serious steel flaw, as the lever lengh is only an inch or so, I would be surprised if you could break a 5/32" blade in that manner. Now if just the last 1/2" of the tip was in the wood it could break of course.

I recently had a friend who weighed 225 lbs, carrying a 50 lbs weight, stand on and then rock up and down on a 1/4" *stainless* blade and it didn't break, it was viced pretty close to the tip so the leverage was many times greater than the RS pictured here.


-Cliff

 

[TLM]

GC;

I would expect it to break exactly where the RS broke when put under stress....abuse or not.

NO IT WOULD NOT. I depends on the way it is stressed. Batoning does not stress the blade/tang juncture if done on the back of the blade.

It is a good thing that most people here do not design aircraft, we would have lost one of our moderators long ago.

TLM