Cutlery With Holes In The Blade?

I cannot comment on tomahawks (I do not know). Regarding conventional knives there are two types of "holes" that I assume you are talking about.

1. is the single hole near the pivot area on folders that is used as a blade deployment feature. This concept was originated and patented by Spyderco and also appears on many of their fixed blades as a symbol of the brand.

2. Numerous holes all over the face of the blade. This is almost exclusive to kitchen knives and not very common even there. The concept is to break the surface tension that tends to hold substrate against the blade (think about slicing tomatoes very thin...the slices stick to the blade and make cutting the next slice difficult).

I hope it is one of these that you are talking about, otherwise I have no idea.

Does it weaken the structure? Sure, but it is very rare that we see examples of breakage.
 
Don't know about tomahawks. Some folding knives use holes or slots as opening devices. If they're properly designed, they make it easy to open a folder with one hand and still have a blade that doesn't have any sharpening obstructions like thumb studs sticking out of it. Other knives (some Benchmade & Gerber models come to mind) use holes or rectangles as an aesthetic aspect of the knife's design. IIRC, some custom designers use them as well.

As far as weakening the blade, I guess that any time you remove some material from a solid piece, it leaves the blade a bit weaker than it was. But as far as I'm concerned, on a small or even large folder blade, there's more than enough steel still there to make the blade strong enough for anything it would be asked to do. I've never broken a folder blade and I don't personally know anyone who has. That's in almost 60 years of carrying and using folders and hanging around with other people who use them regularly.
 
Circles are usually used to strengthen a structure. But in knives, I think it is just a "decoration." I personally think it's hideous.


A knife like this.

KS1560.gif
 
Lots of different blades have a variety of holes, some visable, some not. Under the handle scales of some hawks and fixed blades are holes that "lighten" the feel of the blade. A solid tang can be too heavy, depending on the size, length, thickness, etc.. For example, the triangular cutouts in this hawk's tang are to lighten up the handle. I can only guess about the holes in the head. Must be for weight distrubution, could be for balance, or could just be for looks.
As far as weakening the structure, that just depends on the design, steel, and it's thickness. Some 1/4" thick knives and hawks are so strong already, cutting a hole through a solid tang that's 1/4" thick won't weaken it much at all.

OBW_Recon_Head.jpg



This big hole is definatly to lighten up this massive hawk, it's 44oz with the cutout...
IMG_0225.jpg



These holes are wrenches for the MSR Stoves, and a bottle opener...
spork.jpg
 
There are also holes designed to cut wire like in this knife:
m11.jpg
 
I agree with those that think the holes are usually cosmetic (except in cases like Spyderco, where the hole is used in place of an opening stud). For example, take a look at the many TOPS knives that have that dot-dash-dot hole pattern in the blade. For instance, the new TOPS/Buck Nighthawk collaboration, and the TOPS/Buck CSAR knives (fixed and folders). All have those ridiculous holes in the blade.

I don't like their looks, and don't think they are really useful for anything. However, I also don't think they really have any significant impact on blade strength. I suppose in some theoretical sense, they DO weaken the blade structurally, but in a practical sense, nothing that an ordinary user will be doing with these kinds of blades is going to put enough pressure on the blade that those holes are going to come into play and cause it to fail. I suppose MAYBE in the kinds of extreme testing that somebody like Noss does, the holes could cause premature failure, but nobody I know really uses their knives that way.
 
I kinda flop back and forth on this issue... but it occurs to me that nearly every folder has a hole in the blade! It's called the PIVOT. I'm very curious if there are statistics, particularly from a company like Spyderco, about which hole goes first, the thumb-hole, or the pivot hole. I think a knife with a fuller (one that doesn't go all the way through the blade, but where material is removed from both sides) might be a best-of-both-worlds type of scenario for an opener which maintains rigidity, but doesn't interfere with sharpening, like some thumb studs do.
 
Deployment feature, round, oval, or otherwise
Design feature, the designer wanted it for aesthetic purposes or as mentioned to break the surface area
Feature to attempt to lighten the tool while maintaining strength/toughness of the tool.
 
Dunno if this is an intended consequence or not, but blades with lots of holes take less heat/energy to get up to temp when heat treating.

I have done this several times myself when heat treating various pieces of metal when I only had access to make shift heat sources - an object that would not otherwise reach sufficient temp will glow nice and hot after a few holes are bored into non-vital areas.
 
Sometimes they are to "add interest." At least thats what cold steel's FAQ says about the whole in their Safekeeper III. For some reason when I seen a whole I become less interested.
 
Spontoon said:
I still say they're a detriment to the blades strength.
Click to expand...

I've personally never seen a folding knife that doesn't have a hole drilled in the blade, do holeless folders even exist???

Not to mention this pivot hole gets more stress on it than any extra hole. And they pretty much never fail.

So I'm going to go ahead and say, no, they do not affect the strength of th blade in any realistic scenario.
 
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