Originally posted by Ken Cox
Yes, the F-S has a point optimized for fighting and not for utility.
Nonetheless, the Wilkinson made F-S knives of the WWII era did NOT have a reputation for breaking.
The reputation for breaking came from a batch of US-made F-S knives issued to the Marine Raiders and Marine Parachute Battalion at the very beginning of WWII.
These knives had an inappropriate heat treatment and this caused them to break when used as a field knife.
I see no fault in a fighting knife having a thick blade geometry, and especially so in a double-edged knife, which has a smaller cross-sectional area than a single-edged knife.
Think of a single-edged knife as a half-sharpened double-edged knife.
In order to complete the sharpening of the single-edged knife and thereby make it a double-edged knife, one has to remove steel, or cross-sectional area, from the spine.
F-S starts out with a 3/16ths thickness and carries a diamond cross-section as much as possible to the tip.
This will allow a hair-shaving, damage resistant edge for combat, but it won't slice food in the kitchen.
The Boker, in order to maintain as much cross-sectional area as close to the point as possible, delays the point with a fat ogive curve.
This makes the Boker more versatile, by virtue of its thinner blade geometry, but it does so by sacrificing the acuteness of its point.
The Ek uses a deep hollow grind in order to maintain a thick central spine almost all the way to the point.
The Ek also has an ogive point, but it balances whatever it gives up in point by having a leaf shape with a waist.
This waist multiplies the effectiveness of the Ek in the draw cut and the slash.
If one could add up the pluses and minuses of the Ek and the 1st Pattern F-S Fighting knife, I think they would come out fairly equal.
For me, the Boker gives up too much point in order to obtain versatility.
Someone elses might score this versatility in the Boker's favor.
I read an article written by Jeff Cooper, whom we normally associate with the 1911 handgun, and a compelling argument for the point as the determining attribute of a combat fighting-knife.
Upon reflection I come to agree more and more.
A fighting knife should have a point, first and foremost, and any other attributes it has should detract from the point as little as possible.
The F-S has point.
What the Ek gives away in point it picks up in its leaf shape and its deep hollow grind.
The Boker, to me, represents a great all-around soldier's knife, and a good knife to have in a fight.
In a war-time, real combat, hand to hand in the dark, life or death, winner-takes-all situation, I would pick the 1st Pattern F-S because its "tablet" ricasso facilitates the paintbrush grip and because it has the most acute point of the three knives.
I place the Case V-42 in the same category as the F-S for the same reasons.
