FF Blade Defect

guess I'll be the lone dissenter. I wouldn't have tried it out as a chopper, but do appreciate seeing it get tested. Thank you, Big Bob.

The kamis didn't like the blades when they made them - thought they were too thin. I agreed. But they are very beautiful and well made. The kamis were probably thinking "crazy Americans! why do they want them so thin? They'll break!" while they were making them. So, if we let Yangdu know, she'll let them know and they'll say "Told ya so!" and any chance of getting a thin (or even medium-thin) blade will be squelched. Sorry if that sounds pessimistic. I'd just hate to undo the work we've done trying to get them to lighten up the FF in the first place.
 
Jebadiah is spot on about the heat treatment. A good bolo style machete is very thin and has a wide blade, yet won't deform like this with a permanent set. Also, this style blade is not best served with the kami style HT. A fully hardened blade with the bulk of the blade drawn to a spring temper (excluding edge) will help prevent these types of problems.

MTC,
stevo
 
Jebadiah_Smith said:
Its just heat treated improperly, way too soft. Nothing more, nothing less.

A hardened edge would not have bowed out like that, regardless of the khuk model.
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Yep. What Jeb said. It's not a fighter vs. chopper issue, although certainly one is more appropriate for certain tasks than others. If Bob had been chopping sun dried Manzanita across the grain he could have broken an ax or even bent the blade on a 20" AK. As it was, he said the wood was green.

It shouldn't have bent this badly IMO. They just made a whole batch of beautiful blades on special order, and one of them didn't get heat treated correctly the whole length of the blade. Not surprising. I think he is handling it just right. I would let Yangdu know about it in any case, and they can decide how to proceed.

That HI would stop making a certain style of blades because of incidents like this is not a possibility, also IMO. Like any good business they will make what people want.

Norm
 
I've had machettes which could chop wood - modest applications- without deforming.

We are still here: Is this defective or true of all Thin Foxy Follys?

If true of many thin Foxy Follies HI will have to decide whether or not to keep making them.

Dan Koster- you're right about the Kamis. But what does than mean for us? There is no other logical course than this issue be dealt with. (which I know you agree with) If that means the Kamis will not make further thin Foxy Follies because this one was flawed, then that is what is going to happen. Accepting a flawed product out of an understanding the product line will be jeapardized for others in the future is not realistic.
Don't tell because they'll stop making them? If this line was that fragile, it would probably have found one reason or another to be discontinued.

We use the blades and the cards fall where they fall. Life is unfortunate. Maybe the Kamis will stop making thin FF's.

munk
 
Note concerning machetes and such, I would assume they are also a lot lighter and thus the impacts, in particular laterally, are a lot lighter. That being said a blade would have to be very thin in profile to not be able to prevent that rippling with a decent hardness. The Valiant Goloks for example are very thin in cross section, more so I would assume than the FF's. I mic'ed a couple and put the results in the review, check it for details. They hold up very well except on soft spots and hollows left from forging. I also have a custom parang which I mic'ed and it has a full edge hardening and a spring spine and there is no way you can ripple that, its spec's are in its review as well. If someone could mic the edge on a FF in the same manner and trace out a curvature it would be informative for comparison.

-Cliff
 
Cliff,

Ferguson wrote a review on 6-8-05. He measured some of the blade. Check it out.





munk
 
I'll jump in here and say I don't think it should have folded. There is a thread here on the Blade cutting competitions where they wail thru a 2 X 4. The knives are well, knives. There was no bending or distorting. I don't know the specs on the FF, but I would think it is not thinner then the competition blades. What would those at the contest that saw the blades and saw a FF say?
 
Daniel Koster said:
...So, if we let Yangdu know, she'll let them know and they'll say "Told ya so!" and any chance of getting a thin (or even medium-thin) blade will be squelched. Sorry if that sounds pessimistic. I'd just hate to undo the work we've done trying to get them to lighten up the FF in the first place.
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Gut feel puts me with munk on this one: Is this defective or true of all Thin Foxy Follys? Would be nice to put others through same kind of punishment to see whether or not there is a problem with the whole model line.

Big Bob mentioned that he examined the blade no sooner than upon having finished the job; yet the blade bent only at that particular spot (ironically, sweet spot)... kinda makes me believe that it was a localized edge defect.

Also, I thought that thinner khuks are more vulnerable to breakage rather than edge distortions. Is it not so?
 
munk said:
Cliff,

Ferguson wrote a review on 6-8-05. He measured some of the blade. Check it out.

munk
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First of all let me bring it to everyone's attention that Yangdu is very much aware of what has happened and is quite upset about it.
Y'all need to write like Yangdu is reading the threads, which she does, instead of talking around her, at least that's the impression I'm getting whether intended or not and I'm sure it's not.;)

Here is the thread Munk is talking about.


For my .02 whatever it's worth.;)

Personally I don't think Bob's khuk should have deformed like that. IIRC Dan Koster had a full size GRS that did something very similar so there is precedence in this type of damage.
Also I have a WW II that UB sent me along with another khuk I had ordered, with no explanation, with the same type of deformation as well. And we all know from experience or what others have proclamied that the WW II is one helluva sturdy khuk built to take it.
Obviously the hardening process failed somewhere along the line.

So we've had a failure, so what? Except of course to Bob's great disappointment and believe me I know how that feels since my first Foxy Folly's edge failed first thing and that was with the edge convexed by me before testing.
Bad hardenings are just gonna happen now and then.:grumpy:

Mross has also brought up a good point as well. The knives used in the cutting tests at the yearly knife gathering are not overly thick knives and they don't deform, and they are most all differentially hardened as well although other techniques are used to harden them.
Hell I used to use my mom's Old Hickory butcher knife for all sorts of heavy duty wood carving chores and it never deformed and it Was THIN!!!! :eek: :rolleyes:

With all that said Bob has done the proper thing by notifying Art. If Art can't take care of the problem then Yangdu is good for it and we all know she will make it right.
Like some of the rest of you I don't think we want to get the kamis involved because getting some thinner khukuris is really nice for a change.
Without seeing or handling one of these models I'd have to say that they are users in every sense of the word Up To A Point.
I sure wouldn't chop and then twist when the edge hit the wood because they are thin and are apt to break. I don't know but I doubt the guys testing for the ABS chop and twist with their knives, maybe Dan could tell us?

Here's my suggestion... Let's assume that they are users with limits formed with common sense as several have been tested successfully with no problems.

(This is where some extra information coming from the ones who have used them successfully would be helpful, such as....
Did you chop and twist? .... Was the wood green or seasoned? ....
Were you chopping with or against the grain? ....
Was the wood being freshly cut or had it lain for a while? ...
Anything at all whether you think it useful or not include it with what you did.)

If there are no more failures we know that they're good to go..... If there happens to be another failure or two let's examine them and send them to Art for his expert opinion and go from there.....
IMO that's the best way to proceed and this way everyone wins in the end.... Yangdu gets some very positive input into quality control.....
We find out whether the kamis can successfully make a thin khukuri or not.....
We find out if it's simply a bad hardening that happened....
And the simple fact may turn out to be that they are just too thin for hard use and should be used accordingly.
Hell maybe it was Monday morning and the kami had a hangover, hey, it happens.;) :rolleyes: :D

It all boils down to what Uncle Bill used to say and somehow people have attributed it to me.:rolleyes:
"When you receive a new khukuri take it out and beat the hell out of it... Beat the khukuri from every direction... Try to bend it with excessive force... Chop hardwood with it and chop it as hard as is humanly possible for you... Run a tank over it if you feel that's part of what it should hold up too... Do everything you can imagine and some things you can't."

If the khukuri fails then it's not up to HI standards. With the Katana and the Kobras Uncle Bill had to call some common sense into play. They are swords and should be treated like swords.
Maybe this mistaken run of thin Foxy Follys should be considered swords as well, we'll see.:D
 
I suspect in the end the thin Foxy Follys should be warranteed like Kobras, but every specimen should be able to cut through a 5" green limb without problem, just not a steady lifetime of chopping heavy.

I've written Yangdu.


munk
 
I want to know who made the blade. I have a 06/05 lightweight FF. Yangdu said that they were made by Bura, but mine was made by Sher.
 
Yvsa - I agree with what you've written. Let Art have a look and see what happened, and everybody else give theirs a test (or hang it on the wall).


(For everybody)

The reason I posted what I did is not to try to "hide" the fault. Have I demonstrated that type of action in the past? Heck, I've broken khukuris and posted about it probably more than anybody else here.


Perhaps there is a misinterpretation. The kamis can work magic "within their set of rules". They don't make machettes, they make khukuris. So, why should we be disappointed when we request them to make something outside their normal parameters (from their view)? There's a reason they don't like the thin blades and I wonder if it's more than "thickness paranoia". I think it has to do with their process. Having watched the video of Bura making the blade has "enlightened" me greatly. Their forging, shaping and heat-treating methods seem to favor a thicker blade. Bura forges on a curved anvil, not a western flat anvil. Water-quenched blades have a greater tendency to crack (during quench) the thinner they get. And so on....


Think like the kami for a moment...we asked them to make us thinner blades - blades that they knew would be harder to forge, be more fickle in heat-treatment, and not be 100% reliable (like the rest of the H.I. line).



I don't know what the solution is.....just want people to pause before reacting...that's all.
 
Interesting. (I say that a lot. One of the joys of being a knucklehead is that nearly everything is new and interesting.)

I didn't want to form an opinion about this one way or the other but once Dave mentioned that he'd flexed his, I did anyway.

Flexing a blade is something that I associate with swords, not khuks. Even my Kobra didn't flex appreciably. Some of my swords are stiff enough not to flex. When I can flex the blade, I take that to mean that it isn't appropriate for woodworking.

Now, there are exceptions to every rule. At the MWKK I did some wood chopping with both my tulwar and a manjushree (!) sword. Both did fine. However, I did it with the understanding that both are very sturdy swords (neither can be readily flexed) and that if I loaded up on a bad swing, I'd probably cause some damage to the blade. I wouldn't make a habit of chopping wood with them - I was simply proving a point.

If I had to guess, I'd guess that the heat treat is off. Call it a hunch.

I wouldn't worry too much about it, Bob...even if it's a goner, I have no doubts that Yangdu will make the situation right, one way or the other.

I would be extremely interested to hear exactly what Bura has said about these FF's - both before and after this failure. I'd bet a paycheck that it would be extremely enlightening.
 
Dan,

That's a very good point about the thin FF perhaps being beyond the realm of the kami's expertise. I also thought that if a machete could take this type of use, a khukuri, even a very thin khukuri, should also be able to.

On the other hand, I still think that this type of damage is unacceptable in a fighter and reveals a probable defect. Warriors carried shields and wore armor. If the Foxy Folly Fighter was damaged on relatively green wood, imagine the damage it would have taken had it come into contact with a metal ringed shield.
 
My FF was made by Sher for those who want to know. Sorry for not responding sooner but lately I've been training for a new job in the daytime and working evenings at my old job. Because of this I'll have to wait until Wednesday or so to get my FF mailed off, and then we'll see what Art thinks.

Bob
 
Daniel Koster said:
The kamis can work magic "within their set of rules". They don't make machettes, they make khukuris. So, why should we be disappointed when we request them to make something outside their normal parameters (from their view)? There's a reason they don't like the thin blades and I wonder if it's more than "thickness paranoia". I think it has to do with their process.
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I just got home after a very long day. As I was reading what others said about heat treat, and reconsidering what I said earlier, I was preparing to say just what Dan did. He beat me to it.

I will be looking forward to hearing what Art has to say after examination of the blade.

Mine's not going to be chopping wood anytime soon though.
 
If I have to fight someone with a shield or wearing armor, I'm grabbing my Falcatta...

.
 
Yvsa said:
It all boils down to what Uncle Bill used to say and somehow people have attributed it to me.:rolleyes:
"When you receive a new khukuri take it out and beat the hell out of it... Beat the khukuri from every direction... Try to bend it with excessive force... Chop hardwood with it and chop it as hard as is humanly possible for you... Run a tank over it if you feel that's part of what it should hold up too... Do everything you can imagine and some things you can't."

If the khukuri fails then it's not up to HI standards.
Click to expand...

This is great advice, that unfortunately I did not see until I had been here for several months and bought a bunch of knives. At this point, I hate to start testing them all, especially as many of them can probably not be easily replaced. Even if I had a small failure rate, it would be a lot of trouble for Yangdu to replace them. For the last several months I have started doing this with some blades, but I only really pound on the blades that I am sure I will be using outdoors to chop wood or limb trees.

I had a little 15" Bura Chiruwa AK with a crooked handle that I picked to send to Dan for a new handle, that I knew I would probably be carrying a lot later on, and I beat on a ancient rock-hard railroad tie with the thing until my arm felt like a noodle. Despite the somewhat crooked horn handle, the whole rig held up great. I was convinced I would find a turned edge or a new crack in the handle, but except for some creosote and a few scuffs on the blade it was perfect. Needless to say I was impressed! When these are built right they are REALLY built.

Norm
 
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