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Frame lock vs liner lock in spine whack test

marcinek said:
People should spine whack away as far as I'm concerned. Me, I lick the locking mechanism to see how it tastes. It's an even more informative diagnostic test, in my opinion.
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Marci, do you freeze the knife first and see if your tongue will get stuck? :D
 
jjoanty01 said:
Marci, do you freeze the knife first and see if your tongue will get stuck? :D
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No, no, no. If it's ice cold you cannot taste it, and you can't tell if the lock is good. The lock should be at room temp, like a fine red wine. Or a fine, stinky cheese.
 
evanPGH said:
Maybe to shake off food that sticks to the blade?

Idk that's the only thing I could come up with. :confused:
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Smashing/breaking stuff? But, if I recall, Hwang Jino is one of those "crazy expensive Japanese sushi knife" guys....can't imagine he'd smash anything with one of his blades!
 
Sorry I didn't give reason for spine wacking my kitchen knife.

It's a good way to crush some garlic (I don't like side wacking, hehe sounds funny, as it could bend my thin blade).
 
marcinek said:
I'll bite. Why you spine whacking a kitchen knife?
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I do that to my kitchen knives too! To "bruise" stalk-herbs like rosemary without actually cutting or breaking them. Not really a whack but more like an up-side-down chopping motion.
 
Do you want Ford or Chevy for crashing into walls like no driver ever will tests? Spine whack tests are plainly dumb. They test locks in ways they were never meant to be used. If you are cutting and you slam the spine of the knife onto something... you did it wrong. I have used a knife countless times, and I have never actually needed a lock on a folder.

ALWAYS treat a folder as a slipjoint. The lock can always fail, and you never know when that will happen. If you will he cutting and there can be shock applied to the spine of the blade, get a fixed blade.
 
Spine whacking always comes up, because it is an important factor to someone who plans on using a knife for abusive purposes. If it was plain and stupid practice, it wouldn't come up every month.

How do we test a knifes cutting ability? We test it by cutting stuff and seeing how long it can stay sharp

How do we test a lock? Firstly let's define a locks purpose: a lock is to prevent a blade from closing over your hand, when a force is experienced to the rear of a knife. THEREFORE, it's build purpose by nature is to be built to accommodate incorrectly applied forces to the blade.

Having said that, we test a manufacturers steel by cutting stuff, and we test a lock by applying forces in the incorrect way. Hence a spine whack.

It has been quoted many times, by the top manufacturers, that spine whacking lightly is ok to check your lock up is good. Just like the video above, even before you receive your knife, it's been spine whacked by the manufacturer, why? "Because that's how you test the manufacturing quality of a LOCK". If it fails, it isn't doing its job, and needs to be redesigned or checked. They cannot test their lock by cutting things, they need to apply that forbidden force that is so greatly frowned upon.

Simple as pie...
 
NetshadeX said:
Toyota vs Mazda in a concrete wall crash test, which will be more heavily damaged.
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It's not like manutacturers test the cars for worst case scenarios, even though most people don't intentionally drive into walls. Oh, wait..... Crash testing is mandatory per federal law.

Spine whacks DO test lock strength. If you do it, remember that you are likely ruining the knife in the process though. It's destructive testing at a certain point. I give all of mine a very light spine test when I get them, and a couple more as they wear. That said, sitting around hammering the spine on a table repeatedly is going to round the tangs of your blade and lock, no matter how strong it is.
 
Perhaps we can get someone to collect all the available locking folders, gather some friends to help, get everyone in a circle and do a blade spine percussion test; one could make a video and call it "The Great Whack-off!"
 
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WRGreen said:
Perhaps we can get someone to collect all the available locking folders, gather some friends to help, get everyone in a circle and do a blade spine percussion test; one could make a video and call it "The Great Whack-off!"
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You mean like a circle jerk, but wacking the spines of knives?
 
JasonG said:
Spine whacking always comes up, because it is an important factor to someone who plans on using a knife for abusive purposes. If it was plain and stupid practice, it wouldn't come up every month.

How do we test a knifes cutting ability? We test it by cutting stuff and seeing how long it can stay sharp

How do we test a lock? Firstly let's define a locks purpose: a lock is to prevent a blade from closing over your hand, when a force is experienced to the rear of a knife. THEREFORE, it's build purpose by nature is to be built to accommodate incorrectly applied forces to the blade.

Having said that, we test a manufacturers steel by cutting stuff, and we test a lock by applying forces in the incorrect way. Hence a spine whack.

It has been quoted many times, by the top manufacturers, that spine whacking lightly is ok to check your lock up is good. Just like the video above, even before you receive your knife, it's been spine whacked by the manufacturer, why? "Because that's how you test the manufacturing quality of a LOCK". If it fails, it isn't doing its job, and needs to be redesigned or checked. They cannot test their lock by cutting things, they need to apply that forbidden force that is so greatly frowned upon.

Simple as pie...
Click to expand...

Spine whacking (not the tapping that you are referring to) is the lock test equivalent of chopping through concrete to test the blade chip resistance. It is done by some people, but the majority of knife users view the act as mostly useless, and a very good way to hurt yourself. Knives are designed to have force applied to the cutting edge, and some knives were designed to he able to stab. Multiple tests have proven that locks aside from axis type and tri-ad locks are definitely safe, and even those can have unforseen catastrophic failure.

The safest practice is to always assume that your knife is just waiting to close abruptly. Learn safe cutting practices. Then when you incidentally apply force to the spine and the knife doesn't fail you can go about your business. There are far better lock stability tests.

Also note that every spine whack, even if the lock holds fine, does damage to the lock. It wasn't designed to sustain that force. It is never a good idea to needlessly test the limits of anything, especially when you are testing a limit that shouldn't be tested.

One last thing, I have seen some posts about people who had knives for a long time that fail the spine whack, but are 100% safe to use. I have had a few knives like that. Not a single accidental closure. No fingers chopped off. Only injuries sustained were from me being an idiot.
 
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