Full Story on the catastrophic failure of Marbles 7"Trailmaker.

[Sporty]

Least somebody can read between the lines around here!

 

[Cliff Stamp]

When presenting the times you might want to consider a simple ranking scheme. If you take the minimum time and divide it by all the other times you get a number which represents the relative chopping ability of the various blades (multiply by 100 to get the percent ranking). With the times you listed :

Trailmaker : 1 min 15 sec : 93

Magnum Camp : 1 min 10 sec : 100

Trailmaster : 1min 55 sec : 61

Mod 14 7" : 1min 28 sec : 80

Recon Tanto : 2min 33 sec : 46

15" Sirupati 1 min 55 sec : 61

This allows the reader to quickly make qualitative judgements about the performance.

It is very nice to see such details as the sharpening method, and comments about the quality of the chopping.

I look forward to the rest of the review. You might want to consider starting another thread and just linking this one as background information.

By the way, I am very surprised at the relative chopping performance considering the relative weights and balance points. If possible could you post up the thickness of the blades behind the edges and the angles they are sharpened at.

I found the Trailmaster to be a fairly decent chopper. I would guess that yours has a really thick edge on it, which is not uncommon for Cold Steel to do. If you live near a knifemaker you might want to see if they will thin it out for you. It can be done without power equipment but you are in for quite a lot of work.

-Cliff