I am one who owns and commonly uses this knife. I'm sorry, I can't tell in the pictures where in the handle your plastic cracked - it looks like it occurred in the guard near the ricasso? If that is the case, it is
definitely a manufacture-defect and should be warrantied, that should not have happened, I've never even seen that happen in destruction tests!
It's not a full tang knife. It was made with an insulated handle to protect soldiers from electrical hazards. Breaks are common from reviews I've read. I would buy the knife if I needed it. But I wouldn't baton with it.
No, it IS full tang, but it does not have an
extended tang, i.e. the encapsulated tang extends the length of the handle (= "full tang") but is separated from the pommel. The ONLY reviews I've found remarking on failure (net 3, including a deliberate destruction test, if that is considered "common") are at this juncture, and the breaks occur due to users
wailing on that pommel, stressing the FRN juncture to failure as would be expected, just like in a Mora 2000 or a folding knife, both of which can be readily used for batonning. The LMFII was specifically designed for military use, NOT as a woods-knife, and it sports lots of bell & whistles (and extra weight) catering thereunto, making it an EXCELLENT survival knife, much better than a BK2 which has all the weight with none of the benefits. That insulated handle has already saved the lives of soldiers, the heavy pommel is commonly used for smashing through walls from the anecdotes I've heard (rather than glass as designed), and the hammer-face actually works exceedingly well, much better than the pommel of any other knife I've used, but then again I am using it as a hammer on stakes and nails (again, as designed), not as an anvil to beat on with a baton...
Yea, I heard about people having the same problem. I know it does not make any sense to baton with a plastic filled handle but Gerber does say this in their description of the knife on their site: "Plus, the LMF II does a slick job cutting firewood and building shelter". Sounds to me like batoning wood is something this knife can do. In either case it's not a very good survival knife if the handle cracks under light use, just so they could incorporate a handle that has insularity properties.
It can and does (from personal experience) do a slick job of cutting firewood and building a shelter (much better than my BRKT Bravo1), it batons very well...
if you know how to baton wood, which I guess some reviewers do not? *shrug* For what the knife was designed for, that special insulated handle is WAY more important than wood-processing in a survival scenario anyway (which is rare).
However I would still not consider this a good civilian woods-knife for survival as it is shorter, fatter, and much heavier, with bells and whistles irrelevant to that purpose, a purpose which again it was not designed for. A better choice from Gerber is the Prodigy which sports much less weight and an extended tang with glass-breaker. Obviously many other manufacturers also offer knives for such purpose.
