Kohai999 said:
Gerber got out of the "performance" knife game a LOOOOOONG time ago.
While the heat treating may not be on par with other production companies, the many problems with this knife are not specific to that aspect but to the design. I have also seen the same type of impact failure on a Buck/Strider Solution, Reeve Green Beret, etc. . High carbon stainless in general doesn't respond well to such impacts, especially when it has multiple sharp edges and focus points to concentrate strain.
I have recently used a Fiskars axe and while you can notice a difference in the edge performance compared to the Bruks, I would not describe it as harshly as your label. It easily takes the Bruks on a cost/performance perspective and with some hand tuning on the edge is actually competitive even at price. It is actually better than the Bruks in several aspects of design. The Fiskars is more in line for example with the ideal axe Cook describes in the axe book than the Bruks, aside from the bit being more of a soft wood pattern.
Back to the Trident, before doing this writeup, I did a search, local to bladeforms and net wide for feedback. The praise for this knife was in general high, usually as possum noted, based on a visual overview or specific to how it balanced in the hand as this knife is very light and neutral and some judge this as ideal for a fighting knife. This however as possum noted is not an opinion uniformly held. Personally it always seems to me that knives of this nature should be able to take heavy impacts and I see little value in high wear steels for that application.
As an aside on balance/speed, awhile ago you (possum) noted about leverage in regards to mass being forward and this speeding up the blade in hand. I have been thinking about that lately and even did some timed trials on the Fiskars vs Wildlife. The Fiskars is much more head balanced because of the plastic handle and is significantly faster in hand and the Wildlife feels very sluggish in comparison. It is slightly heavier but that isn't the difference in feel.
Now if I focus I can move both at max speed, which is cutting about two chops per second, but the Fiskars will achieve this pace much more naturally whereas the Wildlife "wants" to move slower and feels in comparison more like a club. I think what is happening is that I am responding to the more forward balance by naturally inducing a snap whereas with neutral balances you realize this isn't effective and just swing the implement as a whole. As an extreme it would be like trying to get a full speed swing with a nerf bat, there is just nothing for your muscles to respond to.
I should note however that high speed chopping it really unnatural to me as I am used to actual working with the blades for hours at a time so unless I focus highly I will out of instinct chop at this pace, or a focused really high impact one, as I have done a lot of test chopping at maximum impact. I think I can get up to three hits per second, or at least about 2.5 with some work and it would not surprise me in the least if someone who focused on speed could swing the blades signficantly faster. My precision and accuracy also go to crap at such speeds and I typically take 25-50% more chops than necessary and the notches show heavy stair stepping.
There are two basic things going on, one is just moving your arm and the knife as a whole in a linear manner which is just dependent on the weight, and the second is the rotation of the object which is very dependent on the distribution of the mass. You have made this distinction before. It seems to me that you can increase the speed of both up to a point with greater weight / forward distribution. At some point though it becomes too much and you don't have the strength to accelerate it at maximum any more.
When this happens depends very much on the user, I have found for example my 18" Ang Khola (920) grams I can swing at max speed with some focus, but my 22" Ang Khola (1600) grams is slower, I was averaging 0.76 (2) seconds per impact recently on woods, but this was elevated as the impact power was so high I was knocking the wood around. I will be doing some trials on fixed woods shortly.
I also compared my Ratweiler vs Battle Mistress. With the Ratweiler unless I focused I tended to induce no rotation, or at least felt none and was just doing very straight swings. However I could definately feel the Battle Mistress snap and after using it alongside the Fiskars I was definately left wanted a blade with a much more forward mass distribution. Thanks for that my the way, I am now no longer as pleased as I used to be with some of my knives with the bliss of ignorance lost.
Now I would be really interested in working with a larger bowie which was much more forward balanced, both statically and dynamically, both in terms of the effect it would have on the speed as well as vibrations in impact. A lot of the subjective judgments I have made on feel in the past also are made more definative now numerically as I can quantify their abilities now.
-Cliff
