Great Knife Destruction Stories

DRider

DRider

Joined
Jan 8, 2005
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597
I think it might be entertaining (and could well have been done before, but there must be new stuff) to share the interesting ways we've accidently trashed our knives. Photos of course would be great.

I wish I had a photo of this one...

I was setting up a desktop aquarium, a cute little 2 gallon hexagonal thing, on my desk at work. I had water in it already, but the final set up was off because the cord went under the plastic base without a little cut out, and so the whole thing was "tippy."

Mind you, this was a busy working office. A stuffy, conservative insurance office.

So very quietly, I take out my Leatherman Wave and thumb open the main blade and start to make just a little cut out in the thin plastic of the base.

Forgot two things. One, the internal power cord was down there in the base. Two, I had already plugged the thing in.

So I'm doing this quiet little bit of surgery on the aquarium, and suddenly there this POP!!! and a flash of light like a friggin magnesium flare and this ball of smoke rolls its lazy way toward the ceiling.

Here's me: :mad: :confused: :mad:

Luckily, only my closeby friends saw it... no one fired me.

And the result: the blade on my Leatherman had this hole burned right through it, about an inch from the tip, from the edge to about a third of the way up, looked just like the traditional cutout at the base of a Kukri. There was also a good size smear of copper which has been welded on the blade all over the tip.

Oh, if only I had kept of photo of that blade to share: the Arc-Welded Leatherman! But I ended up grinding it out so that my leatherman has this very pointy little main blade now! (I think it killed the temper though. It just won't sharpen. I'm getting a Charge to replace it.)

And I never felt a thing. Thank you Patron Saint of Knives.

So what have you done to your blades lately? :D :D
 
My brother accidentally got his Buck 110 between a battery cable and his starter solenoid and arc-welded a dime sized chunk out of the spine of the blade. Also saw an IBM tech accidentally vaporize the end of a screwdriver on a bank of 100,000 uf capacitors while trying to repair a printer controller.
 
yuzuha said:
My brother accidentally got his Buck 110 between a battery cable and his starter solenoid and arc-welded a dime sized chunk out of the spine of the blade. Also saw an IBM tech accidentally vaporize the end of a screwdriver on a bank of 100,000 uf capacitors while trying to repair a printer controller.
Click to expand...

Ah yes, those crazy IBM techs! I've been working as a maintenance tech for IBM for 15 years now, and have seen my share of high current metal-melt. Unfortunately I don't have a knife destruction story (not even a Stanley utility knife). However, one time I was trying to figure out why a breaker kept tripping, so I shorted the contacts with a phillips screwdriver. A transformer promptly smoked, so I replaced it. Worked like a charm!
:p
 
I slipped in hydraulic fluid charging out the back of a CH-46 and landed on my USMC issue Camillus k-bar. Snapped that dull mamajama in two. Kinda glad it did, rather than impaling itself into my thigh and severing my femoral artery. That was possibly the dullest knife in existence, though. I've since learned the value of a sharp, quality knife and a sturdy sheath, and not riding in p.o.s. Marine Corps helos for a living. :p
 
My son had a science project that used a bank of large capacitors to explode a wire and launch a ping pong ball. The trick is that once the fuse wire blew there was still some charge left on the capacitors. I think that he only had a megohm bleeder resistor on it. He decided to help the discharge by bridging the capacitors with the blade of his Buck 110. He almost fell over backwards at the pop and lost scallops out of his edge in two places.
 
I've broken a whole pile of knives on the farm. I use my knives hard there, and sometimes "abuse" them. But, that's the kind of work I need to accomplish, and if I were to design a general use tool to handle the work, it would look just like a knife! There were a few knives that lasted me long enough (a couple years) that I hand sharpened over a 1/4" of steel off their edges and points, before they broke as well.

Most of these knives are not memorable, but there is one in particular that I recall vividly. It was not a general purpose knife, but one I made myself. It's breakage taught me a lot about knife design and performance issues. My new one has held up a lot better so far. ;) I'll just give you this link rather than retyping the whole thing.
 
The most vivid destruction story and real learning expierience I can think of occured when I was about knee high to a grass hopper (about 10 or maybe 12). I had been collecting smaller hunting knives and folders for a bit but most of them were passed down from family and treated w/ nothing but respect. Some how or other I recieved a hollow handle "survival blade" the real cheesy kind w/ the saw back and compass in the hilt, and it was already scuffed up and a bit worse for wear so I didn't feel bad about beating on it a little. So I took my POS knife down to the stream and was trying to hack through a tree limb about the thickness of my arm (and back then that was pretty small), and about the second swing I heard a plop and found myself holding the highspeed hollow handle while the blade dissapearred into the water. The lesson learned? Buy quality and you get quality!
In the military I saw a ton of multi-tool blades get snapped off trying to tighten blank firing adapters on M-60 and M-249s. A bunch of cheap knives get dulled out cutting open sand bags. I myself scratched 90% Percent on the coating off of a BM 975 and completly hammered the edge cutting all the carpet out of a room and replacing it from a condemned building after someone discharged a smoke grenade inside a building we were borrowing for training (we were training w/ the Army ;) ) That blade though did its job and sharpened back up w/ a lot of work.
 
Well, I think my story won't fit very well to this thread, but it's funny how I lost a knife. My son was only 1 year old and he begun imitating us to our daily chores (like taking a napkin and wiping the furniture, pretending to water the flowers or disposing garbage). Somehow, he found an S&W folder (it was a model with a swivelling blade, very safe against accidental opening, that's why I could afford keeping it at the reach) and he threw it to the garbage. I only figured this a couple days later, when all that I found was the leather sheath. Too bad the garbage was already taken. At least there wasn't much of a knife. ;)
 
Lobo103 said:
In the military I saw a ton of multi-tool blades get snapped off trying to tighten blank firing adapters on M-60 and M-249s.
Click to expand...

You should have used the offical tool: an ammo can lid in the slot and turned until the lip bends. When it does, the blank adapter is tight enough. :)
 
Maquahuitl said:
I slipped in hydraulic fluid charging out the back of a CH-46 and landed on my USMC issue Camillus k-bar. Snapped that dull mamajama in two. Kinda glad it did, rather than impaling itself into my thigh and severing my femoral artery. That was possibly the dullest knife in existence, though. I've since learned the value of a sharp, quality knife and a sturdy sheath, and not riding in p.o.s. Marine Corps helos for a living. :p
Click to expand...

I too fell onto my k-bar knife on a hunting trip, I landed on my side and heard/felt something snap. Upon pulling out my knife only 2 inches of blade came out the rest was inside the sheath. I wish I had a picture of that p.o.s.
knife. Also broke off the tip of my buck 110 digging an arrow out of a tree after nailing a squirrel. I reprofiled it into a sharpened screw driver for digging out other arrows..
 
Man these are some good stories!

And educational:

Electricity = bad.

K-Bar = bad.

Squirrel = inadequate backstop for hunting arrow.

:D :D :D
 
Then there is me with tweezers. Talking on the phone, I got bored and started poking around with tweezers. Stuck it in side a surge protector. Lost the tips of the $16 tweezers
 
Almost 15 yrs ago, when I was about 12 yrs old, I got an original Schrade Old Timer Cave Bear, the big lockback, and of course, being 12, I proceeded to really f*** it up! First, my father owned horses, and on a cold winter morning, while cutting a hay bale with it, I promptly slammed the point into the top of a fence post, rather than letting it lay in the snow. Well, when I pulled it out, I broke the tip off! The neighbor who had given it to me told me to make a point out of the end, I should have just left it the way it is, I would have the only "rescue" Schrade Cave Bear out there :) . After I put a point on it, the point would stick out of the handle, and cut up my sheath. Several months ago, I bought a replacement, and it's still in the box. The old one sits in my winter work parka, and still works just fine, except of course for the poking blade. :D
 
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