Have you ever broke a blade? If so how?

I have never bent a blade, much less broken one as I only use knives as knives.

I have, however, screwed up many a screwdriver due to using them as chisels and pry bars.
 
Dropped my Benchmade 581 with M390 blade about 8' off a ladder onto concrete. Bout 1/2" of the tip flew off. $40 to BM and got a brand new coated blade installed. They put a beautiful edge on it and replaced all the hardware........I don't take it up ladders anymore!!
Joe
 
Snapped about a 1/4 of the blade off a Buck 500 Duke cutting a zip tie off a set of heavy truck tire chains, obviously more chain than zip tie. Used it as a beater toolbox knife for about ten years until I found out Buck would fix it, sent it off to them and they made it good as new. Bought that knife brand new at the Navy Exchange in Guam 1984, has a lot of sentimental value.
 
craytab said:
It didn't work though. A machete at the hardware store is what, ~$15? Everyone should own one.

Never broke a blade and I have had some accidental drops, in general though, I use a knife as intended.
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But it did work for what it was ( it was about a 20" carving knife ) and it only broke because I went too far trying to bend it back as it had actually only bent a little bit.
BTW my local hardware store doesn't carry quality machetes, only your typical 6$ pos that's not any better than what I was using.
I will soon have 2 marbles machetes coming, a 20"oal scouting machete and a 24"oal workhorse machete.
 
I'm reasonably careful with my knives and have never broken a real knife.

I did break a small utility knife a few years ago. My wife bought some cheap temporary window shades made out of accordion paper. These things come with a small knife with thin carbon steel blade and molded plastic handle so you can trim the blinds to length. I had one that I sharpened as a test in my garage, and I used it to cut up a small cardboard box. Making a straight cut in the box I broke the blade. The blade was thin, less than 1/16" thick, and the knife was the size of a common paring knife. I was surprised it broke, being carbon steel, but I figured it might have had an excessive heat treat.

When I was a kid my father used to hand down his traditional style pocket knifes. He was a mechanic and sometimes had to pry with his knives, and a medium size Case that he gave me had the tip broken off of the main blade. I ground it square and it made a great screwdriver. This was before the idea of multitools so I had a screwdriver that was easy to carry and I could also use the edge to cut belts and hoses. I used it for 6 years as a mechanic and never had a problem with breaking a blade but I did wipe out the edge frequently cutting wire or scraping something.
 
Broke the tip off a Kabar prying the lid off a military medical crate. Trying to recall why, but at the time it was urgent we get into that crate. Most recent was breaking the tip off my Condor Puerto-Rican machete. I would usually use the billhook type tip to sling chopped wood to the side after chopping. Considering I'd been using it that way for 5 years I'd say I got my moneys worth.
 
Broke my bayonet in basic training, and it got me a day of of duty. Stabbed the dummy and twisted hard, and "pop!". Recently I broke the tip off a kitchen knife prying open a paint can. I don't use my "good" knives for prying.


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Many years ago I broke a small portion of a tip off a CS Master Hunter in San Mai steel... not the right tool for the job ( I was batoning wood at the time). I've been lucky, I believe that's the only one and it sharpened right out.
 
I know . . . you said
accidentally break one
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but I'm going to answer anyway

Have you ever broke a blade? If so how?
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This is Opinel's next to largest knife, a #12, it is like a foot long over all.

I scored the blade with an abrasive cut off wheel more than half way through the blade where I wanted it to break, put the blade in a vise with aluminum jaw pads, took some huge arc joint pliers (channel locks) and bent the blade way way over to one side.

It didn't break.
I did it again but even further over.
It didn't break
I did that a few more times (by the way each time the blade came back to center and didn't bend) finally it broke off with way more difficulty and force than I could ever have imagined. I'm convinced. Opinels are good, thin is good. Anything requiring a thicker blade I shouldn't be doing with a knife. An axe or a saw maybe.



Of course there was that time I was batonning that super hard squash for dinner and cracked the blade . . . but that was just stupidity on my part and the kitchen knife was like under two millimeters thick at the spine. Used it for years after that and the crack didn't travel.
 
Wowbagger said:
I know . . . you said

but I'm going to answer anyway



This is Opinel's next to largest knife, a #12, it is like a foot long over all.

I scored the blade with an abrasive cut off wheel more than half way through the blade where I wanted it to break, put the blade in a vise with aluminum jaw pads, took some huge arc joint pliers (channel locks) and bent the blade way way over to one side.

It didn't break.
I did it again but even further over.
It didn't break
I did that a few more times (by the way each time the blade came back to center and didn't bend) finally it broke off with way more difficulty and force than I could ever have imagined. I'm convinced. Opinels are good, thin is good. Anything requiring a thicker blade I shouldn't be doing with a knife. An axe or a saw maybe.



Of course there was that time I was batonning that super hard squash for dinner and cracked the blade . . . but that was just stupidity on my part and the kitchen knife was like under two millimeters thick at the spine. Used it for years after that and the crack didn't travel.
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I've gifted a few Opinel #12's (they make great picnic knives, as they're long enough to cut through big sub sandwiches, or reach to the bottom of a jar). I've never done what you did to yours, but thats good to know that the steel is HT'd that well. Gives me more confidence in my smaller opinels :).

I've only ever broken one knife that I can recall. It was shortly after joining bladeforums, and I'd been doing a lot of reading about "survival knives". I heard someone talking about it would be "easy" to find a chopping knife in any urban survival situation, because almost ever house has a ~8in bladed chefs knife laying around, and they would hold up fine.

Well, I'd just recently gifted my wife a Victorinox fibrox chefs knife to replace our truly awful chefs knife from when we first got married (no idea what brand, it was a walmart special), so I had a spare kitchen knife to test that theory. I went into the yard, grabbed a ~2-3in thick piece of wood, and went to town on it with the old chefs knife.

The upside of the story, is that the blade itself did seem to hold up just fine. I made it through about half of the piece of woods thickness (lets say 5-8 chops maybe) before the blade snapped off of the fake "full tang" handle (the handle had a line down the middle like a full tang knife... but it wasn't connected apparently). I guess in a true survival situation, I could have used the blade itself somehow, as it was still kind of functional.

We'll call it a learning experience. I wasn't hoping to break the knife, but I was willing to, as I was planning on getting rid of the knife anyway. And, for the record, I've not done that with any of our other kitchen knives, nor do I have any plans to.
 
Hickory n steel, for something tough and that would last a lifetime even chopping wood, I recommend anything made by Aranyik (they have a website). For weeds and such, you probably cannot beat a Tramontina or Imacasa.
 
strong said:
I broke the very tip off my new paramilitary 2 s110v cutting open a USPS box. No prying or twisting, just two straight cuts and looked at the knife and tip was gone
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Called customer service? I'm interested in what their response would be.
 
It's been a while, but broke countless slainless blades beyond repair including two buck 110s from the '80's, from scraping, prying, hammering, dropping, etc. I've bent the tips and mangled the non stainless varieties doing much worse, but never broke, and nothing that couldn't be repaired.
Not a fan of stainless, but that's just profiling, right?
 
I broke the tip off of a Spyderco Native by handing it to a friend of mine to use. He was opening a package at a kids birthday party. Still don't know how he managed to do that.
 
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