Have you ever broken a knife?

Sidehill Gouger said:
I broke two of them. Al told me they were only meant for chopping on flesh. Give me a Break! The rumor was they weren't made in Japan at all but in Taiwan with poor heat treat.
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Mine was some kind of stainless , but definitely must have had a bad HT to break like it did . Way too brittle !

They were marketed, in my go-to wholesale knife catalog , as multi-purpose machete / swords basically = Do anything .

The whole design was faulty on mine, and the replacement , both . Handle appears to be pinned only at the center .

So with time the handle loosens; because the pin acts like an axle , that the handle then rotates around .

What a miserable POS ! 🤯

It did school me to not believe any ad hype, that I could not confirm personally , or from a trusted source . 🤨
 
DocJD said:
:pNo foolin' ! This was an early purchase for me , when first the "love of blades" struck me . Early 80's maybe ?

The Al Mar Pathfinder was really hyped hard , as a "do all" adventure machete / sword ; that you could hack and fight your way thru the Amazon Jungle , Temple of Doom , etc . Utterly reliable and effective . 😒

We had no internet at that time . Only magazines and catalogs . Al Mar was great at some prior time and had a good rep ; but was dead , gone and his name used in vain, by the time I got sucked in . :mad::thumbsdown::thumbsdown:

Live and hopefully learn ! :cool:
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I remember the US Cavalry and Brigade Quartermasters catalogs, too. The Pathfinder looked to me like a do-all knife, but apparently my inability to afford one turns out to have been a good thing.

ETA: Almost forgot I once broke the tip off an S30V Native. All I did was drop it; impact somehow opened it, it bounced, then had a blunt tip. Haven't messed with S30V since, IIRC.
 
Tafkaag said:
to afford one
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Yeah , that was one of the most expensive blades I ever purchased, before or since ...and that was at true wholesale , from Mathews (not sure of the name ?)

Big part of why I got so disillusioned . Not at all a cheap item . Definitely a formative event for me .

I'd have been far better off with a decent $20 machete !!!!! :(
 
DocJD said:
….

I'd have been far better off with a decent $20 machete !!!!! :(
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Unless it was of the type I mentioned above.

About 30 years later I found another copy of those machetes in a flea market. I had a hard time putting an edge on it and my file set indicated a blade hardness below 40RC. It’s no wonder it chopped like a wet noodle.

N2s
 
Never broke a blade, that I can recall. I did have a Smith and Wesson branded $2.50 knife from some freight salvage place that I broke the handle on. It was some kind of hard rubber or composition that came off in a couple of chunks. There might have been a hammer involved. It was close to 60 years ago, so most of the particulars are lost.
 
I've broken a trash-tier kitchen knife with normal use. I also had the blade of a Cold Steel Super Edge slip out of the handle after years of wear and tear. That knife was too good not to buy a new one, though....
 
sgt1372 said:
No comment because I don't want anything that I might say to be perceived as condescending or smarmy. LOL! ;)
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Not that you’re the type to bestow smug & gaudy tauntings anyway. ;)
 
I broke the tip off a Schrade LB7 (Buck 110 copy; both somewhat known for fragile tips) many years ago, applying light twisting pressure while trying to dig something out of a piece of wood. Only a small piece broke and I was able to reprofile it so it is barely noticeable.
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I also broke a small Leatherman pliers by twisting something. I was definitely pushing them past their design limits...
 
I had a machete handle break on me too. I was dumping a load of half frozen chips from the bucket truck, and had left the shovel back on the job site. I was using the end of the square-tipped blade to get up underneath the frozen bunch, and having been slightly above freezing that day, the whole kaboodle let go. As I was stepping back out of the way, the block bent the tip almost back to me. The blade sprang back to true, but the injection molded handle wound up cracking from the pressure.

I cut it off and made a new handle from black walnut.
 
JWright214 said:
Yes, but only once. It was a cheap kitchen knife in a vacation rental. I was cutting ice cream cake and it just snapped.
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I forgot... my most recent knife breakage occurred when I tried to cut a half-gallon of ice cream in half with a handsome $30 Farberware chef's knife. I gave it the gentlest "twist" at the end of the cut to get the chunk of ice cream to break free and the knife's tip broke free instead. :confused:

I consider a half-gallon of ice cream as two servings. If I double my serving size, I won't put any more knives at risk!
 
DocJD said:
Great job ! :cool:

I used to break the tips off folders by throwing them into wood targets ...way too much .

My repairs were never so nice as yours .

Most looked like some weird tanto mod , or a flathead screwdriver ! ;)
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The simple secret is to grind back the bottom (cutting edge) of the blade to form a new tip, not the top. I used a Lansky with an extra-coarse diamond stone (and lots of elbow grease) to reshape it.
 
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