Heavy duty? I think not.

Ok, let me get this straight:
1. The OP asked to help him with the decision 'Knife or hatchet'.
2. With good technique this blade would have withstood a thousands logs...but with that technique the blade clearly didn't have a chance.
3. If you hit a knot with a knife while batoning the knife chips. Always.
4. The possible embrittlement of carbon steels during the the tempering process is just a myth. And HT is always done perfectly by any company or manufacturer (like Benchmade's CSK II)

CS should have done the blade in Rostafrei anyway...
 
Yeah, I wander why it so many people take "get an axe" advice so negatively?
And I must also say that I am wandering sometimes why axe sections here in Canadian building stores like Rona, Home Depot and Canadian Tire are so poorly filled. Good carpenter's axe is just impossible to find! Only Lee Valley has got a good selection of Swedish made axes - but at a premium price of course. Do people know how to use an axe and what it is used for?
Obviously axe has already fallen a victim to the same kind of user degradation a knife is subjected to. It just started sooner and went faster.... :(
 
Morales said:
CS should have done the blade in Rostafrei anyway...
Click to expand...

:D:D Rostafrei is da bomb ,Mon.

funny how this thread I started turned into somewhat of an axe discussion. :p

I am a big fan of using an axe. I also batton once in a while. The thing is , I don't over do it , just use small sticks and generally avoid knots. They are usually easy to spot and are not worth the trouble to tackle even if the knife ( or axe) can hack it. Why do more work when you don't have to , and subject the tool to undue stress?

Combat knife or whatever that Leatherneck is marketed as ,intended use ,implied use or whatever , the thing that I found surprising is that a knife with those specs , steel and overall size blew out like that. Yup , the guys batonning technique is questionable and I agree wrong tool for the job. But I think of it this way: He somewhat abused the knife ( and not greatly Imo.) and had a catastrophic failure. That is all I wanted to point out in my OP.

Carry on ; I enjoy your opinions :thumbup:
 
1966c10 said:
someone always has to comment that they should have used an ax. Add to that it being a Cold Steel product the obligatory sh!tstorm ensues.
Click to expand...

This seems to be the norm here. :cool:

If a guy didn't have an axe and used a knife ( any knife) there is always the shoulda used an axe thing. If a person really needed to split some wood and didn't have an axe , would he still use his knife even though it's against his principles? Depending on the circumstances , I bet a lot of guys would. It certainly wouldn't stop me. Lots of us do it for the fun of it and other reasons.
 
1966c10 said:
Are you arguing that an ax can be incorrectly heat treated and still perform? Because that is what happened in this video, and the only possible correlation that can be drawn from your comment. He noodled the edge with a tiny little thumb thick baton. The knife failed at the same performance level as a butter knife. It was obviously flawed.

There are knives with the edge thickness of a Gransfors, so the blanket statement "get an axe" advice fails. Most of the people that say it have obviously never heard of a "wood fro".
Click to expand...

Sorry, do not get what you want to say. I was not actually arguing anything and in fact was not commenting that video. I have done that already earlier on and moved a bit off topic. Sorry, that was obviously confusing. :(
 
I have hit knots with various knives from 1/4" thick to 1.5mm thick and I have NEVER had a knife chip. :/

Maybe I am super lucky ;)

Morales said:
Ok, let me get this straight:
1. The OP asked to help him with the decision 'Knife or hatchet'.
2. With good technique this blade would have withstood a thousands logs...but with that technique the blade clearly didn't have a chance.
3. If you hit a knot with a knife while batoning the knife chips. Always.
4. The possible embrittlement of carbon steels during the the tempering process is just a myth. And HT is always done perfectly by any company or manufacturer (like Benchmade's CSK II)

CS should have done the blade in Rostafrei anyway...
Click to expand...
 
What happened?

At 1:02. The guy begins to baton.

At 1:14. He can't go further.He yet hit a knot. If he didn't chip the edge at that time it's because he batonned with a light stick. The edge is in bad shape but no matters, do it again!

At 2:22. With an heavier log it will work. The blade doesn't go down. It doesn't come to his mind there is a knot. If it doesn't work it's because the baton isn't heavy enough. New one, heavier.

At 2:48. The blade goes deep suddenly. That's the moment the blade chipped.

At 2:51. He twists the knife. The log is split.

It's an evidence the technique is bad. Batoning isn't hard and any tool, axe or knife, can do the job; but 2 things may happen, the blade meets a knot or the wood fibers are not straight enough and apply an important lateral strength on the weaker part of the blade (near the edge). In the 2 cases there is a noticeable resistance. The guy on the video should have felt something was going wrong. In that case the good technical gesture is to stop, change of tool or try with an other log.

What part of the tool does work in the batoning process? In a first time it's the edge which allows the blade to penetrate the wood, in a second time it's better to make work the bevels of the blade to spread the fibers.

That's why a convex grind or a saber grind will be safer. By the way some people here testify the good results they get with a thin saber grind Mora . I've seen it myself.

dantzk.
 
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It's a failed HT people.... :rolleyes:

I can tell by the grain size looking at the broken part of the blade, they are too big.
 
Ankerson said:
It's a failed HT people.... :rolleyes:

I can tell by the grain size looking at the broken part of the blade, they are too big.
Click to expand...

I'll go with Ankerson. H*ll I've batoned my Ontarion Rat 1 folder right through slightly smaller stuff and cut right through knots! :thumbup:
 
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