How did you mess up your edge?

Ccc

Ccc

Joined
Mar 10, 2014
Messages
622
Hi,

I was thinking about how I messed up my RMD's edge real bad last year and thought that there were probably some great stories from BF members out there, too.

I was out in the woods for work and doing trash cleanup when I saw a long cord on the ground. I picked it up and pulled but a bunch of it had been buried. I pulled as hard as I could, but it was stuck somewhere deep. I figured I could just cut it off and at least clean up what was above ground and visible.

I pulled out my Ratmandu and doubled the cord over the edge and tried to cut it.

I am not sure what was in that wire, but it slipped right over the edge and smoothed it out (rolled it maybe?) along the entire length! I had to spend about 30 minutes at home later that week straightening and resharpening it.

Someone told me that the wire was actually old manual hookups for military-radio handsets from the mid 80's that had been abandoned. i wonder how many other edges that same cord has destroyed, and if that is why it had laid abandoned for 20+ years.
 
Messed up edges, over the years, on several knives. Cutting tv cable wire. Slipping and hitting concrete. Cutting vines out of a chain link fence and hit the chain link. I dropped a knife on a tile floor straight down on the tip and it bend the tip. Wow, I have so many more, too many to sit here and list.
 
My first mess up was a brand new buck 110 look alike. Rammed it into a tree. It didn't even penetrate the soft bark and it's tip just bend on me. Probably it was as soft as it was thick. Anyways, never doing that again on purpose.

By accident I had dropped a folder on tiles. Landed tip first but was an easy fix.

Hitting close to the ground a blade hits dirt and little gravel occasionally. Doesn't bother me anymore since I learned how to sharpen. :-)

Also had aggressivly reground one monstrously thick, cheap kitchen knife which then kept chipping a little until I microbevelled it.
 
I was at a get together once and we didn't have a corkscrew handy, and my drunk brain decided that my Sprint Jester could just pry out the cork. Ended up putting a little chip in the edge, that I'm hoping will fully sharpen out over time.
 
a couple of years ago I had a strider sng with z-wear steel. I took it to camp we made a London broil which I used the strider to cut up. About 3/4 through cutting the meat the knife was dull. I was like wtf this steel sucks lol. So after a few days I had talked to a knife maker friend and told him. He goes did you cut it on a ceramic plate (light bulb turns on). Yep dulled the hell out of it, and didn't even think about it. Or zwear just sucks lol.
 
Packing staple hidden in double-walled cardboard. Luckily, I wasn't cutting terribly hard or fast, unluckily I just felt more resistance and tried to muscle it through, ran almost the entire edge over the staple before I figured out what I was doing.
 
Big staple got me once. It was INFI so the knife won. Tiny little dings. Sharpened right out. Other time were hitting metal, rocks, concrete, basically stuff I didn't intend to cut.
 
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Improper technique when woodcarving and whittling mostly. I just can't stop myself from twisting.
 
Ughhh. Bad memories. The easier question to answer would be, how did you NOT mess up your edge. I don't even use my knives as tools for the most part, which further infuriates me for ruining so many edges, mostly due to sheer stupidity or not paying attention to what I was doing.

The one that comes to mind and caused the most collateral damage, was the fate of my first 275 Adamas, black scales with a combo edge. It was perfect. As if Benchmade first sent it to NASA to calibrate, as far as blade centering and other f and f issues were concerned. The grind was also perfectly symmetrical. Of course, zero blade play no matter how much I would loosen the pivot. Absolute perfection.

One now infamous morning, I was pacing in my kitchen with a world of trouble on my mind (unrelated to knives), opening and closing the above mentioned 275, as the smoothness and satisfying click is somewhat therapeudic. Whilst not paying proper attention, the point of the tip tapped a hard ceramic / marble counter top, fairly lightly, head on. But doing so nonetheless caused its perfect and scary sharp point, to somehow become rounded. I didn't see a chip. At the time, I was wet behind the ear and didn't really know what to look for as to damage. All I knew was that the point had become rounded to the extent that it would virtually useless if I needed to stab something or someone, though the rest of the edge remained hair splitting sharp.

So, not possessing sharpening skills at the time, I brought it to someone who is very reputable, relatively close to me. Asked him to do everything in his power to restore the rounded point of the tip to its former glory. When I had an opportunity to examine my so called sharpened point, I was sickened upon noticing that although the point had been somewhat sharpened and was triangular again, instead of round, THE TIP WAS SHORTER by about a quarter of an inch. WTF. He claimed it was the only way to restore the point. In any event, it made the blade too short for me to take serious, due to the stubby dimensions and the point was too thick to be an effective piercer with a quarter inch missing. To add further injury to insult, he took it upon himself to sharpen the rest of the blade, which when returned to me, could no longer effortlessly shave arm hair or push cut paper, like it could easily do before he had for all intents and purposes, ruined my knife. Also noticeable were areas of missing coating, where he presumable had carelessly placed clamps. Sickening. Ruined. I now have another 275, which is dangerously close to being perfect and will never undergo carelessness by me, followed by butchery by a so called master sharpener.
 
craytab said:
^BM would have fixed that for free. Just the cost to ship it to them.
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Yup. Which made it even more maddening. I wanted immediate gratification. And to support a local, small business. The cost was low and the time frame for being without the knife was three hours, instead of a couple weeks, at least. I paid dearly for my impatience. Sometimes being a mad, impetuous fool, results in tragedy. Lol.

BUT, thinking about it now, I still have the carcass (the ridiculous shortened and broadened angle 275). The handle remains pristine, as does the axis lock and everything other than the comically useless, short and stubby blade. Therefore, your reply prompted me to recall the fact that Benchmade will replace the blade, for I believe $35. Done and done. Thanks for invoking this recollection. Its replacement is not a combo edge. Thus, I'll now have the combo edge version as well as the non combo edge version.
 
Those hidden staples in cardboard boxes are a nightmare waiting to happen. Fiber-glass packing tape can quickly ruin an edge, and why would anyone use a knife to cut through fiber-glass insulation? Uhh, me, I guess.

Most of the time, I know what I'm getting into. I have knives designated to the tough tasks. It really sucks when you just never see it coming, or you do something you KNOW you shouldn't. I was cutting a rubber tie-down cord that had somehow gotten stuck to the underside of the family car. One end was just dangling there, and I thought I'd just snip it really quickly with my DPX Heat folder. So, I grab the cord, set the edge against it, and push away from myself, aware of the danger of cutting towards myself. But, Duh! I swipe through, with much force, and drive the edge right into the pavement under the car. Huge dings and dents that I am still trying to sharpen out.
 
Happens all the time at my work, so I don't even bother putting a polished edge on my knives anymore. Just until they cleanly pull cut copy paper.

I guess the worst thing I do for the edge is cut shrink wrap off the rolls of chicken wire.We use it to wrap the pallets of stone we cut. The edge of my knife gets dragged across the wire.

Fairly easy touch up every night, when I flush the grit out of my knife.
 
craytab said:
Big staple got me once. It was INFI so the knife won. Tiny little dings. Sharpened right out. Other time were hitting metal, rocks, concrete, basically stuff I didn't intend to cut.
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Nice. I used an Anniversary Mean Street to dig my Corolla out of a snow/ice ditch. I dug through 2 inches of ice and gravel and churned up enough dirt road to get traction for about 7 feet. That edge was trashed, but a mug and a strop set me back within 10 minutes. Gotta love INFI. It is fun to mess up the edge just to watch it morph back to perfect!
 
Not so much the edge, but I once messed up the point of a knife in the most idiotic way. I paid one of those "sharpeners" at a local farmer's market to thin out the blade.

:eek:

Never again.
 
I have truly beaten the edge off of quite a few knives, but the one that sticks in my mind wasn't actually done by me, but it was my knife.

We were deployed with Riverine Squadron 2 to Al Qaim, Iraq in 2007, winter. Most people don't realize just how friggin cold that area gets in winter. we had snow and icicles hanging off the gun barrels of the boats. Long story short we were on the river banks with a boat stuck on a sand bar for a while, decided to start a small fire to keep the rotating security watch warm. A buddy of mine had one if those cheapo Walmart special magnesium fire starters with the built in flint. He asked to borrow my knife (Emerson SOCFK-B), and proceeded to use the EDGE OF THE BLADE to spark the flint, leaving a very nasty flat spot, that took more than a simple resharpening to fix. Knives are tools so I wasn't too upset, and that one had seen a fair bit of use.

Reinforced the notion, use em hard, or lose em.
 
I didn't!... why, did sombody say I did? Uhmm... I don't know... it was like that when I got here. I swear! :D
 
Using my ESEE 6 as a trowel I hit a rock

A few passes on the strop and back to work

stroppingsaves_zpstivajzac.jpg



I kept using it as a trowel. Got a lot of work done.
 
A years back I just bought my Endura 4 saber grind.

I was so excited to use it I tried cut a piece of half mm steel cable.
Massive rolls , rolls for days
 
I destroyed the edge of my Cold Steel GI Tanto back when I was a knife noob by trying to use one of those stupid carbide sharpeners. Fast forward to 2016, and nothing will fix it now; I need those diamond rods from Spyderco or perhaps even something more abrasive to fix the edge, which simply will not cut things anymore. It's a tactical butter knife until I fix it.
 
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