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How likely are Becker knives to break in a survival situation?
- Thread starter tim777us
- Start date
They are great. Well, the one I have is great. Looking into getting a Becker Necker (Bk-11) to accompany my Bk-7. The Harpoon looks nice, too. I wish I'd given one to my buddy when he was going into the military, instead of the Buck knife I gave him.
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Buck is good.
Your buddy was well covered with your generosity.
dano
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In a "Survival situation", whatever that exactly means, you should have the mindset of using the tool as little as possible. Additionally, i think people have too much of a fantasy mindset of "Survival", which is espoused in most of these youtubers and there destruction test nonsense.
He liked it. I'm happy I could give him a knife at all.
Thank you. I'm glad I could give him something.
Right on point! Too much focus on the knife and what abuse it can take. In truth, survival is about a mindset. You have to absolutely refuse to let circumstances dictate your state of mind. A knife is a tool. It may be one of your most important tools, but all the more reason to take care of it in any situation where you have to rely on your wits and adapt to your environment.
He was pretty happy with it. Bear in mind, he had very little to his name going into the Army. Good kid, now a grown man with a wife and kid.
That's the important part!
scdub
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baxtrom
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Some amount of information can definitely be extracted from the semi chaotic knife abuse performed by Joe X. Additionally, depending on one’s sense of humour, there are glimpses of comedy. I liked the effort he put into his Predator reenactment. And one has to respect the man’s expenditure!
VERY good point. Especially for soldiers, everything you carry has a cost in weight, and that cost has to be justified if you're going to schlub it around. During the Civil War, those big D-guard Bowie knives (the kind that were almost swords) ended up in a ditch or sent home as corn knives.
Anything heavy that doesn't justify it's worth by being used a lot is a liability. Also, any knife that may possibly be used for *fighting, sentry dispatching or whatever, (*however unlikely in this day and age) needs to be light and balanced. I think Ethan Becker did a good job considering the needs of the soldiers and adventurers who would use this knife.
Personally? I'm just glad I can chop some brush for a fire, cut my steak and don't have a boat anchor on my bellt.
I had a Bark River Shining Mountain. Really, really great knife. I just found it to be too heavy for me. I like knives that can be used for combat and outdoor chores, despite the fact that I'm never likely going to be in an actual knife fight (nor would any sane person want to).Really?
I wouldn’t?
Nobody would?
I do like to practice and spar with a training Bowie, and to do cutting with bottles and pool noodles stuffed with manilla rope. It's really about the history and the Bowie knife as an indigenous martial art. It's not really any different than those who practice HEMA or Japanese katana (Iaido, kenjutsu, kendo). I practice with the tomahawk and long knife too. I also use my Bowie or the Bk-7 and my tomahawk for outdoors.
Dwight McLemore has great books on the Bowie knife and the tomahawk & long knife. Check them out if you are into it.
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What "survival " situation? , Joe x is a moron who buys knives to break them, nothing he does is short of grotesque misuse and abuse, not to mention dangerous, I even called him out on it and he sees nothing wrong with wasting his money and stabbing car hoods.
Well, it depends on case by case basic, mission dictate what they bring. Now, why do you need a chopper in a combat zone? And what do you plan to use your knife for? I will make a thing clear first about combat knife: killing a man with a knife doesn't take a lot of effort, you don't need a strong or tough knife for that, a improvised shiv is quite enough to kill.
Infanteers work as team, not individual. As a team, soldiers have section equipment, which are dedicated tools, like axe, machete, shovel, crowbar, even pick axe, which are more effective at their job, whereas the knife excel at small utility and cutting job on individual level. The best soldiers are those with high teamwork capacity. The case of lone survivor that people love to imagine is way pass the worst scenario, it should never an "if". Many soldiers to carry more variety of knives because of the mechanized infantry, soldiers don't carry much on their back, but that also means the survival scenario less likely to happen.
The kind of "survival situation" would likely to happen on multiple days mission, on foot. with minimal support (low signature), like reconnaissance for example. However, that type of mission has a lot of pre plan, and the individual would need to carry so much stuff that they will try to save as much as possible, down to how many rations, pairs of socks and underwear to carry (I'm not even joking). We trace back the lineage of these type of mission, started from the days long sortie for hunters, pathfinders and wood runners, who hike and camp outdoor for days to weeks. It turned out to be a great deal of information collecting, which is detrimental for warfare, and many military doctrines have root from it. The bush craft and survival techniques were developed from such trades more than farmers (no offence to farmers, you are brilliant in other ways). As such, they also keep their gear as light as they can, down to the knife, as weight means efficiency and travel time. This is one of the reason that most traditional tourist/adventurer/survival knives are almost always stick tang, because the knife still do what the knife is needed to do, but lighter, to make more from less.
The USMC Ka-Bar, who ever has the contract, is based hunting knife from the contemporary period, hence the stick tang and fuller on the blade to save weight. It it is not made for many newer techniques cough baton cough. Most other modern issued knife bayonets and combat knives are in the same veins. They don't need to get heavier than that for their intended use. Multi-tools and pliers multi-tools offer much more variety of tools with little mass increase is why they got adopted so fast by militaries and outdoor enthusiasm.
Now, many dudes just sit right by their truck or by their farm comfortably, then start moaning in front of a camera about how things are best or trash for survival or the military.
Infanteers work as team, not individual. As a team, soldiers have section equipment, which are dedicated tools, like axe, machete, shovel, crowbar, even pick axe, which are more effective at their job, whereas the knife excel at small utility and cutting job on individual level. The best soldiers are those with high teamwork capacity. The case of lone survivor that people love to imagine is way pass the worst scenario, it should never an "if". Many soldiers to carry more variety of knives because of the mechanized infantry, soldiers don't carry much on their back, but that also means the survival scenario less likely to happen.
The kind of "survival situation" would likely to happen on multiple days mission, on foot. with minimal support (low signature), like reconnaissance for example. However, that type of mission has a lot of pre plan, and the individual would need to carry so much stuff that they will try to save as much as possible, down to how many rations, pairs of socks and underwear to carry (I'm not even joking). We trace back the lineage of these type of mission, started from the days long sortie for hunters, pathfinders and wood runners, who hike and camp outdoor for days to weeks. It turned out to be a great deal of information collecting, which is detrimental for warfare, and many military doctrines have root from it. The bush craft and survival techniques were developed from such trades more than farmers (no offence to farmers, you are brilliant in other ways). As such, they also keep their gear as light as they can, down to the knife, as weight means efficiency and travel time. This is one of the reason that most traditional tourist/adventurer/survival knives are almost always stick tang, because the knife still do what the knife is needed to do, but lighter, to make more from less.
The USMC Ka-Bar, who ever has the contract, is based hunting knife from the contemporary period, hence the stick tang and fuller on the blade to save weight. It it is not made for many newer techniques cough baton cough. Most other modern issued knife bayonets and combat knives are in the same veins. They don't need to get heavier than that for their intended use. Multi-tools and pliers multi-tools offer much more variety of tools with little mass increase is why they got adopted so fast by militaries and outdoor enthusiasm.
Now, many dudes just sit right by their truck or by their farm comfortably, then start moaning in front of a camera about how things are best or trash for survival or the military.
Its just destruction testing, taking a product to the limit to see what it takes to make it fail and then examining how it fails. Pretty much everything you own has been through the same process, just not by some nut wearing a gas mask on Youtube....
I replied this after his video - "I don't think there will ever be a situation where I need to hammer my knife with a giant rock. I think it held up pretty well."
He just said "ok." He was much worse to some others, going on about how it's not a "true" combat knife after one person said that it's not a bushcraft survival knife, but a combat utility. Pretty much, if you questioned his methods at all,he sort of descended on you trying to make you look stupid or dismissed what you said, which is what he did to me. His tests prove nothing other than that knives eventually break, some before others (although that could be a problem with that one particular knife, it could be the order in which he did the destructive "tests," or any number of factors).
It's ridiculous to declare that a knife will break on you in the field just because one particular example from one brand of one model of knife didn't last as long as another particular example of a different model (and brand) of knife. And if you question it at all your either an idiot to be made fun of or an idiot to be dismissed and ignored. If he was honest about the so-called "test," I'd have nothing to say about it at all.
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As others have said in a true survival situation I don't think so unless the knife is faulty. I've used some of my knives very hard but in an appropriate way obviously not hitting stone/rock or a steel pipe multiple times. Although a decent knife should be able to get you out of a car/plane where the body will be much thinner than a mild steel pipe. On wood your Becker should be fine unless you intentionally want to bend or break it. I've said this before in a similar thread but I could fairly easily break any knife including a Busse if I wanted to. I've bent large wrecking bars and would have broken them if I'd carried on doing what I was doing with them. I do actually carry a small strong pry bar with me when wild camping so would never pry with a knife anyway.
And I have no problems with the test. I actually think they're a good thing. My problem was that Joe X declared that they will fail you I'm the field (presumably under normal circumstances) because he was able to break it after a torture test wherein he bashed it with a giant rock quite a few times. Seems a bit far-fetched to me, especially when BK&T has grown their reputation on being hard use knives, coming from actual field use by customers.