I was just told a skeletonized tang has more strength. Is that true?

Horsewright · Sep 1, 2018

Maybe he was talking about under the handle. Removing material under the handle will make the glue up stronger as there is more surface area for the epoxy to bond. I drill holes to lighten the weight and for added surface area during glue up.

Maybe what he was talking about?

Natlek · Sep 1, 2018

bdmicarta said:
I am a structural engineer so I know a lot about strength of materials.

It used to be standard for a fine custom knife to have a tapered tang which was their way of keeping full strength but reducing weight and improving balance. T

As structural engineer what do you think about this kind of blade/distal taper from tip to butt and tapered from spine to bottom side of blade/ compared with same blade but with normal / lengthwise/ tapered tang ? Which one is stronger ?

Natlek · Sep 1, 2018

letsurf said:
Ah I see. He didn't word it like that. I was inquiring about the Bravo 1 because it has a very skeletonized tang. Do you think the handle adds a lot of strength? It baffles me that two small pieces of thin metal like on the Bravo tang could have any strength at all. But.. if the handle has a lot of strength and it extends up past the thinnest part a significant amount then maybe it adds a lot of strength?

I would like to see someone to bend/break that tang if you put carbon fiber or micarta 6-7mm thick scale mounted with corby bolts and glued with epoxy

Mistwalker · Sep 1, 2018

22-rimfire said:
I once in fact used a sledge hammer to baton a SOG fixed blade and had no problems what's so ever with the knife. I don't recommend that practice and have not done it since. I was playing around with a knife I really didn't care if I broke or not.

An older SK5 one or a newer AUS8 one? I played a round with a newer AUS 8 Teamleader that I didn't care if I broke just too see what it could take, and was pretty impressed with their AUS8. It took a lot and didn't fail.

22-rimfire · Sep 1, 2018

It was AUS8. I beat the hell out of that knife and the blade didn't even chip. This was back around 2005-2010.

I do have a couple SK5 ones including a Tigershark. Beast of a blade. I was real interested in SOG blades when I first joined BF. Things change....

To the OP, my intuition as others have said is that the drilled tang is weaker, but it may not be important for knife tasks. I have a blade that was one THR had put together (group buy) with a maker out of the Knoxville TN area.... Clip Shape. No handle. No holes. Soild tang.... I honestly won't use that blade. Probably should get in contact with that maker and see if he'd make handles for it and probably drill some holes. I believe he's an apprentice Bladesmith now.

DocJD · Sep 1, 2018

This is OP's handle in question maybe ? https://www.bladeforums.com/threads...ang-is-so-skeletonized.1607822/#post-18367120

davek14 · Sep 2, 2018

Might be tougher, more flexible, less likely to break once glued up. Not that that would likely be an issue.

eKretz · Sep 2, 2018

Wow, there is a lot of misinformation floating around on this subject (dealer guy is F.O.S.). When you hear that an I-beam is stronger than a solid square steel beam with the same outside dimensions, THAT is false. If you're talking cross-sectional area, then the I-beam is far stronger. So basically, a knife handle with identical material, exterior dimensions and thickness can never be stronger when skeletonized than when it's solid. However, most solid knife handle are so overly strong that skeletonizing doesn't really make enough of a difference to matter. Steel is a wonderfully strong material.

letsurf · Sep 3, 2018

This is becoming a much more complex discussion than I originally anticipated. So There are two thoughts of logic:

1. Removing metal will make the blade weaker, period...
2. Removing metal allows for more area for epoxy to populate thus making the overall handle stronger.

If the handle extends up and above the weakest part of the skeletonized area then technically the handle could aid in overall blade strength right? Two stiff pieces of handle sandwiching the blade provides some lateral strength beyond just the metal part. So an overall stronger handle could aid in blade strength?

letsurf · Sep 3, 2018

DocJD said:
This is OP's handle in question maybe ? https://www.bladeforums.com/threads...ang-is-so-skeletonized.1607822/#post-18367120

Yes it was originally but I think it applies to any knife. When someone says "full tang" before I was just under the impression that it meant full tang. When I saw that image it made me question that assumption. How much material needs to be removed and in what configuration until it becomes a partial tang at best? I think it's a valid question.

DocJD · Sep 3, 2018

Making any cuts or holes can only weaken the steel itself , but if the handle is built up with high strength epoxy filling all voids and joining together strong material for scales , then the handle will end up very strong and act as one piece . The steel will break somewhere else , often at the hilt . IMO , but I'm not an engineer or knife maker .

davek14 · Sep 3, 2018

eKretz said:
Wow, there is a lot of misinformation floating around on this subject (dealer guy is F.O.S.). When you hear that an I-beam is stronger than a solid square steel beam with the same outside dimensions, THAT is false. If you're talking cross-sectional area, then the I-beam is far stronger. So basically, a knife handle with identical material, exterior dimensions and thickness can never be stronger when skeletonized than when it's solid. However, most solid knife handle are so overly strong that skeletonizing doesn't really make enough of a difference to matter. Steel is a wonderfully strong material.

What about the difference between hardness and toughness? Since the steel is hardened to an extent, would the flexibility matter? I'm really just curious, not looking to argue.

microbe · Sep 3, 2018

DocJD said:
This is OP's handle in question maybe ? https://www.bladeforums.com/threads...ang-is-so-skeletonized.1607822/#post-18367120

I would not pry or put heavy sideways force on those knives. It's clear that there is a weak point where the cutouts start. For cutting in the plane of the blade, these will be plenty strong, but for lateral prying, this type of skeletonized tang is about as strong as a rat tail with less then 1/3th material of the full tang.
Unrelated to the strength of a skeletonized vs a full tang, it appears that the full tang term is often used falsely by marketing folks, when skeletonized tang would be correct. The problem is that you do not see or know that until you bought one and removed the scales. (Yeah, it happened to me)
So in various cases, you are buying a full tang in a bag.

Sonnydaze · Sep 3, 2018

Sounds like everyone is building on Horsewright's post, no.22. Dave Ferry is the voice of long experience.
Trust a nationally-renowned builder to get real data on a question like this. Look at his beautiful knives...
In other words, get your info “straight from the horse(wright's) mouth.
Sorry, Dave, couldn't hep mesef.
Don

Sonnydaze · Sep 3, 2018

bdmicarta said:
It used to be standard for a fine custom knife to have a tapered tang which was their way of keeping full strength but reducing weight and improving balance. This would probably be expensive for a production knife company to do so they just order the blanks with holes cut in the tang.

A good number of mid-tech and custom builders will still use the tapered tang to improve balance through reducing grip weight. It is also considered by many, including myslef, to aid in the beauty of the finished product.

Sonnydaze · Sep 3, 2018

letsurf said:
When someone says "full tang" before I was just under the impression that it meant full tang. When I saw that image it made me question that assumption. How much material needs to be removed and in what configuration until it becomes a partial tang at best?

I believe that a full tang is just that...one that extends to the butt of the grip...regardless of drilled or milled lightening holes.
However, a partial tang (hidden tang, stick tang) is a method whereby the tang is just pushed into a hole in the grip and then secured via glue, epoxy, etc. Although cheaper to manufacture, its strength is reasonably less than that of the full-tang knife.

Mistwalker · Sep 3, 2018

letsurf said:
Yes it was originally but I think it applies to any knife. When someone says "full tang" before I was just under the impression that it meant full tang. When I saw that image it made me question that assumption. How much material needs to be removed and in what configuration until it becomes a partial tang at best? I think it's a valid question.

At one time, full tang just meant that it went the full length of the handle, and even stick tangs or rat tail tangs that go all the way to the pommel were considered full tangs and the knives with over-molded handles the tang only went so far into are partial tangs. The skeletonization of the Bravo handle was the first thing that started to turn me off of BRK&T tools, seeing so many posts on Blade Forums with messed up BRKT knives with a lot of rolled or chipped edges, questionable heat treatments and questionable steel types, taking a series of photos for possible litigation against BRK&T for some really shoddy farmed out work back in 2011, and then later several conversations with Mr. Stewart himself finished turning me off to them. So these days I just don't even pay attention to them anymore, and grimace whenever a friend wants to show me one they just picked up in a trade. I do own some with similar skeletonization such as a BK-17 that has taken a lot of abuse, but I have a lot more faith in the designer and the company doing their part in ensuring a quality product through every step of the process than I would ever be able to have with BRK&T at this point. That said, most skilled makers out there skeletonize tangs in some way to some extent. For better balance and weight distribution, and for hand comfort in use. Because all of that mass of an actual full on full tang isn't necessary unless the knife is destined from the outset to face serious abuses in lateral stress. For a "normal" user knife it just makes the handle heavier than it needs to be and fatiguing to the hand and wrist in long term use.

22-rimfire · Sep 3, 2018

To think I was really looking forward to being able to handle a lot of different Bark River knives when KSF opens their store front which is supposed to happen soon. I don't use knives really hard and only own a couple BRKT fixed blades. I have to say that I really like the Wilderness Explorer model, but I have no idea what the tang looks like other than it is a "full tang". I guess my question is "why would BRKT cut so much out of the tang in the first place?" Scrap steel prices aren't exactly high. I assume it (pictured) would be one of their "light" models. But they may in fact do this on many of their blades.

eKretz · Sep 3, 2018

davek14 said:
What about the difference between hardness and toughness? Since the steel is hardened to an extent, would the flexibility matter? I'm really just curious, not looking to argue.

If the steel is the same hardness, the skeletonized handle is still weaker. I'm not exactly sure what you're asking, but a handle hardened to a low level and one hardened to a high level will both flex the exact same if they're of the same shape and dimension. The difference is that a softer one will take a permanent bend before the harder one. So in other words, to theorize - with 20 pounds of force, both might flex the same amount and return to straight. With 40 pounds, the softer one might be permanently bent, while the harder one would come back to straight. With 60 pounds, the softer one might be very bent, and the harder one might take a small bend, or depending on hardness, break.