I'm a sad knife owner today.

Yipes! :eek:

You know Spyderco will make it right, but dang! :eek:

:edit: I just noticed this was a factory second. Hmm. I know the scales won't be warranted, but the blade? That's not normal.
 
Hmmm...mankind has been using an axe to chop things since 30,000 BC. I wonder why they have fallen out of favor in 2010? :confused:
 
I don't think batoning is abuse, but my guess is they will say you were abusing the knife. Ask around the WS&S forum or Bushcraft USA forums and most everyone I know batons with their bushcraft knives. (I guess I should qualify this with small wrist sized wood, not massive logs)

Of course this is NOT the most efficient way to split wood, but it is part of a normal bushcraft knifes existence IMO. The whole idea of bushcraft is to use what you have and sometime you don't have an axe, I guess this is a lesson. (this one is not a hard use knife) It is pretty, besides the cracked handles which can easily be repaired.

I have batoned for years with everything from a Mora to a Skookum bush tool, I have never broken a blade yet. I picked up a Spyderco factory 2nd also - but I won't be using it like I do all my other bushcraft knives, this one will be a re-sell. Too bad.
 
From the pictures you can see a sort of lateral impact caused it to break where and how it did. I have no idea if the knife is designed to take impacts like that and survive. Ifyou look at the picture of the knife in the wood, with the cracked handle before it broke you can see the knife was not verticle, but going through at an angle. Sitting there without doing anything would have had a force exerted on the knife due to the wood.

The knife wasn't being batoned straight up and down where it's the strongest. but down and sideways.

It's easy to see how and where it failed, but I'm not entirely sure if that falls in the area of what it's designed use is.

stringy, knotty wood of that size and thickness would have warranted an axe for me, but I recognize people love the idea of indestructible knives that can do it all.

I'm glad I'm not currently a knifemaker in the age of the internet where every flaw, or break even caused by misuse is online the same day with dozens of "experts" giving their opinion.
 
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good lord that thing just, BROKE :eek: i was expecting the scales to fail but the blade at its thickest point? dang
 
Although you have a good point there APF, that shouldn't have happened. That knife is MEANT to stand much more hard use and batoning than what caused it to fail in this case. It is a (special kind of) SURVIVAL knife after all, which you should (in extremo) be able to depend your life on. You for sure couldn't have done it with THAT knife. Disturbing. I hope this is not a similar case of too hard tempering as with the ZDP MULEs. That would suck. I hope it all turns out well and there was just a material defect that caused this total failure. Spyderco will (hopefully) clear things up.

Dennis
 
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That sucks, now I am rethinking my decision to get the factory seconds in the future. I got one of those now but seeing this really shocked me. I really hope Spyderco has something to say about this. Recently I see a lot of similar things on the forums about Spyderco knifes. Are the loosing their quality standard?
 
It's definitely disconcerting, I would expect a properly made bushcraft knife to be able to baton
through a piece of wood and not break in half :confused:
 
Sal actually said he'd look into the knife failure in the spyderco lab in the OP's post he referred to.
about the knife: it's probably murphy's law in action.
 
I feel for ya - hope it works out.

That being said...it doesn't change my impression of spyderco knives or the company.

Top class knives and people.

If only they made a hatchet :-)
 
Oh man no I love my Spyderco's.I'll keep on buying their stuff.I have a native that's been through hell and back a few times and came out smiling.
I didn't hit the blade till it broke I grabbed it with my hand and snapped it when I tried to pull it free of the wood after the scales broke.
I'll take Sal up on his offer.
 
I wasn't really shocked to hear about the problems with the spalted wood scales, but this is really unusual. What a bizarre coincidence to have both problems in the same knife!

I was sitting on the fence about picking up one of the seconds. I guess I'm stepping down until we can find out if there was actually anything wrong with the blade or not.
 
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