In what way is the BK9 better then an RD9?

A

Agent Iron

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Feb 5, 2005
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This is gonna be great having an Ethan forum!

I was wondering if I could hear some opinions on why I should buy a Bk9 over an RD9. All opinions are welcome, but I would really like to hear how Ethan would argue this one. I know both are outstanding knives, and both are tough knives, yet they are different in material, blade design, and thickness. I am sure Ethan could have made a blade of a similar type to the Ranger but he chose not to, and I imagine for good reason. Then again, perhaps the Brute would have been a better comparison to the RD9...if only that was an option. :(

Thanks
AI
 
Hey AI....

I would dearly love to argue my case for the BK9 but I am not familiar with the RD9....I WILL however do a little research and get back to you.....In general I have heard good things about the Ranger range of knives.....

All Best...

ethan
 
Hey AI...

At my age I can only dream....but Thanks...

I took a quick look at Justin's website and without actually holding and/or working with one I will be happy to share some quick observations...The Blade steel is great stuff and if it comes from Ontario and has the magic Maragne heat treat it is gonna have great edge retention and should be an aggressive cutter.....
At a quarter inch thick and what appears to be a fairly low grind my only concerns would be of the weight, balance and slicability(if that is a word) those I can not address until I have a chance to handle one......

The grip scales are slabs and that is where I think the BK9 will definitely shine in comparison....Although, I think I can safely say the handle design of the Ranger is such that you would be unlikely to find it uncomfortable....Please ask this Question again in late january .....I will get a few feels over at Ontario's booth at SHOT Show...I should probably get one... .I have been looking for a blade with Dan's magical 5160...

All Best...

ethan
 
Thanks alot Ethan!

I have heard enormous praise for Justins knives, and am sure that RD9 would be a beast of a chopper. I do know know how the types of grind compare, or in what applications one blade would shine over another. I will be currious to hear what you think about the blade after getting to spend some time with it...I think you owe it to yourself to posses one. :D

I would love to hear what motivated you to design the BK9, did you find some areas where the BK7 was not quite the right tool for the job, and other situations where the Brute was just too much in some way?

My bet is the BK9 would be a better slicer then the RD9, and in some chopping situations it might excell the RD9. I think the RD9 would probably be a better hatchet then the BK9.

I probably need one of each just the same.
AI
 
Hey AI
Again, without hefting the RD9 me betchum you are right on the money.....

I designed the BK7 COMBAT UTILITY as a modernised, beefed up Marine Combat....I tried to keep the blade length the same (some commanders will not let their troops carry anything with a blade longer than the issue knife) and to keep the weight as close as possible with a full, but skeletonised tang......I had design constraints that I did not have when I put the BK9 COMBAT BOWIE on paper......When Ken Warner went to Vietnam as a correspondent with the American Rifleman he asked his good friend Bill Moran to make him the best camp/fighting knife he could and the result was a Rio Grande Bowie...I have a Blackjack copy of that blade and it just kept tickling the fringes of my fevered brain....What resulted is certainly not a copy but it was certainly the inspiration...And by krikeys it sure does work.....There is a reason American fighting men have carried big Bowies to war for almost 200 years.....If properly designed you can whittle with'em, split and chop with'em and carve large chunks off your enemies with'em....A multi-tool with no moving parts.....I like the BK7 a lot and it is a great soldiers tool....But a couple more ounces and a couple more inches gives BIG returns in utility...When I do cutting demos the nine is my tool of choice and when I go to the woods the nine is with me....I LOVE my nine....

All Best...

ethan
 
Hey AI
Again, without hefting the RD9 me betchum you are right on the money.....

I designed the BK7 COMBAT UTILITY as a modernised, beefed up Marine Combat....I tried to keep the blade length the same (some commanders will not let their troops carry anything with a blade longer than the issue knife) and to keep the weight as close as possible with a full, but skeletonised tang......I had design constraints that I did not have when I put the BK9 COMBAT BOWIE on paper......When Ken Warner went to Vietnam as a correspondent with the American Rifleman he asked his good friend Bill Moran to make him the best camp/fighting knife he could and the result was a Rio Grande Bowie...I have a Blackjack copy of that blade and it just kept tickling the fringes of my fevered brain....What resulted is certainly not a copy but it was certainly the inspiration...And by krikeys it sure does work.....There is a reason American fighting men have carried big Bowies to war for almost 200 years.....If properly designed you can whittle with'em, split and chop with'em and carve large chunks off your enemies with'em....A multi-tool with no moving parts.....I like the BK7 a lot and it is a great soldiers tool....But a couple more ounces and a couple more inches gives BIG returns in utility...When I do cutting demos the nine is my tool of choice and when I go to the woods the nine is with me....I LOVE my nine....

All Best...

ethan
 
Ethan Becker said:
Hey AI
Again, without hefting the RD9 me betchum you are right on the money.....

I designed the BK7 COMBAT UTILITY as a modernised, beefed up Marine Combat....I tried to keep the blade length the same (some commanders will not let their troops carry anything with a blade longer than the issue knife) and to keep the weight as close as possible with a full, but skeletonised tang......I had design constraints that I did not have when I put the BK9 COMBAT BOWIE on paper......When Ken Warner went to Vietnam as a correspondent with the American Rifleman he asked his good friend Bill Moran to make him the best camp/fighting knife he could and the result was a Rio Grande Bowie...I have a Blackjack copy of that blade and it just kept tickling the fringes of my fevered brain....What resulted is certainly not a copy but it was certainly the inspiration...And by krikeys it sure does work.....There is a reason American fighting men have carried big Bowies to war for almost 200 years.....If properly designed you can whittle with'em, split and chop with'em and carve large chunks off your enemies with'em....A multi-tool with no moving parts.....I like the BK7 a lot and it is a great soldiers tool....But a couple more ounces and a couple more inches gives BIG returns in utility...When I do cutting demos the nine is my tool of choice and when I go to the woods the nine is with me....I LOVE my nine....

All Best...

ethan
Click to expand...


Yes, Yes, Yes....that is what I was looking for. I have toiled over the BK7 or the BK9, and I always came back to the BK9 as only having advantages when doing the comparison. I have not handled either, so I could have been wrong, but your experience has confirmed my thoughts. It just seems like with the
BK9 you can probably do all the detail work that you could with the BK7 with added power, reach, chopping ability, easier to use as a draw knife, and it just looks plain Awesome! Beautiful, thanks so much for giving me your time this evening Ethan, this is gonna be a great forum and I wish you great success!
AI
 
Sorry to bug you one last time this evening. One thing that comes up over and over when I do some searching is that the RD is tougher then the BK9, and I think more then anything it is based on the tests by Noss, and Cutlery science where they saw some early blade failures in their tests. Now I do not know how much stock to put in these failure tests as they do some pretty unnatural things to the knives. I was wondering with all the BK9's you have out there, some in very hostile real world situations, do you have any idea what kind of failure rate you have. It seems like everyone that has a BK9 loves it to death, most people who suggest going with a Ranger or Scrapyard seem to be people who do not own a Becker. I don't want to sound negative, and spoil the party mood with a question like this, I am just relishing having such easy access to the MAN!

Thanks
AI
 
Agent Iron,

All knives can break. If a knife has more of one fairly tough steel than another knife, it will be tougher, but not cut as well. As long as you're not using a 9" obsidian-glas blade, tough should come from the hand gripping the knife, not the steel.

A blade that's thinner and lighter might not survive as many accidental impacts with rocks or plain tomfoolery, but it'll do more work before its user gets tired and will have less time in sheath than out of sheath.

I own some of Justin's fine knives: a custom RD-9 with S7 steel and an extended front guard (wanted one built for tomfoolery and Justin obliged) and a stock 5160 model that I've thinned down to a shadow of its former self (we won't talk about the custom bainite heat-treatment for now ;) ) which makes it closer to a BK-9. Very good stuff all around. I think, though, if you're not willing to get a custom version made to your specs or spend countless hours with a grinder, that a stock BK-9 will work better.
 
thombrogan

Thanks for the post! Sounds like Justin's knife without modification is more like a club then a knife....or as I aluded too, it is the better hatchet. I do not want to have to reprofile a knife....I do not trust my ability to do so, nor do I have the desire. I figure you would have to get pretty silly to break a BK9, not that there is anything wrong with being silly once and a while....:)

YOur post was most helpful!
AI
 
Hey AI......

I do not think Camillus EVER got a BK9 back broken...My own tests on the new Ka-Bar made stuff indicates to me that we are not likely to have any problems....The only times I have broken a knife in my adult life I was deliberately trying to destroy it....I am expecting several BK9s tomorrow and intend a test to destruction over the weekend.....I must say that a test I did two weeks ago resulted in a broken tip on a NECKER----BUT after over 45 degrees of deflection from true...not bad for a skinny little neck knife- for apiece of steel that thin it really is impressive...An impromptu test at PWYP this last year with a much narrower blade than the BK10 withstood a 250+ pound guy hanging on it with the blade pounded sideways into a tree....I pretty much invented the sharpened prybar school of knife design and I have realised over the years that the more a blade is a prybar the less it will be a useful knife.....In all things there must be balance... You can have a razor blade or you can have a cold chisel, just not in the same space...I doubt that in any scenario other than brying the lid off a Bradley fighting vehicle that you will suffer a BK9 failure in the field...I am a German and you give me a big enough hammer and I can break ANYTHING......KaBar tells me they get VERY few busted Mariine Combat blades back from freaking WAR zones and it has a THIN stick tang that makes my overkill genes shudder every time I think about it......If you break a BK9 in field use I will be VERY surprised.....I have really abused several Camillus BK9s without negative results and the new KaBar made ones really are mechanically stronger.....Thanks for your questions they are pertinent and I have enjoyed the dialogue.....

All Best....

ethan
 
oops... I could have let the Thom Man say it for me...bed time for the old codger..it has been fun guys...

All Best...

ethan
 
I just watched www.knifetests.com video of the BK9 destruction test. I think they should have given it a higher rating than they did. After batoning all those 4x4s, and the way it still sliced that paper like butter, I was really impressed. The blade did break in half though, on video 3 I think, but the guy was hacking through a solid sheet of brick. I'm pretty sure most people won't be doing that. I was also impressed with how many hits the handle took with a sledge hammer before breaking.
 
I have a BK 9 that I've used for several years now. It's been a great working knife, and a tank in terms of durability without the excessive "heft" that so many others have. I use it a lot around the house (outside), chopping tree branches and roots. It's taken a few hits into the ground when I got sloppy, and has always come through with little damage. That's a good testament from a guy who's not too careful where he chops.
 
Agent Iron said:
Sounds like Justin's knife without modification is more like a club then a knife....or as I aluded too, it is the better hatchet.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the kind word, AI and EB.

I don't want to give the wrong impression here. The RD series started off as "sharpened club" style cutlery, but got thinner with every new iteration. Right before Ontario picked up the line, the RD series was full flat ground and about 0.03" thick at the top of the edge. For a chopper, that's in no way unreasonable. Many of my pocketknives have had edges that thick.

That said, I'm jonesing to get my hands on a Ka-Bar BK9. The scales are grivory, but grelephants aren't an endangered granimal.
 
Hey Guys...

Before I start groaning in in grief over Thom's not, all that bad punning.....I have a horrible confession to make....At about 0400 this morning I remembered not one but TWO BK9 failures...One was at a demo at Smoky Mountain Knife Works some years ago and one happened to Bob Brown of Buy Brown Industries (a damn good Kydex mangler).....Both failures were caused by throwing them into wooden targets.....I really do not know why the relatively gentle act of throwing a knife so often results in castatrophic failure thereof but I do know that there is a reason that knives that are designed to be thrown are rarely heat treated above 53RC and many are down in the 40's...I would like to say that the new heat treatment protocol will fix that but I suspect it does not.... I will check with Paul later today on his thoughts.....As a word of caution, I lost a lot of my enthusiasm for throwing knives when a MACHAX I was throwing came back and nailed me 37 stitches worth in the leg...It happened in a real big hurry...It Was embarrassing.....It was expensive...It was time consuming....It was painful....As a practical matter if you do throw a knife---do it when you are not depending on it in the field, ie. at home...We have all had fantasies about knives being thrown in a combat situation BUT, I believe that in WWII with MILLIONS of men involved there is only ONE documented case of a knife being used for sentry removal!!!!..This may be why pros rely on suppressed firearms....Can anyone say MP5SD.....Anyway, sorry about the memory lapse.....

All Best...

ethan
 
I look at this way people can break anything, and then there are people who can use things and will wear them out or will be just well worn from decades of use.

For over 40 years I have used knives as part of my everyday life and the only knives that every broke for me were so called Gas Station knives and I only carried these because it was what I could afford at that time in my life.

When one man down the street goes through lawn mowers like toilet paper and another man can use the same lawn mower for better than a decade, is the problem with the person or the product.

The key to survival is lasting and that goes for your tools also. IMHO

BTW Mr. Becker the BK 9 is already on my next knife order list which will happen before this month is gone.:thumbup:
 
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