Is a dull knife more dangerous than a sharp one?

I don't think it's that cut and dry.

I have cut the shit out of myself with both dull and sharp knives.The extra pressure and a slip is definitely an added risk with a duller knive, but the ease at which a sharp knife can slip through flesh makes it very dangerous too. The last bad cut - a duller knife that I was just sharpening. It was a Buck 110, and it was completely dull. I sharpened it up to the belly, and started trying to get a Q-tip into the bolster to clean the tang (not the most careful way to clean the tang, but I do stuff like that every day and accidents are rare) - I pushed hard, it slipped, and my finger went right down on the blade as I twisted the edge toward my hand. Dull knives are definitely capable of cutting, but I would have hated to see what a razor sharp knife would have done.

All things being equal, I would rather get cut with a razor sharp knife because it hurts less and heals cleaner.
 
Sharper knives cut deeper. Deeper into muscle, tendon, and bone.

It really depends on the manner of which you get cut. If I was cutting vegetables I would rather it be sharp. If I was getting mugged in a dark alley I'd hope his knife is dull as a rock.
 
BenchCo Spydermade said:
I agree you are using greater force, but only because that greater force is needed for the knife to cut. So though the greater force IS imparted on the part of you that you cut, it should be relative to the extra effort needed for it to cut you in the first place. By this logic they would be equally dangerous, no? I agree that cuts from dull knives hurt more, but in my experience they bleed less.
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The reason more force is dangerous is because a knife can "jump" when the medium being cut all of a sudden breaks apart. Less pressure, more control, less likely to jump. I have a nice scar on my wrist from a dull box knife because of just this scenario. I've since become a knife knut that has sharp A knives and if I'm using more than moderate pressure on something I stop and find a different way. Muscling any tool is bad form IMO and risks damage to the work, the tool, and yourself. I like the old addage "Work smarter not harder." ;)
 
Surfingringo said:
Funny story, a couple of months ago I was cutting a tomato. I was using a kitchen knife that my girlfriend makes me intentionally keep extra dull so she doesn't cut herself. :rolleyes: So there I am with a half cut tomato, trying to make another slice. The thing was so dull I was sawing and putting extra force and the whole tomato just kind of "rolled" and the knife came down on my finger. Cut it pretty good. Not worth stitches, but worse than I've done with any of my "dangerously sharp" knives in the last 20 years. Well, guess what? That was all HER fault for making me keep the knife so dull!!! :eek: See?? Two can play at that game! ;)
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LOL...thanks for the story. :thumbup:
 
Shotgun said:
The reason more force is dangerous is because a knife can "jump" when the medium being cut all of a sudden breaks apart. Less pressure, more control, less likely to jump. I have a nice scar on my wrist from a dull box knife because of just this scenario. I've since become a knife knut that has sharp A knives and if I'm using more than moderate pressure on something I stop and find a different way. Muscling any tool is bad form IMO and risks damage to the work, the tool, and yourself. I like the old addage "Work smarter not harder." ;)
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Yeah, last time I can't myself it was a "jump". I was cutting the stem off of a rose(I know, the task all manly men need a knife for). I was standing so u used my thumb to put pressure on the stem opposite the knife. Then " jump". I only had my self to blame.
 
I don't understand why someone wouldn't want the sharpest tool to make the work as easy as possible. Makes zero sense to me.
 
Yes. A dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one.

With a sharp knife, you whip it out, cut whatever needs cut, and put it back.

With a dull one, you whip it out, struggle to cut what you want to cut, it jumps and skips across what you're cutting, you're using a lot of force (maybe even sawing with it), and boom - it skips out and cuts or stabs you!
 
Ask the surgeons who repair the cuts , they want a sharp knife because the cut is clean with no tearing .This makes it easier to repair and heals faster.
 
You'll cut yourself more with a sharp knife, because the slightest move or mistake will slice right in, but you have a higher chance of gutting yourself, stabbing yourself or other serious injury due to bearing down on a dull knife.
 
Maybe the question shouldn't necessarily be about the knife itself, rather the mentality projected towards it during use: I don't think I've ever heard "Be careful~that knife is dull". +1 about axes and hatchets~ dullness breeds excessive force and eventual carelessness.
 
mete said:
Ask the surgeons who repair the cuts , they want a sharp knife because the cut is clean with no tearing .This makes it easier to repair and heals faster.
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I think it depends on a lot more than that. If a guy mangles the flesh on his finger, or cuts though a ligament down to the bone, the flesh wound will be a cakewalk compared to what happens when you sever a ligament.
 
marcinek said:
Dull.

1) You are using more force to cut. That greater force is imparted into whatever part of you you happen to contact.
2) The cut is not as clean as the cut from a sharp knife. Not only is it nastier...it hurts more.
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This: I was working in a kitchen, the guy next to me was trying to cut carrots with a dull knife. While he was exerting more force than normal his thumb slipped under the knife then he pushed thru the carrot. Off came the tip of his thumb, about 1/3 thru his finger nail. We put it in a bag of ice and stuck it in his chefs pocket. They couldn't sow it back on.
 
You get more cuts with a sharp blade, but there are more accidents with a dull one.
 
I cut myself with a sharp knife but feel it very quickly. Since I have been sharpening my family's kitchen knives I do believe they have gotten cut LESS. In fact, the last time I cut myself with a kitchen knife, it was dull.
 
I hate hearing that. It makes no sense. What's the point of using a tool that isn't working properly? If one is concerned about the risks of cutting oneself to the point that they won't keep the knife sharp because they believe doing so minimizes the risk of cutting oneself, why not go a step further and not use the knife? It's dumb logic. The point of a sharp knife is so it cuts immediately into a surface away from the user. Try cutting into a rounded surface like an onion with a dull knife. The knife will slide off right into your hand instead of into the onion! Using knives requires self confidence.
 
mete said:
Ask the surgeons who repair the cuts , they want a sharp knife because the cut is clean with no tearing .This makes it easier to repair and heals faster.
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This is the exactly what the ortho surgeon told me after sewing my severed tendons together. Good clean cut he said, "must have been a sharp knife". Little slip ups turn into major surgery with sharp knives, and that's from experience. I still carry mine hair popping sharp, but i also realize a small mistake with minimal force can now cause a hundred thousand in surgery expenses.
 
Dull is more dangerous overall, although mistakes with a sharp knife is more likely to end severely. I've been cut the most by dull or duller knives that required greater force to cut or complete the task at hand; however my worst cut has been with a nice sharp edge that required a visit to the ER and has left me with nerve damage in my left thumb, lucky i didn't cut any tendons.

Dull=more dangerous in pure numbers Sharp= less dangerous by numbers, but the accidents that do happen are more severe.

just my $.02
 
I think it depends on the user and the activity. To me dull knife cuts are a result of poor judgement putting yourself in a bad situation because you have to force the knife too hard, and sharp knife cuts are simply accidents.

Most people are used to dull knives, their finesse/control/skill is with dull blades. I don't know how many people I've sharpened knives for, or gifted knives to that cut themselves significantly in the first week. Yes it was carelessness of them not to be wary of a sharp knife but regardless those people were used to dealing with duller knives and having a super sharp knife got them in trouble. It's like giving the average daily driver a formula one car, they won't make it out of the pit lane without wrecking because they are used to driving something completely different.

I know they say sharp knife cuts heal faster and cleaner, and I believe it, but I've had plenty of nicks and small cuts with dull edges over the years that would have been ugly ugly to the bone cuts with a really sharp knife so I think it goes both ways.
 
I don't think it's a matter of control but one of force. Take a banana or a piece of fruit and hold it on your thumb, and slice down through the fruit with your thumb as a backing. If the knife is very sharp the force needed to slice through the banana is minimal, when it goes through to your thumb the force your exerting is not great enough to cut your flesh. You feel it long before it ever cuts, and so you can pull away before cutting yourself badly or at all. Repeat the same thing with a knife that is kind of sharp, and once you get through the fruit the force you used will probably have been great enough that you get cut worse from the dull knife.

Whittling is a pretty interesting way to observe this effect. You can "miss" all the time and graze yourself, but if the force that was needed to cut through the wood was minimal in the first place it doesn't really cut you very much--maybe a small scratch in the upper layers of dermal material, if the knife was slightly dull then the force behind it would be higher. Of course there is the idea that with a super dull knife you have to use so much force that it's unwiledly and you will hit yourself--but a lot of the time in that scenario the knife is so dull that it doesn't cut a person. On the other hand, a person can misuse a really sharp knife in the same way, and the resulting cut can be disasterous.

The better way to look at this is that you WILL get cut. Everything is a learning experience. Unless you used training wheels, no one learned to ride a bike without having a few accidents--and I'm pretty sure when they came off it eventually happened too. They're part of using the tool, but making it really sharp does is allow you to make the little mistakes and learn from them and go "Oh wow that would have cut my finger off if I wasn't pressing down with about a feather's worth of weight."

More often than not, when you're using enough force to make a really bad cut, you're doing something wrong whether your'e using a very sharp or a very dull blade. I once had a very sharp knife and was carving a stick, but forgot not to carve toward myself. I took too deep a cut, and when it finally made its way through the material I was putting too much force behind it. When it hit my finger it did so with such a great "smack" and with no slicing movement that for a second I thought that it hadn't cut, until I bent my finger and then saw a massive hole at the seam of my knuckle. Pretty sure I could see tendon and then the space filled with a pool of blood. Had to go to the hospital and get my first set of stitches.

Fast forward to some point where I still hadn't learned my lesson. I had some cheap old, kinda-sharp serrated knife and I was doing something to my door jam that required some prying. Well the backlock failed and somehow I ran the same finger on the plain-edged part. It stung like crazy and once again thought "Maybe I got luckly and it didn't actually cut me" because I hadn't been hit by the serrations. But then like a second later it started pouring blood.

Funny thing is the latter cut bisected the former and makes a perfect X on my finger. I didn't have to get stitches, but on the other hand it's because the cut was MUCH worse and had basically filleted a chunk out of the finger. Took much longer to heal up and was a lot more painful.

Ultimately though I think it highlights the fact that carelessness is going to be worse off in the long run than whether the knife is sharp or dull.

However as far as logic and philosophy goes, I don't understand why a person would use a knife, cut themselves, and then claim that the knife is too sharp. That is in fact the knife's function, to cut something. Instead of thinking that they should adjust their level of care when using the knife, they think the knife should be adjusted to simply not work as well as it should. This would be like driving a car with a bad transmission, but then saying that was safer because it can't go "too fast".
 
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