is a shorter blade stronger

Y

yoz's friend

Joined
Jun 30, 2001
Messages
1,751
for instance if you have a dogfather and a SOD of the same thickness. would the SOD be stronger. kind of like you could bend a 6 ft re-bar but not a 2 foot re-bar? would a shorter blade flex less?
 
I don't know if length make a steel inherently stronger, but I recall reading an article saying that a sub-3 inch blade could be heat treated closer to its full potential of hardness whereas a blade longer than 3 inches should be heat treated "softer" so is was tougher. I guess this is because with most sub-3 inch blades you are strictly cutting and not abusing the knife. So technically if a shorter blade is heat treated harder than it would be stronger.
 
Yes. If you apply the same amount of force, a short blade will bend less than a longer blade.
 
Jessekf said:
Yes. If you apply the same amount of force, a short blade will bend less than a longer blade.
Click to expand...

Assuming the same other overall dimensions, yes.

A short, thin blade would be a lot less "tough" than one that is longer, but 2-3X as thick..
 
yoz's friend said:
for instance if you have a dogfather and a SOD of the same thickness. would the SOD be stronger. kind of like you could bend a 6 ft re-bar but not a 2 foot re-bar? would a shorter blade flex less?
Click to expand...

Well, flexing if definitely not a measure of strength IMO. Strength is how much or what can it cut through.

But, if you are counting flex, then yes, a longer blade will tend to have more flex than a short one, given the same blade thickness and height.
 
I would think the strength would be the same,the problem would be that the longer the blade is the more leverage you could get on it.
 
yoz's friend said:
so in that sense a cgfbm with say a 6-7 blade would probably be near indestructable?
Click to expand...

Nope, anything is breakable. Could you break it under normal, but hard use? Very unlikely. I spent a TON of time in the woods with a 3/16th inch, 6" blade that I cant imagine ever breaking under normal uses. If I batoned through a car door, who knows.
 
Kind of like a rail road track. Hard to bend a piece 1 foot long but 100 ft will bend under its own weight.
 
u812 said:
Kind of like a rail road track. Hard to bend a piece 1 foot long but 100 ft will bend under its own weight.
Click to expand...
..... this, it is about the force that can be realistically applied to each different length of steel. That force or pehaps stress is a better term here can be magnified by the length, simle leverage comes to mind. the two pieces of steel will be just as inherently strong as each other it is the ability to applly larger degrees/amounts of force to the larger piece of steel which allows you to find the failure point.
 
Thanks for the sciense Andy, it was starting to look like the monkeys slapping at the monolith at the beginning of 2001 in here :D

To answer your original question practically, all other things being equal, of course :thumbup:
 
with same thickness and geometry , shorter blade get more resistant to break apart .

shorter blade flex less and thicker flex less.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top