KABAR failure

It's a fighting knife. Nuff said lol. Sorry for your loss, I have seen Kabar replace these, broken in the same spot from batoning. Let us know how they treat you.
 
D R E said:
So the instructor grasped the bare blade with his left hand, the handle with his right and simply snapped it like it was a stick? Man, I would like to see that.
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Blade was sheathed, but it was still pretty jaw dropping. I suppose he could have pre-cut it or something similar, but I'm unsure why he would.
 
There are times when I wish the blade world would simply forget there ever was a word called "batoning." That word has become superglued to bushcraft and outings in the woods, where everyone feels a need to "test" their knife — by batoning it into some chunk of wood using another chunk of wood.

Batoning is best thought of as a last-ditch, I-gotta-make-a-fire-or-die-tonight sort of technique. It should always be considered a move of desperation, used when conditions unexpectedly turn bad or some other unforeseen calamity happens. It's what one does when nature throws a curveball.

Clearly, batoning can be done safely with small, not terribly tough wood, under nice conditions, on a sunny day, with a stout, full-tang knife. But if you get in the habit of that, you're likely try it routinely, and therein lies the risk. How many knife owners can tell an oak log, from an elm log, from a hickory log, from a white pine log....? Not even counting sizes and how long these have been dead — this is all dead wood we're batoning, right? — these kinds of wood have big differences in durability and toughness.

If dealing with logs and branches is going to be part of the trip, bring a folding saw, ax, or hatchet. Bring the fixed blade knife, too — but remember what your particular knife was made to do and keep within its perfomance envelope. Your visit to the bush will thereby be easier, and your knife will remain a useful tool for many decades to come.

/OK, rant over
 
Insipid Moniker said:
I've watched an instructor snap one in half barehanded. Failure to radius the transition to the tang is poor design, as doing so would cost very little more and make the knife much stronger. Many people have been fine with the classic KABAR. It's still poorly designed, though.

Your analogy particularly falls apart because I've made no claims about what the blade should be able to do. I've just agreed with the obvious weak point that was mentioned above and reiterated that it was a design flaw, a particularly egregious one that's been known for many years.
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I thought that bigghoss's analogy was perfect. The "design flaw" survived a war, and the knife was praised by its users. It has limitations, yes. But "egregious" points at a major problem that caused frequent failures. This was simply not the case.
 
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whitethronebooks said:
I thought that bigghoss's analogy was perfect. The "design flaw" survived a war, and the knife was praised by its users. It has limitations, yes. But "egregious" points at a major problem that caused frequent failures. This was simply not the case.
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I actually mistyped there and I agree to some small extent. Should have read, "particularly egregious BECAUSE it's been known about for many years."
 
FYI, the Government specification for this knife has included a 1/32" radius at the junction of the tang/blade for more than 50 years. So things aren't as egregious as you might suppose they are.
 
sac troop said:
FYI, the Government specification for this knife has included a 1/32" radius at the junction of the tang/blade for more than 50 years. So things aren't as egregious as you might suppose they are.
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In that case, mea culpa. I saw that demo and it turned me off cold to the classic KABAR combined with the explanation that came with it! This is one circumstance in which I'm very happy to be wrong.
 
Hey first off I'm happy to have been able to send a little sunshine in your direction.:) IMHO, as long as there are tools, people will find ways to break them. I do like to think that if an item proves to fail at a significant frequency, the problem will be addressed.
There are a lot of examples of the Government implementing changes to knife/bayonet manufacture that were intended to improve reliability that in the end showed that the problem didn't originate there. Removing the fuller from the M9 bayonet to fix blade breakage, turned out to be a heat treating problem. Moving the ID stamp from the ricasso of the Jet Pilots knife to the pommel didn't decrease the incidence of blade breakage on them either.
 
You beat a tool with a heavy stick and it breaks. Should anyone be surprised?

The Ka-Bar is a fine general purposed design. But, it is a knife, not a splitting wedge and the two are not interchangeable. There is nothing wrong with batoning, done correctly, you should put very little if any strain on the blade or handle.

What were you using for a baton?

n2s
 
Yes it will break, but it shouldn't that easily. I was using another piece of oak firewood about 3" on diameter and 16" long to baton the knife. After the KABAR broke (on the second hit), I switched over to a cheap machete and proceeded to baton it and split the rest of the evening's firewood. As I said earlier, I'll be carrying my BK7 next time.
 
ScottK said:
Yes it will break, but it shouldn't that easily. I was using another piece of oak firewood about 3" on diameter and 16" long to baton the knife. After the KABAR broke (on the second hit), I switched over to a cheap machete and proceeded to baton it and split the rest of the evening's firewood. As I said earlier, I'll be carrying my BK7 next time.
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A hatchet would get you kindling, small stuff, and usable sizes of firewood faster and easier and with less risk to expensive cutlery.
 
AreBeeBee said:
A hatchet would get you kindling, small stuff, and usable sizes of firewood faster and easier and with less risk to expensive cutlery.
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^This. I consider batoning a last resort type procedure. If packing it in the high country (or in survival situation), and weight is big issue, use what you have. But if camping at a normal destination site, always have an axe, hatchet, or hawk.
 
Thomas Linton said:
"Knife, Fighting Utility"
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^^ This^^ For a Ka-Bar profile fighting utility one. Emergency Batoning when it needs to be done and your options are low.

Was my primary idea of using my KA-BAR D2 for light to medium duty, used the hilt to stomp plastic tent stakes in the ground, cut wads of fish line under water along with an an abandoned gill net, killed rope dangling around the camp sites people left to lazy to pack their crap out or burn. When I'm cold tried and shivering is when the big knife gets used for batonning. I admit I do Batactitoning at times (tactical batoning!) but that's to keep a skill up and when the axe or hatchet got forgot or for recreation, I always keep a big knives about. Really axes and hatches walked of to many times (keep the solid metal shaft, non tubular, hatches stash as those are the ones people like to grab first) ...plus its a great stress reliever at times.
 
ScottK said:
...I was using another piece of oak firewood about 3" on diameter and 16" long to baton the knife. ....
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That would be an approximate volume of 3*3.14*16=150.72 cubic inches/1,728 cubic inches per cubic foot=8.6% of a cubic foot. Depending on the moisture content, oak weighs from 44 to 63 lbs. per cubic foot, so lets say it was in the middle at around 53.5 lbs./foot. That would mean that you were beating on your knife with a 4 & 1/2 lbs. club. Could you imagine hitting your others tools with such a thing? Beating on your drills, handsaws; on your lap tops or telephones; hitting your car or lawnmower. The bottom line is that few tools would survive that unless they had been specifically designed for such abuse.

This is what you were trying to do with your knife:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAA5mu9FQDQ

n2s
 
Pi R Squared?
I always thought pie are round!

I spent my whole life looking for a square root, they're all round too!
 
LostViking said:
Pi R Squared?
I always thought pie are round!

I spent my whole life looking for a square root, they're all round too!
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See kids that is what happens 25+years after you finish grad school.....:(

Diameter * pi = circumference

The area is the radius squared x Pi=

or (in this case)

=1.5 x 1.5 x 3.14
= 7.1 square inches

The volume is 7.1 inches x 16 inches
= 113.6 cubic inches

which is 113.6/1728 = 6.5% of a cubic foot

at 53.5 lbs. per cubic foot = about 3 1/2 lbs.

n2s
 
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