Knife destruction test question

There are not enough comprehensive or scientific tests to enable absolute ranking of knives, unfortunately. I would like to see this kind of thing myself.

There was a website for awhile with destruction tests of various fixed blade knives but it has been taken down. A few of his videos are back on youtube but not nearly all of them. He tested a random sampling of knives, mostly knives that he was able to buy or that people sent to him. Also his testing methodology changed with time and somewhat from knife to knife which made it difficult to compare knives.

In general the carbon steel knives fared the best and cost of the knife was not a factor. I recall one very cheap stainless steel knife that did very well and one very expensive stainless steel knife that didn't do very well. I won't repeat the names because I'm not 100% sure of my memory and if I get it wrong the fanboys will roast me, again.

There are a lot of general factors involved in the destruction tests. Cheap carbon steels are just tougher then any stainless steel so they can chop concrete or stab steel better without significant damage. The shape of a blade at the blade to tang junction is important because sharp corners can be locations where a fracture will want to originate. Heat treat is important and this is something that you can't find out when you are comparing specs on paper.

So for those of us that buy and use knives, we have to glean what tidbits of comparison data we can get from lots of different discussions, and we make our choices, pay our money, and take our chances. If I wanted a tough fixed blade I would buy a Becker or a Cold Steel model in carbon steel. I only have one such knife that I consider to be tougher than others but I put it in my emergency bag at work in my office figuring if I have to cut my way out of our highrise in an emergency it will be my best bet.
 
ZT0300- production folder

becker bk2- porduction fixed

I have no means of backing this information but it sure sounds right.
 
singularity35 said:
1. Thickest
2. Thicker
3. Thick
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Yep. Exactly what he said.

If you go by destruction tests only, the best knife in the world would probably be a rusty chunk of rebar.

Rebar-big.jpg
 
singularity35 said:
1. Thickest
2. Thicker
3. Thick
Click to expand...

BS!! if that were true, the CRK Green Beret would have beaten the Busse Skinny Ash in Noss's destruction tests by a wide margin... instead, it snapped in half very early in the testing, and then skinny ash survived almost to the end.

There's a lot more to it than thickness.
 
No ranking is required because MY knives are the toughest. My knives can beat up your knives. Heck, my knives are so tough that if you just looked at one of my knives you would get cut. My knives are pure BAD-ASSESS, they'll cut you so bad, you'll wish they hadn't cut you so bad. :D


Just funnin' with ya JAMerolle, your question was extremely vague and open-ended, impossible to answer. And the validity of "knife testing" is the subject of much debate here.
 
BePrepared said:
BS!! if that were true, the CRK Green Beret would have beaten the Busse Skinny Ash in Noss's destruction tests by a wide margin... instead, it snapped in half very early in the testing, and then skinny ash survived almost to the end.

There's a lot more to it than thickness.
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I agree, tons of other factors contribute to this. A couple of which are the type of blade steel as well as the heat treat.
 
BePrepared said:
BS!! if that were true, the CRK Green Beret would have beaten the Busse Skinny Ash in Noss's destruction tests by a wide margin... instead, it snapped in half very early in the testing, and then skinny ash survived almost to the end.

There's a lot more to it than thickness.
Click to expand...

Dunno about that, the specs I see are green beret .220, skinny ash .223. Not much but there you are...
 
singularity35 said:
Dunno about that, the specs I see are green beret .220, skinny ash .223. Not much but there you are...
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The skinny ash is .1875

The Green Beret and the Project are .220 and .255 respectively, and both broke FAR before the ASH in the tests
 
That's like asking which hammer can saw boards the best, or which gun can pound nails best...

Not all tools are designed to do the same job.
 
For what it's worth destruction test very important , much in the same way crash testing cars has lead us to safe cars or at least identifying thos that are not. But for the tests to be valid and give a measurable outcome from knife to knife steel to steel there needs to be reliability in the testing methods to render some objectivity
 
I think if I was going to have a folding knife so tough that I still might destroy it, I would take my chances with the ZT0200 or ZT0300.
 
JAMerolle said:
For what it's worth destruction test very important , much in the same way crash testing cars has lead us to safe cars or at least identifying thos that are not. But for the tests to be valid and give a measurable outcome from knife to knife steel to steel there needs to be reliability in the testing methods to render some objectivity
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That is not even a remotely fair comparison.
 
JAMerolle said:
For what it's worth destruction test very important , much in the same way crash testing cars has lead us to safe cars or at least identifying thos that are not. But for the tests to be valid and give a measurable outcome from knife to knife steel to steel there needs to be reliability in the testing methods to render some objectivity
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Not really...Destruction tests (in the Noss style) for knives are much more like buoyancy tests for cars - Yeah, it's nice to have a car that will float, but it's mostly useless and isn't any kind of indicator as to whether the car is any good to drive or not.

Similarly, I guess it's nice to have a knife that you can pound with a sledge hammer and stand on and all that other nonsense, but it's not much of an indicator as to whether the knife can cut things or not.
 
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JAMerolle said:
For what it's worth destruction test very important , much in the same way crash testing cars has lead us to safe cars or at least identifying thos that are not. But for the tests to be valid and give a measurable outcome from knife to knife steel to steel there needs to be reliability in the testing methods to render some objectivity
Click to expand...

Spyderco breaks their knives and others in controlled tests to determine lock strength and points of failure etc.
That's pretty different from some guy on the Internet breaking things.
 
Dorito Monk said:
Not really...Destruction tests (in the Noss style especially) for knives are much more like buoyancy tests for cars - Yeah, it's nice to have a car that will float, but it's mostly useless and isn't any kind of indicator as to whether the car is any good to drive or not.
Click to expand...

I think even that is too generous. I think destruction tests are more like buying a sports car and then wanting to test how well it does offroading.
 
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