Knife Failure Survey

Hmm, I broke the blade of an old Gerber FS II using it as a pry bar. Opps. Sent it back to Gerber for repair, they fixed it for free! But, I think that was way back in the 80's, not sure about Gerber now.

I broke the tip off a Spyderco Delica trying to scrap off some epoxy glue. Was an old rivet type Delica, so Spyderco couldn't fix it.

I broke the red plastic handle of my Victorinox Midnight Minichamp just carrying it around in my pocket. I sent it back to Victorinox for repair. They fixed it for free, but it took over two months, and 2 phone calls to get it back.
 
I beat the ever living crap out of my cold steel khukri and I've never had a problem with it, It cuts better then a few other machetes I've had and a few hatchets too. I've used mine to chop down some serious trees clearing UTV trails on my property.
 
It wasn't a "fail" per se as the blade functioned as it should.

Working on a scissor lift with full fall protection (harnesses and Kevlar/wire-rope lanyards) my buddy got his stuck in the scissor mechanism and it started cinching up on him, at the angle he was caught, neither of us could reach his caribiner release.

I had a full serrated SS Endura that worked its way through the Kevlar and the 1/4" wire rope but it took that Endura back to Butterknife sharpness.

I suppose I could have sent it back to Spyderco, I gave it to the safety guy at the jobsite instead, as an example of you should always watch your surroundings.
 
I gave my son a Buck Special for Christmas 2 years ago. That afernoon he snapped the blade about an inch from the hilt while chopping through a fir bough. Sucks, sucks more on Christmas.
 
Snapped about a 1/4 to 1/3 of an inch off of the tip of a bucklite moving ladder stands one day.
 
Seen three K-Bars USMC fighting/utility knives broken in about 15 minutes. They broke right at the handle blade junction, of course they make lousy throwing knives. LOL
 
my first knife that I made I got way to hot and it had huge grains and i broke when i was doing some light batoning and then I used it as a hot cut from the on and broke it 6 more times.
 
About a week ago I broke my Cold Steel Mini Gurkha Light Kukri. I had had it for around 10 years, used it quite a bit at times to cut and process wood. For the last 4-5 years it's just sat around and only been used occasionally. When it broke, I was comparing it to my Tomahawk and was splitting some small rounds of Hemlock tree. I used a baton on the back of the Kukri, about 3 hits, and it broke at the handle. When I looked at the break I could see corrosion penetrating inside the steel of the tang. Looking at the rubber handle itself, it's not sealed so moisture can easily penetrate and get under the handle. The point of the break on the tang was about a half inch into the handle.
Another time, I was batoning some wood with an Ontario pilot survival knife (the one with the saw back, leather handle, etc). After processing a small amount of wood, I looked at my knife. The blade was bent slightly to one side and the guard had come loose from the handle. I used some wire to fill the gap between the guard and handle, and bent the blade back to alignment, although it never looked or felt right again after that.
I now prefer the tomahawk or a hatchet for splitting wood and would not recommend batoning knives except in an emergency survival situation, i.e., when there is a need to very quickly make a fire in wet conditions. IMHO, if there is any weakness in the steel or tang construction of a knife, batoning will expose it and more likely result in a knife failure.
In addition, I had a friend who broke two Ka-Bar fighting-utility knives by throwing them into trees, another way of exposing weaknesses in a knife it seems...
 
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WILLIAM.M said:
Here are 2---but I think Busse makes the Best hard use knives in the world for the $

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...iact=rc&uact=3&dur=268&page=1&start=0&ndsp=11

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl...iact=rc&uact=3&dur=197&page=1&start=0&ndsp=11
Click to expand...
If I remember correctly
The picture of the bushwhacker BM was broken by someone shooting it in the middle of the blade with a 50
cal so I wouldn't count that one.

The steel Hart ergo was modified broken then covered by the warranty even though the failure wasn't due to the quality of knife

I have seen a couple broken busse knives that held up to some extreme abuse before breaking. are there other brands of knives that can take what a busse can probably but there are definitely more that can't
 
suppertramp said:
If I remember correctly
The picture of the bushwhacker BM was broken by someone shooting it in the middle of the blade with a 50
cal so I wouldn't count that one.

The steel Hart ergo was modified broken then covered by the warranty even though the failure wasn't due to the quality of knife

I have seen a couple broken busse knives that held up to some extreme abuse before breaking. are there other brands of knives that can take what a busse can probably but there are definitely more that can't
Click to expand...

Like I said in my post--I think Busse makes the best hard use knives in the world for the $
 
As a hunter, trapper, fisherman and lodge owner. i have never done anything worthy of breaking a knife that wasn't the knife's fault.
it was the knife's fault when i brought nothing but a rapalla fillet knife on my minnow trap line 14 miles from camp and i bent it into oblivion (prying) metal traps into shape.
actually, that's the only one that stands out in my mind... living up here you break one of everything eventually though, brush axes, ratchets, hand fuel pumps....

couldn't figure out how to take a screen shot of a video on my iPad. haha. so i took a picture of my iPad screen for these, hence the terrible quality. but i think it illustrates what i did quite nicely...
listen, i was too far away to not get the job done. it meant ruining a knife, so be it. my minnow trap line is a ten mile boat ride, a three mile bike run (bike = tav in my world) and then a half mile of creek and beaver dams in a couple canoes.

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I killed my first blade when I was 7, which was also my first knife. It was a cheap folder & I'd just discovered batoning :rolleyes:

I was convinced it was fixable, but dad made me throw it away nevertheless. I can still see all the pieces laying there in the trash-can when I close my eyes.

Last one was this January, twas a Mora 120 which I broke the tip off & bend the edge in couple of places within the first half hour I was using it. I still have it somewhere, but it just seems to much work to fix it for what it costs. Plus I'm clearly too hard on my knives for such a delicate carver that I don't really see the point in using it again anyway.

Other than that I've bended and broken a few tips in the 30+ years of knife-usage in between those two, but nothing too extreme comes to mind. I do find I have to do edge repair on my Spyderco Bushcraft a little more often than I should. But idk, perhaps I'm just expecting too much of the knife, I do use it pretty hard on a regular bases.
 
I broke the tip on a Gerber Applegate Covert by lending it to a coworker who used it as a prybar.


I broke a JA Henckels 4 Star 10" French knife cutting ice-cream into one inch cubes. The blade just broke in half, I was not putting any stress on it, The knife was replaced under warranty and I still use today although it's down to about an 8" blade after 30 years of service.
 
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I've had a few cheapies break on me, which I don't think counts, but other than user error I've not had a knife suffer any undue damage. What do I call 'user error'?...

1. On a very drunken night's camping in the Brecon Beacons, I tried battening (battoning?) my Busse FHS through a big log for the fire. After a few whacks on the FHS with another log, I wondered why the wasn't making any more progress. Big knot, thinks I. So, I hit it harder. Several times. Then the hard sandstone lump I was resting the log against split. Oops - only took an hour or so on the stones to grind out the tear in the edge and bring the knife back to hair-popping sharp. If I had kept the factory edge and not thinned it out, I would probably have got away with the knife unscathed.

Moral of the story: Don't thin out the edge of your superknife if you get drunk a lot while camping.


2. The Oyster's revenge. And yes, I had been drinking again, a little. My misses had brought along a load of fresh oysters to our beach camp without telling me, and I didn't have a screwdriver handy. So, I thought my new Fallkniven A1 would do the trick. Almost the instant that the knife touched that hard shell, 1/8th inch of the knife's tip cracked off. Superhard VG10 beaten by a mollusc. Another hour on the stones.

Moral of this story: Stick to the hotdogs, they don't break your knife.


3. My first 'real' knife when I was a kid was a 6" stainless Bowie-style, with nice brass fittings and a stacked leather handle. Actually quite a decent knife. I dropped it while cutting a tree branch and it landed on stone, mushing the tip and bending the knife almost ninety degrees an inch from the tip. You see, I was high up in the branches of a huge oak tree when I dropped it. I used the pavement outside our house to fix the knife; bent it back by inserting it into a gap in the flagstones, then reground the tip on the same flagstones. Lost about 1/2" of tip and it had a kink, but it still served me well until I finally lost it.

Moral of the final story: Don't chop up living trees, youngster!
 
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