Looking for pics of blade failure in Cold Steel

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Mongo

Mongo

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Howdy all, before anyone tells me to perform a search... I have been trying for the last 30 minutes rather unsuccessfully to do so. For some reason, entering "Cold Steel" makes the system very uncooperative. I also entered every conceivable combination of blade/failure/cold/ steel also.

What I am looking for: pics of broken cold steel blades, specifically at the blade/tang junction. I know they exist, I have seen them here.

What I DO NOT WANT: ANY opinions on Cold Steel, Lynn Thompson, their warranty, any BS at all. Let's keep this thread civil, I am ONLY looking for the pics.
 
for some reason, the search function can't handle string searches. Steel and Blade are both way too common for the search to handle, but even putting them in a string, where it should only find "blade failure" still overloads it with blade. I bet "Cold Steel" itself is mentioned enough times that even if it could differentiate better with strings that it still overloads.

dsc03489gc9.jpg

BustedRecon720.jpg
 
Mongo, to perform "cold Steel" searches on BF, use the Google advanced search function so that you can look for the term "cold steel". Details are on the search FAQ sticky.

I use both the BF search engine and Google when I search for data on BF. Which one I use depends on how much I know about the thread I am looking for and on exactly what terms I need to include.
 
I'm not sure what type of "failures" you're looking for. Anyone can break a knife if they abuse it. In fact, the photos above are the only ones I ever recall seeing. The knives above are all Carbon V models, BTW.
 
Batoning a 3/16" thick knife designed for hard use is hardly abuse.

And yes, my Recon was the Carbon V model.
 
FoxholeAtheist said:
Batoning a 3/16" thick knife designed for hard use is hardly abuse.

And yes, my Recon was the Carbon V model.
Click to expand...

agreed, also, if you look at the fracture, is is definitely faulty HT and/or stress risers. Not only is the recon tanto thick but it is saber ground which makes it even more of a pry bar, yet it failed miserably. I have broken a few CS TM's and Scouts, but I never broke an SRK and I abused it quite a bit, so a bit of inconsistency there. I also had a few recon tanto's but did not use them enough to form an opinion.

I am also the one that got Cliff the CS trailmaster and Scout that he tested back in 99 after meeting with Lynn at a CA show, and they performed average. Lynn wanted to buy my Busse SHBM at that show in CA and I told him that he should order from Busse as I waited 8 months for mine to arrive.

The problem is that CS does not do anything in house. It is all farmed out and quality control is suspect even if you supposedly have a rep checking it. Let's face it, even if camilus was making the Carbon V stuff, if they were going to skimp on quality it was not going to be on something that carries their name, but something made from an unknown steel by an unknown source, well that is a different story. Same goes for stuff made in China or Taiwan or Japan. If you do not have a knowledgeable rep checking all aspects of production, you cannot guaranty the product.

Having said all that I have always liked the TM's blade design and wish the quality wouild have been better and more consistent.
 
There actually are many pics of broken CS knives on the web. Happily my own SRK hasn't experienced the failures shown. Two places ANY knife might break are at the tip and at the tang. Tip breakage is very common whether it be from prying or stabbing. A little lateral force at just the wrong time and a snap or a bend will result. Tip failure, while common, is usually just a nuisance and many, many knives have just soldiered on with a broken tip to be reground to a new shape later.

Tang failure is much more serious.I have noticed enough failures of CS knives however to formulate an opinion that the tang steel of CS products isn't included in the heat treating process, or at least not to the same degree (no pun intended) as it should have been. Look at knife tests.com, where did the SRK being tested fail worst? At the tang. It should have bent, not snapped. The same above.

It isn't just a CS problem though. Look at the venerable MK2 Kabar being tested there, its tang snapped when used as a chinning bar. At least the Kabar was nice enough to bend first thereby giving a solid warning of a future snap.
 
I wonder if the blades aren't quenched deeply enough. The whole tang doesn't need to be quenched, but if the transition from martensite to pearlite is right at the blade/handle juncture, that could be a problem.
 
superc said:
Tip breakage is very common whether it be from prying or stabbing. A little lateral force at just the wrong time and a snap or a bend will result.....

....At the tang. It should have bent, not snapped. The same above. ...
Click to expand...
I respectfully disagree. A well made fixed blade should neither bend nor snap with "a little lateral force at the wrong time", even at the tip, and there are enough knives out there that demonstrate that this is possible.

Maybe I am missing something here, but the blade shown, broke while batoning. A knife should never bend when batoning, certainly not downwards and lateral force should not be involved. I have batoned a simple Buck 119 like the CS shown above without any problems. In fact a decent fixed blade should never fail during batoning....period. Not as long as you us a simple log as a baton.
 
I saw enough Carbon V and Becker knives break that I never really wanted one of the large knives made from 50100B.
 
FoxholeAtheist said:
Batoning a 3/16" thick knife designed for hard use is hardly abuse.
Click to expand...
I can't say whether it is or not. I am saying that abuse can destroy knives and that I haven't seen any other failures. Given what others say, it may very well be a heat treat problem on those particular knives. I've seen heat treat problems galore on revolvers. When someone shoots 23 magnum rounds through a Ruger Security-Six, and the forcing cone cracks at the base, I know it's not representative of other Security-Sixes I've seen and shot.

A lot of folks baton with their knives, fixed and folders, and when it happens only a time or two, I tend to think the steel wasn't adequately treated. The Recon Tanto has a good reputation and shouldn't be snapping like it did. BTW, I shot a Virginia Dragoon .44 mag one day, and on the second round, my hammer shattered like glass. I took it to Interarms, they put in a new trigger and it lasted the rest of the time I owned it without any problem.

I didn't mean to suggest that batoning was "abuse."
 
(Ignoring the issue of how replacing a trigger would fix a shattered hammer..)

My Dad brought his Kabar home from WWII which we still used for odd chores right up through the 90s when he passed. The blade tip eventually snapped because he liked to throw it at a thick wood pillar in our house back in the 50s and 60s. [He was pretty good, about a 98% stick rate from varying basement distances. Still, however, eventually the blades tip cried uncle.] He just reground it down to a semi drop point and we continued to use the knife for other things. The other things included batoning the knife through deer pelvics and rib cages at least once or twice a year. There were no failures of the tang. However when we go to knifetests.com we see the Kabar there fails at the tang while batoning. I remain convinced such failures are something about the metal heat treatment that the particular blade received. The same is true of the CS knives. For every Carbon V that fails, there are 10 that haven't under similar use. There is also the issue of metal fatigue. How many times has this or that blade experienced this kind of stress? If I had batoned one more deer with the same Kabar that had done dozens, would the tang have bent or snapped? Yes, we all want a knife that will withstand such strains and stresses hundreds (or more) of times. However any knife makers ability to guarantee that is probably really slim. The more knives he or she turns out to meet production, as quality inspection and control diminishes to meet volume demands, the greater the odds of an occasional failure. I once saw the rear axle of a concrete truck snap with no warning while making a slow turn. [Kind of impressive really. A truck with at least 9 cubic yards of 'rete suddenly jumping a foot up in the air.] Hand examining the steel afterwards gave little clue. Two + inches thick and snapped clean. Thousands of miles on the truck and many, many slow turns at different sites. We can never tell when or if. All a knife maker can do is try to adjust the odds, eliminate micro fissures when forging, proper heat treatment, etc. Even then, no guarantees.
 
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