Cliff Stamp
BANNED
- Joined
- Oct 5, 1998
- Messages
- 17,562
In the general forum I made a post concerning throwing knives :
www.bladeforums.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002018.html
This was not on the value of being able to do so but more along the lines of just how hard on a knife is it. For along time I just accepted that throwing knives are different than regular knives. I never really thought about it. But it was mentioned to me, mainly in jest, as a sort of a test and the longer I thought about it the less extreme it seemed.
Yes, if you throw a knife and the point jams into a piece of board that is a fair shock on the point. However many survival / camping / heavy utility knives regularly are used to dig point first through wood as well as puncture metals, dig holes in rocky soil etc. I then got to thinking about some of the throwing knives I had used and they were all very cheap stainless and I had never damaged them. Even when I experimented with high velocity throws that missed badly and sent the knife flying. This made me wonder how I could possibly damage a much tougher high carbon steel knife if the cheap 420 stainless ones were not overly bothered.
Ok, I know that the temper and geometry is much different. For one thing the points on throwing knives are very thick and the temper is very low. However I figured that even though the high end survival knives are thinner with a higher hardness the better steel and heat treat would make up for this somewhat.
Anyway all the replies to the thread got me thinking about this enough to make me want to actually verify what conclusions I came to. So basically I took a very cheap imported fixed blade, mystery stainless, and threw it around for an hour.
www.physics.mun.ca:80/~sstamp/knives/throw.html
End result - I couldn't really damage it by throwing it at wood even when I intentionally missed and sent it flying. The tip was strong enough to take straight 6 foot drops onto concrete with just slight impacting. To see a bend I had to actually throw it at the floor.
This was a very curious result as many high end knives like the ATAK and Project are not warrentied under throwing. Now the subject line is not a serious statement - but - I do wonder how any decent knife would get damaged if the cheap knife held up fine.
Now I am not saying that if you are looking for a good throwing knife then get a camping knife, they are designed for two different things. Throwing a knife that the edges are sharpened is not an overly smart idea for one thing. But what I do think, is that any knife that wants to be known for its toughness should not be bothered by you throwing it around. There are exceptions, but I think that is a pretty fair statement overall.
I think the only way you would do real damage by throwing is if you missed a high velocity throw and the knife rebounded and landed straight tip down on a rock - and the chance of that happening is about the same as you flipping a coin and it saying on the edge. Usually the knife just rebounds and takes a glancing impact on the tip - and that is really not that hard on the blade. I am speaking of a specific class of knives here of course and that has to be kept in mind. I won't be throwing my Madpoet knife around any time soon for example.
-Cliff
[This message has been edited by Cliff Stamp (edited 14 April 1999).]
www.bladeforums.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/002018.html
This was not on the value of being able to do so but more along the lines of just how hard on a knife is it. For along time I just accepted that throwing knives are different than regular knives. I never really thought about it. But it was mentioned to me, mainly in jest, as a sort of a test and the longer I thought about it the less extreme it seemed.
Yes, if you throw a knife and the point jams into a piece of board that is a fair shock on the point. However many survival / camping / heavy utility knives regularly are used to dig point first through wood as well as puncture metals, dig holes in rocky soil etc. I then got to thinking about some of the throwing knives I had used and they were all very cheap stainless and I had never damaged them. Even when I experimented with high velocity throws that missed badly and sent the knife flying. This made me wonder how I could possibly damage a much tougher high carbon steel knife if the cheap 420 stainless ones were not overly bothered.
Ok, I know that the temper and geometry is much different. For one thing the points on throwing knives are very thick and the temper is very low. However I figured that even though the high end survival knives are thinner with a higher hardness the better steel and heat treat would make up for this somewhat.
Anyway all the replies to the thread got me thinking about this enough to make me want to actually verify what conclusions I came to. So basically I took a very cheap imported fixed blade, mystery stainless, and threw it around for an hour.
www.physics.mun.ca:80/~sstamp/knives/throw.html
End result - I couldn't really damage it by throwing it at wood even when I intentionally missed and sent it flying. The tip was strong enough to take straight 6 foot drops onto concrete with just slight impacting. To see a bend I had to actually throw it at the floor.
This was a very curious result as many high end knives like the ATAK and Project are not warrentied under throwing. Now the subject line is not a serious statement - but - I do wonder how any decent knife would get damaged if the cheap knife held up fine.
Now I am not saying that if you are looking for a good throwing knife then get a camping knife, they are designed for two different things. Throwing a knife that the edges are sharpened is not an overly smart idea for one thing. But what I do think, is that any knife that wants to be known for its toughness should not be bothered by you throwing it around. There are exceptions, but I think that is a pretty fair statement overall.
I think the only way you would do real damage by throwing is if you missed a high velocity throw and the knife rebounded and landed straight tip down on a rock - and the chance of that happening is about the same as you flipping a coin and it saying on the edge. Usually the knife just rebounds and takes a glancing impact on the tip - and that is really not that hard on the blade. I am speaking of a specific class of knives here of course and that has to be kept in mind. I won't be throwing my Madpoet knife around any time soon for example.
-Cliff
[This message has been edited by Cliff Stamp (edited 14 April 1999).]
