My BK9 Chipped Out...with pics

M

Mooks100

Joined
Aug 10, 2010
Messages
26
Hey Guys, This may be my first post, I have been lurking for a while. I have learned some good knife knowledge here and have great respect for Becker Knives. So thanks for that.

Anyway, as the title suggests, my BK9 has blade has failed. This knife was virtually unused when I took it with us up to the Bunya Mountains in Queensland Australia last weekend. I woke up early and it was quite cold. Went outside to split some wood so I could get the fire going again. Batoned through a few logs until I came to a tough section and then saw the blade had chipped.

Now I am not particularly experienced at batoning wood, so maybe it was my technique. The wood was dry and hard and it was COLD!
I have read previously when this has happened that it could be a bad HT.
Maybe it's a combination of the above factors, but I'm still pretty disappointed. I am glad it happened in an environment where I was not relying on it as my sole bush.
tool.

Anyway, let me know what you think.


Tried posting pictures but apparently I don't have permssion.

Cheers
 
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Welcome to the forum.

You should be able to post pics, I would like to see it.
Kabar/Becker takes care of there knives I'm sure they will take care of you.....
 
Hey man, it could very easily just be a combination of bad circumstances. If it was a really hard type of wood with the cold and you introduced a shear stress by hitting the blade at a slight angle that could very easily chip the edge. How cold was it? Are we talking 10-20C? I feel that it would have to be closer to the 10C side to make the blade that brittle.

I always like to test my heat treats by seeing how long the knife holds and edge. I compare it to a knife that has a similar steel composition and just test them for a while. If you had another becker that would be ideal.
 
Thanks Guys,
Yeah my permissions say I 'May not add attachments' when I went to post, otherwise I'd be happy to show you the pics.

It was cold 5 - 10 degrees C and that tittle section of the wood was really hard, and I batoned on the blade a good five times in the one spot.

I'm sure they will look after me. Their reputation is part of the reason I purchased their blade. It is a real bummer though that I have to ship it all the way to Ka-Bar and spend that money (expensive from Australia) just to end up with the same blade I had just last week.

Despite this failure, I'm still a fan of Beckers and understand that sometimes when the planets align and circumstances conspire, you can break anything. I am wondering though if this is the right blade for what I want to do. Perhaps there is a better Becker option for splitting wood and heavier camp duties?

Cheers,
 
The pics are on my computer, I can email them to you but I don't have messaging permissions either on here, so you'd have to give me an email address. Oh and if you give me you credit card details, bank account number, home address, blood type and sperm count I will wire you $5 million from dead uncles Congo gold mine fortune....just for being such a good guy. Just kidding, but yeah if we can work out how I'm happy to send the pics to you for you to post.
 
You could set up a PhotoBucket account in a couple of minutes. I have attachment privileges here, but I never use 'em anyway. I always post to my Photobucket account and then link from there (which is super easy if you've never done it) because I usually end up posting my pictures on more than one forum anyway. Also pretty large storage capacity. Not sure how big it is, but I've had my account for 10 years or more and have hundreds of pics uploaded there, some of them pretty high-rez, and have never had a warning that I'm running out of storage space.

Bummer about your blade, but obviously none of us can really evaluate or give you any legitimate advice about it without seeing pics of it. Whatever, as you and others have taken note of, you're likely protected by the warranty, hassle though it may be to take advantage of.

Blues
 
Mooks, you can post those pics in the thread. Go to the link you provided, hover your cursor over the pic of your choice, and a drop-down menu-type menu will appear. Click in the box next to the words "IMG code." It will highlight briefly and then automatically copy the code to your Clipboard. Just paste that code into the text box where you're writing your post, and it will look just like this:

IMG_0265.jpg


If you want to see what that code looks like in my text box, just click "Reply with Quote" and it will show up as text instead of the picture you see here. You can post the rest of those pics if you want to.

That said, I'm not an expert, but I don't think you're going to get that repaired. It looks to me to be a definite warranty item. That's very strange breakage to be caused by wood, even frozen wood. Seems like as-suspected, a heat-treat problem, but whatever, your warranty certainly should cover it. Maybe after you get the pics posted Ethan will give you some input and guidance about where to go from here.

Hope that helps.

Blues
 
Hey Mooks......

WOW........I am woefully ignorant of Australian wood varieties but I had no idea you guys got your STEEL from trees......LOL....

I really am at a loss, other than to comment that knots, especially old seasoned knots can make strange things happen ......I had a brand spanking new Plumb axe do a very similar thing (second or third hit out of the box) in a north american wood called hemlock ( I found out later that the old timers tried to burn hemlock whole).....We had an instance a year or two ago that was similar.....I think in both that case and yours ( I am speculating here) the edge was twisted in the knot and a follow up blow caused the failure.....No way you could have known and NOT your fault....

I am truly sorry that you had this happen with any blade and especially one with my name on it.........

Tooj (a VP and senior engineer at Ka-Bar) is the guy to handle this and I will bring it to his attention first thing tomorrow (monday) morning......Things like this are not SUPPOSED to happen to Becker blades and I am really glad that it did not happen to you in a OMG situation.....We will make good on this and I hope we can figure out how to minimize any inconvenience to you.......

All Best....

ethan
 
Looks like you added one really mean serration. I suspect Ethan and/or Toooj will see this thread shortly and imagine they will get you sorted out.

Lol - scrolling up, I see Ethan is in the house. :D

---

Beckerhead #42
 
BluesStringer said:
That said, I'm not an expert, but I don't think you're going to get that repaired. It looks to me to be a definite warranty item. That's very strange breakage to be caused by wood, even frozen wood.
Click to expand...

I've seen quite a bit of such breakage here at BFC, a couple of Becker blades now among the bunch. It often seems to happen with frozen wood.
It's simply not good business to baton through knots. The knife tries to follow the gnarly grain structure and gets caught in two (or more) directions.
The result is lateral stress--one grain pushing the knife one way, the other grain pushing the knife in another. This side-to-side stress will chip out even good steel.
The knot is pretty easy to see in the picture below. Sometimes you can't see the knots as your batoning, but if you can see them, it's best to avoid them.
I've had knives caught in knots before, but instead of pounding on through them, I chose to back the knife out and split the wood elsewhere, or just leave it alone.

Mooks, I say all this not to lay any blame. Ethan points out correctly it's not your fault.
But if you ever are in an isolated situation, this info can prevent you from messing up one of your key survival tools.

IMG_0260.jpg
 
Damn, that is some chipping out, that's for sure.

Thanks for posting this up. I know you' will be taken care of, and good on ya for using your BKTs. Seems like that knot had more ass to it than looks would let on.

Glad to see you posting up with us mook.

Moose
 
moosez45 said:
Seems like that knot had more ass to it than looks would let on.
Click to expand...

Moose said ass. :o
That's exactly what all the boys used to say about Mary Jane Gallagher, bless her little a... I mean... heart.
 
IMG_0251.jpg

It looks pretty unstable to baton through, but on the bright side there is still enough blade left to make a skinny BK2 w/ a thumb ramp. hmmm...I wan't the leftovers.:)
 
nice chip out. do that some more and get a serrated model, and sell it on ebay for profit :)

so this batoning thing. i used to be on the fence about it, but more and more i'm seeing it as a silly thing to do for firewood. it's extra work, and well, just not necessary... especially in a "true survival situation"... might be handy if you're trying to make something fast... but i'd probably be looking to make wedges and such and hammer THOSE through the wood. that's more aesthetically pleasing to me, using wood, to split wood. protect those tools.

now, if you got some nice clean wood, and batoning is your thing, like some people are obsessive whittlers or knitters... yeah, do it...

Nessmuk was never into the batoning thing really, or even chopping if he didn't have to. he'd prefer the fire to eat the logs as he fed them in. burn them in half, or just drag a bit more in. for starting the fire, there's almost ALWAYS small stuff around, and if not, you can make SOME, but one imho just doesn't need to make a huge bundle of split sticks. it's nice that you can if you have to... but i'm not really seeing the need (okay, MAYBE if the only dry wood is heart wood, but there are other ways)

anywho, looks like Ethan and KaBar will make this right, as usual. kinda boring that :) but boring is reliable, and good, and there when you need it ;) exciting is when someone says no. that's the kind of excitement most of us don't need :D :D :D :D
 
Bladite said:
nice chip out. do that some more and get a serrated model, and sell it on ebay for profit :)

so this batoning thing. i used to be on the fence about it, but more and more i'm seeing it as a silly thing to do for firewood. it's extra work, and well, just not necessary... especially in a "true survival situation"... might be handy if you're trying to make something fast... but i'd probably be looking to make wedges and such and hammer THOSE through the wood. that's more aesthetically pleasing to me, using wood, to split wood. protect those tools.

now, if you got some nice clean wood, and batoning is your thing, like some people are obsessive whittlers or knitters... yeah, do it...

Nessmuk was never into the batoning thing really, or even chopping if he didn't have to. he'd prefer the fire to eat the logs as he fed them in. burn them in half, or just drag a bit more in. for starting the fire, there's almost ALWAYS small stuff around, and if not, you can make SOME, but one imho just doesn't need to make a huge bundle of split sticks. it's nice that you can if you have to... but i'm not really seeing the need (okay, MAYBE if the only dry wood is heart wood, but there are other ways)

anywho, looks like Ethan and KaBar will make this right, as usual. kinda boring that :) but boring is reliable, and good, and there when you need it ;) exciting is when someone says no. that's the kind of excitement most of us don't need :D :D :D :D
Click to expand...

I still don't understand the point of batoning myself.... I always let the fire do the work, in all my years in the woods I still never have "batoned" a thing... Anyways-

That sucks man- I think you'll get it sorted out though
Goodluck!
 
Thank you for your replies and thanks Ethan for your words. I think the fact that you're on here, tending your flock says volumes of the integrity of both yourself and the the company which you have chosen to be in partnership with. Any tool can be broken, especially in the hands of a novice like me. In hind sight, after reviewing the photos and reading the replies, I think you are all being too kind. I think it was dumb of me to try to pound through that knot. Guyon hit the nail on the head with his 'lateral stress' comment in my opinion. That knot was ridiculously hard, the blade literally would not go any further, yet I kept a lot of pressure on the handle and kept pounding the blade. With such a small part of the edge of the blade being locked in the wood and taking all the pressure, due to the hole in the log the rest of it was free and would have been bending and flexing under the pressure. 'lateral pressure'. With my limited knowledge, I don't think it was a HT problem. I think that would be very rare in such quality blades. Much more likely a dumb-ass problem. But I am learning.
 
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