Nice article about batoning

[dogstar]

http://brkca.com/docs/batoning.pdf
Some of you might have seen this before. It makes a lot of sense to me. This is important for knives with a hidden tang. If I have to baton my Mora, I will follow the advice from this article. If you don't want to read the whole thing, the gist is to keep the handle of the knife above the point when batoning. This concentrates stress on the blade, not the tang/handle interface.

 

[Myal]

another batoning thread

I blame heat treat , and blade design combination .. those neat cut right angles that allow the guard to sit so neat against the blade make a stress point , mass produced small blades usualy have a uniform heat treat , so the temper of the cutting edge is the same as the spine , the same as the tang , kinda brittle .. given some beating flexing on a stress point , fatigue point on kinda brittle metal .. and yeah itll snap , that is the reasoning I have come up with for the cheapo crappy knives I have snapped anyway ..

I have made a few stick tang knives , but kinda built them with abuse in mind .. they got a blue temper along the spine and tang and no neat cut cut corners , I fitted the handles around the curves . they do get abused , more than I expected , 3 years and no failures , yet . My thinking was with rounded corners instead of cut angles , it eliminated potential fatigue / stress points , and being spring temper , it could take some bending and still come back to true rather than staying bent or snapping .

Im just a very small time amateur tho , and probably am way off target in my working around the problem .

 

[kgd]

The article has been around for quite some time. Its good stuff. I'm not so sure that angling the knife like that is a guarantee that you will break your blade nor does it mean that if you use "proper" batoning technique that you won't break it either. Like Myal says there are plenty of factors that lead to blade breakage, many can be implicit in the design itself. I'm of the usual opinion that its good to go at it with a new a blade and test it out. I'd rather have it fail on me in my backyard than somewhere else. Then again, I pretty much usually have a back-up fixed blade with me in case something happens with my main blade. Losing it is far more likely as far as I can tell then breakage by batoning as I have yet to have a blade fail on me and I've pounded my share of them. I think the phobia about batoning is more about people fearing their favorite blades (i.e. symbol) breaking more so than all the verbage about having to protect your only survival tool. Individuals are hardly ever in a 'survival' situation and blades hardly ever 'break' so the survival * breakage probability is pretty darn low.

 

[Guyon]

So what you're saying is that it's not the length of the tool; it's the angle of the dangle. Good article. Thanks for sharing. :thumbup:

 

[AA Forge]

Properly built is the key to a hidden tang. I think you guys will enjoy this.

[video=youtube;3Y7PiRjkN8k]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Y7PiRjkN8k&feature=player_profilepage[/video]

 

[j williams]

So what you're saying is that it's not the length of the tool; it's the angle of the dangle. Good article. Thanks for sharing. :thumbup:

:thumbup:

 

[kgd]

So what you're saying is that it's not the length of the tool; it's the angle of the dangle. Good article. Thanks for sharing. :thumbup:

Guyon, I believe that length, thickness and angle are all important factors to consider!