"Performance index" for knives?

D

DCM

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Aug 28, 2006
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Ed Fowler wrote about in his latest Blade Article, the importance of an index, across the board, having knives rated in categories, possibly.. to give customers a fair representation of what to expect if knives were to be used, and what tolerances to expect. This may be more possible in production knives, than customs, but.. throwing it out there..

What would it look like, if it could be done? .. is it even a remote possibility?

What categories, what tolerances, what indicators might be suggested?
David
 
Hmmm, sounds interesting but I would venture to guess that it would not be as easy as it might seem. There would have to be rules to catagorize the knives, then someone to determine what an industry standard would be for angle of grind for each type, sharpness factor determined, edge retention with differing usages, and the list would go on. You see, I am a quality manager by trade and am very experienced in creating standards. When standardizing any process or product, it can get down to the finest details. For example: say a knife passed all of the above tests with a factor of "A"; which represents top of the line. What if the person purchased it and found that it had a blade off center, or with a slight twist. In my mind, to capture the essence of each knife there would litterally be a hundred catagories that would have to be determind and then rated. The next question: what panel would rate them, as one person would definitely skew the results having favoratism for certain styles. I hope you see where I'm going with this. Custom mean just that, it is the uniqueness of each blade that makes a custom knife what it is and sets it apart from the hundreds of thousands of machine ground rototicized knives. just my opinion.
 
For such a thing to work it would have to be spearheaded by a group of people who design the test to be fool proof, highly controlled and very repeatable, otherwise you would have results that are all over the map. Also, the tests would mean nothing unless other tests were used to balance it, for example I could make a knife that would take several hundred pounds of torque to bend it 30 degrees; however, that knife won't cut very well. And I could make a knife that could make several thousands of cuts on a piece of rope; however, that same knife chips if you look at it wrong. The easiest way to see such a performance index if it was done by one maker who wanted to a lot of testing on his knives who would also want to use very scientific, repeatable tests.
 
Having not had the chance to read the article I am not sure what would be entailed in the indexing. What kind of testing would be done? It is doubtful that all makers would want to have to send their knives somewhere to be tested. This would add time to the delivery of a knife, and would also add a cost that would have to be passed on to the makers' customers.
 
Haven't read the article, but don't see how it could be done. Perhaps you could summarize what Ed suggested in this regard? I don't know how you get a level playing field in terms of testing, because the human element is too much of an integral factor. Reggie Barker can hack through a 2 by 4 in a few seconds. I could take his knife, perform the same task and take 10 times as long.

I also don't really see the use. If the knife meets or exceeds the individual customer's expectations in terms of performance, isn't that what counts? Is a knife that will do 225 rope cuts "better" in any meaningful way than one that will do 215? Or whatever?

Roger
 
All that is inteneded is for the makers to know how tough their blades are, starts with each maker who choses to test his blades. As the information builds we come to know various steels and say what we found when we tested. No great involved deal, just an index we could share.
 
Ed Fowler said:
All that is inteneded is for the makers to know how tough their blades are, starts with each maker who choses to test his blades. As the information builds we come to know various steels and say what we found when we tested. No great involved deal, just an index we could share.
Click to expand...

Now that seems to be something that would be very worthwhile, and would be a great resource for knifemakers.
 
This is totally up my alley! Not to be pimping my biz but that is exactly what we do for all technologies that can benefit from it. If a product, process or system is used by one or more humans, it can be evaluated, scored and ranked for performance. And in our busy society, who has time to read thousands of user posts in dozens of forums so as to decide between knife X and Knife Y ?
Frankly, every forum website should have just one thread devoted to data gathering on product performance and a group of qualified individuals could analyse the data and post score cards. Instead, there's a huge amount of feedback scattered all over the Internet- how on earth can customers make informed decisions when the information isn't in one place?
We've been doing that for 6 years in several domains mostly high tech/IT. Closer to home-we did a seminal piece that was published in SWAT magazine (March2005) on tactical lights for the Glock. No one even at the DOD test labs had ever bothered to do such a comparison- now we've shifted to the emergencypreparedness and response markets.
Consumer Reports and JDPowers are the originals in the consumer market.

It's great news to hear that more and more media and companies themselves are doing this. I know there are the "Collectors" who hate it because we rate actual performance rather than implied or alleged performance- but in the end it makes us a better society of technology users.:)

For an idea of non-blade pubs that have been doing this type of work-
http://www.Cnet.com
T3 Magazine http://www.t3.co.uk
Consumer Reports http://www.consumerreports.org
http://www.cooper.com/


DCM said:
Ed Fowler wrote about in his latest Blade Article, the importance of an index, across the board, having knives rated in categories, possibly.. to give customers a fair representation of what to expect if knives were to be used, and what tolerances to expect. This may be more possible in production knives, than customs, but.. throwing it out there..

What would it look like, if it could be done? .. is it even a remote possibility?

What categories, what tolerances, what indicators might be suggested?
David
Click to expand...
 
I don't have the article in front of me, but it dealt with blade failure as a focus.. and that many knives should have some indication of limits, so customers understand and can rely on knives to the degree specified.

..While writing, I've noticed that several posts have just been made. It would be interesting to see how the steels/knives might have a performance rating. I really have no idea how.. but thought provoking.
Thanks for the article, Ed.
David
 
The information does not need to be high tec. for example if one bladesmith was working with xxxxx steel, decided to see what the difference was between a peanut oil quench and atf, he could forge two blades close to the same, harden and temper them and report the torque values from bending the blades. That would be one piece of information we don't have now. Each blade smith, stock removal or forged blades can be added to the list, and we would have some comparison information. Journeymen smiths could report the torque values achieved by their journeyman and master test blades if they wished (maybe not the official ones tested, but their practice blades getting ready for the test. All voluntary.

Thanks for the encouraging words!
 
As an engineer, I often look at specifications for parts. Most parts have many specifications. Sometimes, datasheets for parts will have hundreds of numbers on them. Usually, though, there are just a few key specs that tell the whole story. And very often those numbers represent tradeoffs. You can't optimize all of the specifications. Consider, for example, a common mechanical screw. The key specifications might be weight, strength, and cost. You can optimize any two of the three at the expense of the third. Want a light-weight, strong screw? It's probably going to be titanium and expensive. Want it cheap and strong? Then it will be steel and heavy. But, you know for the application for which you are seeking a screw what specifications are needed. And you select the screw for the application according to the specifications.

Knives will be the same way. There is no one magic number. But maybe we can get a small set of numbers. And that would be very helpful in selecting the right knife for an application.

BTW, Mr. Fowler, I loved the article. That was one of the most sensible things I've read in a knife publication recently.
 
Ah! I see. Those type of metrics. Blade Engineering performance metrics. No, that's not my domain after all. I'm a human factors professional. We measure the performance of the whole product. Surely breakstrength & tensile strength are only relevant if the end product is expected to be used as a lever. The few knives that are really used are typically intended to cut, slice, chop or hack. Surely very few are expected to used as prybars or hammers.
 
Moodino: Blade strength, cut and -- are only parts of the equation, knives work in hands, the total knife is what follows. When human is in a jackpot, any tool available will be used to do what needs done.
 
I would like to see a easy-to-understand guide that illustrates the inherit differences in blade steels. Showing which steels are better for which applications.. For knife makers, it's probably second nature to understand the differences in steels.. for others like me, (not in the business) it's still somewhat of a foreign subject.
David
 
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