Pounding a Custom knife into submission!

R

RobertHankins

Joined
Jun 10, 2001
Messages
1,385
That was the goal here anyway:D
I wanted to see just how much abuse one of my blades would take. This is my display piece.
Took me a good 15mins to pound it home but
*NO* Ping - Snap, only mashed where I pounded on it and didn't chip the point.
I suppose it will stand up to normal use.
No it's not Aluminum it is 1/8 steel.
Drew a crowd of neighbors as I pounded it on the blacktop. Now they know I'm crazy

This one is made from 1/4" O1, Flat ground edge, convex point.
Canvas micarta scales. NS pins and what remains of the thong hole.
 
Not a bad looking blade, but I believe I'd work on point strength when you build the revised version.:p
 
I hate to be the one to tell you, but just about any knife can be driven through 1/8" (3.175mm) mild steel sheet metal. (By the way, anything less than 1/4" thick is not plate; it's sheet.) Certainly any blade made of 1/4" stock should do it with ease. The damage to the butt looks excessive even for an annealed tang; I wonder how that happened. Was the tang pointed before you started hammering on it? Was it thinned out?

Next time you think you've done something impressive with a knife, try it with a cheap junker too before you get too excited....
 
The But did flattened about 1/8". It has an edge quench on the blade so that area is essentially soft.

Try it with a cheap knife OK!

Someone care to step up and pound one of there production knives thru some steel.
Would be nice to see that pic.
 
Man, you guys are BRU-TAL. Sheet metal, plate, bang a CUSTOM through WHATEVER ya wanna call it!!!!! Holy SH*T batman, would that help me cut some small soft wood branches, cut thick rope?, gut my deer? Now that it's gone thru hell, I WANT IT!!!!!!!!wolf;)
 
Hey Robert its not the crowd that's tough, just a few isolated nuts, uhh I meant 'tough nuts'. And don't worry, it seems that everyone else throughout the world is also un-enlightened as to steel plate; see:

http://www.oxelosund.ssab.se/enproducts/index.htm

"We produce heavy plate extending in thickness from 4 mm upwards. Efficient, state-of-the-art processes enable us to manufacture plate with a wide variety of properties ..."

and the following, including dumb old US Steel, all stock "steel plate" 3/16 inch thick.

http://www.usx.com/corp/ussteel/Plate/index.html
http://www.aasteel.com/construct.htm
http://www.oliversteel.com/hist.htm
http://www.plate.com/k04.htm
http://www.alleghenytechnologies.com/glossary.html

It goes without saying, of course, that steel can have different mechanical properties depending on chemistry, annealing, tempering, quenching, working, cryogenics, etc. Who knows whether the properties of "mild steel sheet metal", whatever that means, are comparable to the steel you used, or even to a typical 1/8 inch thick steel, for that matter. Darned if I'd try beating one of my knives through 1/8 inch steel.

As to "Its all been done before", just remember that 20/20 hindsight vision makes geniuses of us all! In the mid 1800's the Commissioner of US Patent Office was ready to shut the whole place down, uttering the words, "There is nothing new under the sun." Glad we got rid of that innovative fellow.

Couple quotes from Churchill -- "Never, never, never, give up." (his entire speech at a graduation ceremony) and "Don't let the bast__ds wear you down." :p

Steve Bodenheimer
 
RobertHankins :

First off I appreciate any maker (or anyone else) sharing work they have done with knives, however as Cougar noted there are some problems with the way the above is being interpreted mainly because there is nothing used as a reference.

Someone care to step up and pound one of there production knives thru some steel.
Click to expand...

I have done it many times including on harder and stronger materials than 1/8 mild steel. Consider the hardness of the steel as opposed to the hardness of the knife. Why would you expect the knife to get damaged. It cannot get impacted and considering the obtuse tip geometry there is no way it is going to deform.

When you are doing these things as Cougar noted you want to do it with a few other knives so as to get an idea of just how "impressive" a task is actually being performed. Some things can be very misleading if you have not done them before. Here is a shot of a Busse Basic after being used to cut the drain out of a sink :

http://www.physics.mun.ca/~sstamp/images/basic_sink.jpg

That club was used as a mallet as it was far too tiring to just stab and wrench it through by hand. The blade took little edge damage, some but not enough to see it on the picture. The tip was not effected however it had been flattened before by impacts off of rock. Does this actually prove anything. No not by itself, as unless you have done similar things with other knives you can't judge the strength of the performance.

I had a friend awhile ago do a demonstration that he was told by a knifemaker as to the quality of his heat treatment. He put a nail (common 3.5") in a vice and pressed a blade through it. I then took a 5$ fillet knife (440A stainless) and then did the same thing. Even cheap cutlery steel is far harder than the steel used in common nails, sheet metal etc. .


Consider this, Tom Johanning has driven his TAC series through steel many times (3/16" diamond plate steel) :

http://www.survivalknives.com/dplate.gif

yet when Dan Kohlstrom used two of the blades two tip fractures were generated :

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=89352

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=89352


I bent the tip of a TAC-11 awhile ago doing pretty much the same thing. While it maybe doesn't sound as impressive to some, digging in wood is far harder on a knife than being pounded through a sheet metal or even plate. So are lots of other things, some which are directly related to the tasks that the knife could be called on to perform. For example contacts off of bone.

Take some thick bone stock and do hard cuts into it while it is moving (swing it with a 10-20 lbs weight hanging from the end). Use both the edge and the point. You will see the effects of hard contacts as well as violent snaps across the edge. These will generate far greater pressures and forces on the knife than driving the point through sheet metal or even steel plate.


-Cliff
 
I am impressed with that Busse pic!!!
I didn't know they were that tough.
Anybody know what steel they are using?
The Tac11 is made with in a machine shop using a milling machine if I'm not mistaken. It is a really cool looking knife and appears to work better than someone with a 2x72 grinder could make. That would be me for right now:p
Most of that is in the steel type, heat treat and angle of the grinds.
Looks aside I would rather have a plain or even a ugly knife that performs well.
 
Busse uses a steel of their invention called INFI. I believe they said when it was being introduced that it would be available to knifemakers, but it is very expensive compared to just about anything but Talonite.
 
Just to add a little to the discussion.

The way the knife is driven through the steel will have a dramatic impact on results that is difficult to quantify.

If the knife is held in the hand and driven through 1/8" Steel with a hammer as it sounds like happened here, it is actually more impressive than if it is driven through much thicker material using a hydraulic press.

Why?

Because the hydraulic press puts very constant pressure in a straight line.

While pounding with a hammer by hand involves all kinds of impulse forces that are prone to be at various angles.
 
SDouglas :

The way the knife is driven through the steel will have a dramatic impact on results that is difficult to quantify.
Click to expand...

Yes, and in a more general sense this applies to any work done with a knife. In regards to durability testing, I have done in the past heavy cutting of hardened steel, heavy guage wire for example. I have found that it was easily possible for me to effect the results by method of an extent just as large as the difference that using various knives made.

If for example I cut using very light hits, carefully placed to drive the knife tightly through the wire in a perpendicular path, the result of the damage to the knife was usually very little. Cutlery steels are much harder than wire and can be pressed through them without harm, which is what I was basically doing. However if I tried to do it very quickly, like in a few seconds, I would pretty much always get a skewed hit which would cause the edge of the blade to snap sideways while embedded in the wire, this is very hard on a knife.

This is one of the reasons that it is very difficult to do durability testing comparisons without a very large sample of data, which means basically a lot of impacts or whatever, so you cover a very broad range of results which should bound all reasonable outcomes.

Yes, INFI is a tough steel, what impresses me more about it however is the range of ablities it has. There are lots of steels that are *very* tough, something like S7 for example, however most have problems with excessive corrosion, low wear resistance etc. . INFI has a very strong performance over a wide range of applications.

-Cliff
 
I keep reading about the INFI steel Busse is using and all the reports soung great I just don't think Busse has invented a new grade of material. My thoughts are maybe they came up with a Heat Treatment
Process thats a little better.With the amount of steel Busse buys no Steel Mfg.would make special runs or billets just for them.

If someone would like to supply me a sample of their material I will be happy to send it to one of our (BODYCOTE) Testing Labs to check the chemical composition of the steel.


Bodycote has 52 Heat Treating Plants and 20 Testing Labs in the United States and they would be glad to provide some free testing for me if I can supply the material.

Darrell Lewis
www.bodycote-na.com


YOU MAKE IT FIRST-WE MAKE IT LAST
 
Darrell,

Here is a contest we sponsored about 2 years ago when someone had INFI analyzed and published its analysis on the knife reviews and testing forum. Here's the link.

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=84800&highlight=INFI+Nitrogen


The missing ingredients turned out to be .5 Carbon and .11 Nitrogen.

You are correct in stating that it isn't all about the analysis. We do the most extensive heat treating protocol in the industry. I would enjoy speaking with you off-line about your company's (Bodycoat) processes as we are always searching for ways to improve our performance.

Hope this helps,

Jerry Busse
(419) 923-6471



Edited for spelling.
 
I must make a correction Bodycote has 60 Heat Treating Plants
and 13 Meterials Testing Labs in North America. It's hard sometimes
to remember the correct numbers with over 250 world wide.

Darrell Lewis
www.Bodycote.com
 
I just gotta go run out and buy a custom and pound it into the radiator of my SUV. DUH....What does all this prove? Great stuff on BF lately.....:rolleyes:
 
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