Practical strength question

[Dallas T]

Opinions or experience question, does adding ti scales to a plastic handle knife such as a bugout, add any practical functional strength or just cool factor? I know they’re plenty strong and won’t break I just don’t like the flexing. Thanks in advance

 

[JC972]

If it were me and that's what I wanted, I'd just look for metal handled knives or ones with steel liners. Just my 2 cents.

 

[Banter 247]

Cool factor. I say that as someone who detests the feel of the grivory. Functionally, it’s strong enough for anything it’s built to do, and the flexibility means you’d have an early indication before exerting enough lateral force to break the knife.

 

[davemo96]

Both.
I have both scales .
Benchmade should make them with the titanium scales , looks great and feels great in the hand.

 

[ScooterG]

Opinions or experience question, does adding ti scales to a plastic handle knife such as a bugout, add any practical functional strength or just cool factor? I know they’re plenty strong and won’t break I just don’t like the flexing. Thanks in advance

This guy has a an opinion around 19:17 in. Might be good to watch from 15:00 or so on for context.
youtube.com/watch?v=zBRJYNwwgys
Oh, and NSFW!

 

[Banter 247]

This guy has a an opinion around 19:17 in. Might be good to watch from 15:00 or so on for context.

Oh, and NSFW!

I know Steve very well. The point of that was that the Bailout didn’t make sense as a ‘tactical’ or ‘hard use’ knife, and that the ht of the steel also made it a poor choice for EDC.

In fact, Steve owns and loves a Bugout, and one performed well in his edge retention testing a few months back.

In short— the handles are great for an EDC knife/cutting tool, but not suited to prying. The Bugout doesn’t pretend to be tactical.

 

[DocJD]

Cold Steel has gone mostly to solid (no metal liner) G-10 handles . They care about the "hard use " performance of their folders . So I'd say it's mostly cool factor to add metal .

Although , the big 4 Max has steel liners for extreme strength and the Voyagers still have aluminum IIRC .

 

[gadgetgeek]

Personally, I like how light the Grivory feels, G-10 is heavy for its strength, and Ti and other metals rely on the grip pattern engraved rather than the characteristics of the material to provide traction. So I'm a bit of an outlier, weight and rigidity are not a factor to me in regards of quality and strength.
If however you are talking pure preference, then you do you boo, get whatever you like.

 

[Halador]

It is cool factor. Has to be. Anyone abusing a knife so intensely that the handles might break doesn't know or care enough about the proper use of a pocket knife to bother buying expensive replacement scales for their added strength.

If scales are replaced just for peace of mind because you don't like the flex, that's totally ok, but at that point you would completely change the category of knife anyway. Most knives that have handle replacement options available are ones that are designed to be fairly (or extremely in the case of a Bugout) light weight, so swapping the light, an thereby flexible, scales for metal replacements kills the point of buying that knife in the first place because all the weight saving is gone. Unless you truly love the design features of the knife because otherwise it defeats the purpose of the initial purchase.
That last part is personal opinion.

Ultimately, if getting replacements helps remove stress when using the knife, then it is worth it for that alone. But then, why not just get another knife to begin with, right?

 

[Lance Leon]

I'd say it depends on the knife in question. If it's a Benchmade Bugout which has relatively thin and flexible scales, I wouldn't be surprised if scales snapping or bending out of shape was one of the first types of failure under stress (though I doubt 99.9% of us will ever use a knife that hard or for tasks that it's not meant for). But there are many knives with much stronger plastic/composite handles, because of the material types, thickness, and structural design - in those cases, I am much more inclined to believe that the lock or stop pin would fail before the handle scales, and so adding replacement metal scales would have no functional benefit.

This is all speculation on my part though, since I don't stress test my knives nor am I a material science expert or an engineer.

 

[Lapedog]

Opinions or experience question, does adding ti scales to a plastic handle knife such as a bugout, add any practical functional strength or just cool factor? I know they’re plenty strong and won’t break I just don’t like the flexing. Thanks in advance

I just got cf scales on my Bugout because of the same reason. I hate the flexing of the stock plastic scales.

The stiffer cf certainly changes the way the knife feels. Titanium is even stiffer so I don’t see why the added rigidity wouldn’t make an overall stronger knife.

The real mystery is how “strong” the stock plastic scales are.

I do imagine ti scales would add strength.