Question for Cliff Stamp re: Ed Fowler's knives...

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what??? you don't believe i actually abused a busse and fowler by opening a beer with them!!:grumpy:

well it was nuthing compared to the other abuse i've given them.:eek:

send me one of yours and i'll put it through the test:cool:
 
Skunk, thats not abuse, thats using the knives in a survival situation and it seems both passes the ultimate test! :D
 
LMAO:D :D

you knife nuts are a bunch o trouble makers:D

i'm sure glad i don't make no stinking knives:eek:
 
well mmmmmm????....

i said i would buy the first round but looks like now we have about 60 people horning in on this deal...

maybe we should raffle a knife off to fund the party?:)
 
I'm in. And I'll even buy the 61st round :) if I'm still standing that is.
 
Bruce,

The pelvis was just the first big bone that came to mind, but since you're a former game processor, you tell me which bones you needed to hack through cleaning a carcass? The point I was trying to make was that the blade is capable of such a task, making it a more versatile tool than a blade made from the steels Cliff mentioned.

Based on my experiences with custom knives it's more important how the steel is worked than what type it is. Yes, in my experience forged blades have generally performed better. A specific steel may exhibit certain characteristics that make it more suitable for specific tasks, but at what cost? Let's take L6 for example. I don't have any actual experience with a blade made from this steel, but it was mentioned in an article in Blade magazine that I read. Apparently, after some testing, Howard Clark perfected a method that makes it an almost indestructible sword. Does that mean that all blades made from this material will perform as well?

I didn't take exception to what Cliff wrote because I felt threatened, but because it's contrary to my own experience. How is giving your opinion on steels you prefer your knives made from an objective review of 52100? The only positive I read was that it could take more bend, but that might just be because it was clamped between wood in the vice, and that there's no reason a knife should bend that much anyway. I have an almost 5" pronghorn that I might be able to bend using all the force in my body, fully hardening the blade might make this impossible. Would that make it a better knife? What practical application would require this increased strength? And while it would increase strength it would also have it's own drawbacks.

I've actually used Ed's knives and am confident in their ability. You may prefer a different steel, or design, but don't knock it until you've tried it. You go ahead and take your paxil, I'm gonna go chop something up with one of my knives...:D

-Jose
 
Jerry: All is well, I would also like to buy a beer, it sounds like I will have to float a loan to buy a round with as many folks as are lined up.

Cliff: You make a lot of generalizations on 52100 by its book properties. In some cases you could be correct, but this is different stuff. We have exceded what was, a few years ago, the theoritical limit in 52100 grain refinement. The metalurgist who made the steel we are using could not believe the photomicrographs he saw of the steel came from steel he made. I would not believe what we can do now was possible 10 years ago. If our present experimental results prove valid, we may have again doubled performance. I would not have believed it possible a year ago.
I know what you mean when you say a soft back is weaker than a spring back. There is an inbetween and this is only possible (as far as I know) following a tremendous degree of reduction by thermal mechanical process and a lot of well planned thermal cycles, not only normalizing but both short and deep hardening cycles during the forging process, followed by a fine tuned hardening and tempering process. The variables are astronomical, we may never know the limits. In the mean time I plan on having a lot of fun exploring and will continue to write about what we find.

Those who etch blades and ask questions about what they see will soon learn how to read the results. It is only one view of the nature of the steel but highly worthwhile to both maker and client.

As far as I know, no one has ever lost money on one of my knives or found one lacking in performace. I am proud of that and plan on sticking to my goals.
 
Ed, I will continue to monitor your experiments with great interest. Carry on exploring. :)
 
Ed Fowler wrote...
what was, a few years ago, the theoritical limit in 52100 grain refinement. The metalurgist who made the steel we are using could not believe the photomicrographs
he saw of the steel came from steel he made. I would not believe what we can do now was possible 10 years ago. If our present experimental results prove
valid, we may have again doubled performance. I would not have believed it possible a year ago.

One of the benifits of knowing a steel rather than jumping to every new wonder steel that comes along. As a knife buying freek I do like getting these new steels, but when it comes right down to it D2 is still my foavorite just because I know it well, not because it is the best at any one thing. There are better steels and there are worse steels but I like almost all of them.
 
Jose :

[my preferences for a knife]

... keep you from testing a pronghorn.
Click to expand...

They wouldn't, I have evaluated lots of knives that have a range of uses I would personally not choose. However such a performance spectra would obviously keep me from buying one. Of course I could just buy one and resell it, the secondary market value is pretty solid. More likely though I will just trade for one of Burkes on the secondary market. I would be very curious as to how it would compare to a stock removal knife of the same profile in regards to edge retention. I already have a maker willing to grind the comparison blade, CPM-3V and CPM-10V would be obvious comparisons.

If it's possible to tell a knife's performance based on it's materials and construction techniques alone, why not just write up the specs and forget about all that performance testing?
Click to expand...

This would be all that would be necessary if you fully understood the effect of the geometry and the steel properties, and the properties of the material being cut. You do the testing first and foremost to ensure that the theory is right, and secondly to refine it and to expand it. But yes, with a few basic measurements you can map out the expected performance abilities of a knife - if this wasn't possible, makers could not design knives, nor adapt designs to different steels.

For example, when I got the Wildlife Hatchet from GB awhile back, after using it for awhile I wondered what would happen if I deepened the primary hollow grind. Now it is clear that the inherent penetration should increase, but so could the wedging (this is a bit tricky to predict), and of course the mass would go down so the overall power would drop.

When I got the Wetterling hatchet, I eventually ground it fully out, it was very similar to the GB one NIB. The net penetration was the same, thus it was more efficient from a mass point of view, however it was no longer as fluid in thick woods, but made a better limbing tool.

Now this generalization can be carried out to other axes, I of course don't need to do that with the GB to know what would happen if I did. Same thing with much of the above generalizations stated in the above. I have knives ground just like Ed makes his (cross section), and even ones ground thinner and will thus cut better, and I have used blades with extreme tapers, soft spines, spring spines, fully hardned etc. .

Bruce :

... which indicates it's strengths but also it's weaknesses
Click to expand...

This is my main directive when presenting performance descriptions - cover where the knife does well *and* where it doesn't with an attempt made to quantify these statements to a meaningful extent. Secondly, if possible provide the underlying basis (geometry and materials) for the performance to allow the reader to use this information to predict how other knives will perform.

To be clear, I didn't invent this type of review, nor many of the principles used. I was strongly influenced by Alvin Johnson and Mike Swaim who did the same thing on rec.knives years before me, work which was continued and expanded by Joe Talmadge. These individuals would use references when describing performance (other knives) and give the specifications about the knives that allowed the performance.

baumr :

You're talking about controlled events where someone's life or health isn't on the line. Refunds and replacements would be too little too late in a real life situation.
Click to expand...

First off all, the main value of a refund or replacement comes from the inherent performance of the knife. Such full warrenties and explicit performance descriptions are very rare on knives that don't perform as described for obvious reasons. The most hyped knives are those with heavily claused warrenties as they prohibit evaluation of pretty much any performance claim. Secondly, such a the policy allows a full evaluation of the knife *without monetary risk* before it is actually needs to be depended upon. Thus you can determine exact what the abilities of the tool are, and thus you are in a much better situation to come up with functional options in an extreme situation.

Now as for your point that you may exceed the abilities of the knife in extreme situations, (you known the knife is going to fail but have no option so give it a shot anyway) if the knives are to be used in such a manner, your best bet (in regards to protecting against shards or keeping the knife in one piece) would be to use a fully soft knife with extensive tapers. However because the prying ability is vastly reduced, that knife will fail to be able to complete the pry in sutuations with the other would succeed. Which has direct and obvious conclusions to the person which is depending on the prying being successful. Note as well that by simply wrapping the knife in cloth any shard danger is made insignificant even with the most brittle steels, so just cut off your sleeve, pant leg or whatever first.

Ed :

You make a lot of generalizations on 52100 by its book properties. In some cases you could be correct, but this is different stuff.
Click to expand...

First off, I have also used 52100, forged as well as stock removal. Secondly the generalizations are often steel inspecific. However exactly which performance statements do you disagree with. Do you claim that your 52100 at 60 RC is actually tougher at the edge than S7 (which exceeds the toughness of A2 more than three to one), is more corrosion resistant than 420HC, or that it has a higher wear resistance and greater tensile strength than CPM-10V at 4-5 RC points higher?

Many of the performance generalizations can be shown to be true by a simple logic extension of the general behavior and examining the consequences.

For example lets assume that tapers actually increase strength and rigidity. Consider a taper from spine to edge (the primary grind), the basic taper assumption then predicts that fully flat ground blades are stronger than sabre ground ones. It would also predict that the more acute an edge is ground , the stronger it would get - that leads to nonsense quickly, infinite strength with no steel.

Or consider the strength of the soft spines. Lets assume that the softer spines are in fact stronger than the spring tempered ones. This means that they have a higher resistance to deformation as that is how strength is defined. Now if this was true they would also score higher on the HRC tests as that is also a deformation test - yet they don't as they are softer. It would mean for example that the softer spines would actually be more difficult to file than the spring tempered ones.

The variables are astronomical, we may never know the limits
Click to expand...

It is not as complicated as you are describing. For reference see "Heat Treatment Shanghai, 1983", Third International Congress on Heat Treatment of Materials which contains a paper presenting testing of multiple quenches and the effect of forging on the grain structure. The increase of dislocation density induced by forging (the forging temperatures were also studied) will cause grain refinement when the the reheat rate was 100-150 degrees / minute. It was also found that going from as-quenched martensite (soaked in liquid N2) gave a finer grain than going from tempered martensite. From memory, forging by stretching was also found to be superior than by compression.

As for the limits, these could easily be predicted by simply correlating the performance to the grain structure achieved so far and doing a regression model to allow extrapolation which may be quite obvious depending on the nature of the correlation, ie. linear for example. They are also obviously not infinite and there are clear restrictions, for example the wear resistance of a highly alloy HSS cannot even be came close to considering that they have very fine grain structure as well, a few microns, and have alloy carbides that make the Cr carbides in 52100 seem soft in comparison.

-Cliff
 
Jose, sorry about the emotion. Although elk are larger than deer, they are smaller than cattle. The goal is to cool them out as quickly (without freezing them) as possible. If you bagged a large bull on a warm day, you may have to split the pelvis -- but for $10 you can get a folding saw (I have a Gerber that cost me $7 and weighs less than 4 ounces). These saws have hardly any weight but great utility for their size -- they function in the "survival" mode also. However, I rarely crack the pelvis. If one needs to cool quickly, it may be best to muscle-bone the animal and leave all the bones in the field. This results in about 12 large muscle section of 10 to 40 lbs each. Advantages are that the meat will cool more quickly and the weight is also reduced. The disadvantages are that you need large plastic bags to carry the meat in, must carry it in or on a pack frame (you loose the bone structure the meat normally hangs on for transport), and in some states it is illegal to separate the head or genitals from the carcass till it has been checked by your state's Fish and Game (evidence of gender).

I guess I just blanch at the idea of using my custom hunting knife (Matt Harilstad, maker) to do anything other than field dress and skin. There are enough anecdotal experiences to indicate that using a knife to separate large bones usually results in a broken knife as to make me wonder why it still happens. Seems like the old adage that (paraphrased), "If one keeps doing the same thing, why do they expect different results?" I usually carry my custom hunting (read, game processing) knife, a small folding saw, a less expensive yet well cared for six inch boning knife, plastic bags, a couple of game bags, disposable gloves (dirt, ticks, etc.), parachute cord, and a small sharpener (diamond rod or such). Weighs little and is very functional.

Anyway, I only process my own kill now, and the last Mule Deer I got in Utah was so good, my parents didn't even know it was venison stew!
 
Cliff

I'm confused. Did you say you had, or had not tested any of Ed Fowler's knives? I was reading along and thought to myself if I were a movie critic and did the same reviews about movies, I'd have a hard time explaining the parts about the movie I liked or didn't like... It's presumption. Don't you have to see it first? Isn't that what it's all about? For example, it's not just a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, it's eating the sandwich. Then you say "Hey, that was good!, or "Man that was just an ordinary ole' sandwich with gooey stuff on it." :rolleyes:

David
 
David, no I have not used one of Ed's knives as stated clearly in the first post. However as also noted I have used knives with similar geometries, materials and so on. Secondly no where in the above did I do a review of one of Ed's knives. I made statements concerning the geometry, and materials used, plus specifics about the hardening based on other knives I have used which were made in a similar way.

The above also clearly shows a huge bias. Check in the past and you will see positive comments from me on Ed's knives. Note no arguments from Ed or others stating I should not make such comments because I had not used one of his knives. In fact in the past I was thanked by Ed for such comments. Yet when I make statements that are taken as negative, this arguement is used.

You of course can't have it both ways. If you allow positive statements to be made about knives because of geometry and materials, you also have to allow the negative. Of course this arguement isn't just used by Ed and company in the above. You will see it very common in general as a reaction to negative comments, but never in responce to positive ones - a large and obvious bias.

-Cliff
 
So, let me get this straight:

First someone posts a thread specifically to ask Cliff whether he has tested and reviewed one of Ed's knives. Cliff says no, then explains why he has not. Then people get defensive when he explains things in terms of simple issues of geometry, material, and the manufacturer's own words. Then people start accusing him of being presumptuous for reviewing a knife he's never used.

This thread is getting silly.

Cliff, you must be the most patient man in the world. For what it's worth, you get a pat on the back from me for all you do around here. I've learned more about knives from your explanations and discussions about geometry, materials, heat treatments and cryo, and personal experience and tests, than from all of the others here combined.

Good on you!

--Mike
 
mike, DITTO!

there is nothing better than a good discussion or debate amongst gentlemen. i believe that is how the world advances in knowledge.

debate, not attack.

black or white, ford or chevy, there's something for everybody, and some own both!:cool:
 
Hi Mike...
Just looked at your photos.
Jeez, that's great stuff.
I especially like the frozen puddle.
Thanks for sharing, Mike.
Steve
 
Cliff: I have been dancing with 52100 for years, at first I used 2, then 3 inch ball bearings and races, like you, I figured it was all the same. I kept experimenting trying to push the steel further, sometimes a variable worked, sometimes it did not. This was years of frustration chasing an unpredictable lady.

Then Rex called offering a consistent steel. I did not understand the beauty of consistent steel and declined. Rex did not give up, he asked me to send him some knives to evaluate, I did so. One of the blades came from a ball bearing, 52100, that was alloyed with Nitrogen. This type of 52100 steel was developed my the German steel industry during WWII when the import of other suitable materials was denied to the Germans as stratigic materials. The other blades also differed in semingly minor aspects.

These events encouraged me to try a consistent steel Rex had available. I started working with it, over two years later and many blades tested to destruction and we had some answers, the performance of our blades increased dynamically. We know a lot about this steel, how, when it was made, Rex has the records.

All 52100 is not the same. Had I known this at the start life would have been a lot easier.

How the steel is forged, the degree of reduction to the final dimensions, the forging temperature, the nature and number of thermal cycles all play a part in determing the nature of the blade.

You talk about spring back vs soft back as if it were a simple construct. I see seven zones above the 'temper line' and wonder why. I disect blades, examine the martenisite cone and spend months trying to manipulate its nature then apply its influence to the finished blade, to the point where I have more questions than answers.

You discuss forged vs stock removal like they were two concise discriptions, in reality there are as many variables as there are those who make knives.
Granted many blades are rather simplistic and variables easily defined. There can be more.

I have never attempted to keep any of our results secret, readilly shared them in the hope of others joining in the development of what I hope are better blades. We have devoted a lot of time and energy exploring what at one time were considered purly hypotheitical constructs and made sense out of what many consider myths.

Am I bias Yes, I am bias against simplistic explanations that fail to realize there may be more.
 
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