rc-4 destruction test

[taurn]

I'm sure we all had the feeling this test would turn out good. I'm most impressed with the handles, man! What do you guys use to glue them together?! I always wonder if they'll ever get loose on me, but no worries anymore! This knife is tough enough for me

 

[ShooterMcgavin]

The knifetests.com tests have irritated me, in parts, for a while...

1A) Have you seen some of the videos where he hooked up a torque wrench to bend the blade over? Then, they put a dial with degree markings around it, on top of the vice holding the blade. Since the dial's center is not lined up directly with the pivot point of the blade (it is probably 4"+ above the top of the vice), you cannot get any idea of what angle the blade is bending to. Still, the guy video-taping will call out "30 degrees", "40 degrees", etc. when the blade has actually reached NOTHING NEAR that angle. The blade is simply bent over in front of the number 30 or 40. I have seen some of the extreme bending reach a little over 10 degrees, and that is measured as parallel to the 10 degree line.
1B) In one of the videos, the torque wrench he was using was slipping. It started out about 30 degrees off from being inline with the blade. As he proceeded with the test, the angle of the torque wrench went to 90 degrees and beyond. He still kept reading torque numbers. However, as the torque wrench gets further and further from being inline with the blade, the effect of X lb ft of torque is actually less on the blade.
2) The tip test in the sheet metal. The guy hammers the tip into the sheet metal and bends the knife over. That is a decent test. However, the tip would be more likely to break if he only barely inserted the tip into the sheet metal, like 1/8" or 1/16" rather than burying it a half inch down.
3) The 'weight-test', where he stands on the handle, is FAR from accurate. Clamping it at a certain distance from the handle is fine. Even lowering his weight onto it is fine. The problem I have is in two parts.
A) When he stands on the handle, he could shift his weight just a tiny amount towards/away from the end of the handle (even without knowing it) and greatly increase/decrease the forces on the blade. He has no way of knowing the exact point where the force is being put onto the handle. The range can be anywhere from 1" to 6" from the clamp.
B) He bounces his weight on the handle!!! How scientific is that?!?! Is he sure that, with each knife, he bounces the exact same amount? (Of course not!) Changing the manner in which he bounces could change the weight on the handle by 25 to 50 pounds, easily. Compound that with the issue in 'A' above and the effect could be that some blades receive MUCH more force than another.

I am not claiming that he is purposely trying to be partial or unfair to some knives, but there is no way to reproduce his tests accurately. He wants to get the results he gets - he wants to break the blade. So, how much emphasis does he put into his bounces with each knife at each level? When knives make it through that part of the test, I think it's because they are serious, over-built knives. That is fine for some knives and there's nothing wrong with the RC-4. It is excellent for what it was designed to do.

I find the videos interesting and will watch when I have some free time, but these tests are not even close to being scientific or reproducible

 

[Jake Bauer]

That's really Impressive. I've watched a couple of his videos and he works em hard. I reckon he could send that back to Rat and get a new one no?

 

[R.A.T.]

That's really Impressive. I've watched a couple of his videos and he works em hard. I reckon he could send that back to Rat and get a new one no?

I think someone sent him that knife. I could be wrong but I got an email the other day asking if we would replace the knife that he tests to destruction and I told them we would. We just want the original knife back for our own testing after destruction. So, to answer your question, he, or whoever sent the knife to him, absolutely gets a new knife.

To stress a point that has already been made: this is common 1095 steel, not some exotic super steel, and we're pretty damn impressed with the heat treat Shon is putting on it.

 

[MrCoffee]

Ok, well I just got my first RAT, a RC-3 plain edge, and now I am lusting for a RC-4. Was I the only one that cringed as this guy abused the heck outta that poor blade??

I was impressed as hell with all that the RC went thru and survived, thou i can't say that I can see myself putting any of my blades thru that kind of abuse.....ever.

 

[noss4]

I think someone sent him that knife. I could be wrong but I got an email the other day asking if we would replace the knife that he tests to destruction and I told them we would. We just want the original knife back for our own testing after destruction. So, to answer your question, he, or whoever sent the knife to him, absolutely gets a new knife.

To stress a point that has already been made: this is common 1095 steel, not some exotic super steel, and we're pretty damn impressed with the heat treat Shon is putting on it.

Just for the record. It's not I who sent the email. The knife was donated to me for the test.

Very cool of you to replace the knife for the original owner though :thumbup:

 

[Cpl Punishment]

I was extremely impressed with the edge retention and the tip capabilities. I couldn't care less about the step test -- I don't see anywhere that would be necessary.

It's also no surprise how the blade reacted to the lateral stress. The heat treat that gave it the ability to withstand the edge and tip abuse means it isn't going to bend 45 degrees and pop back. Plus, there really isn't a lot of metal there. Yes, they are fairly wide blades, but they're flat ground from a 3/16" spine, they aren't going to lift a Buick off the ground.

 

[R.A.T.]

Actually, we are getting about 30 to 40 degrees flex on the 1095 on the overall length of the knife. In other words, if you hold the tip in the vice and then flex the blade it will flex about 30 to 40 degrees before snapping. If you chuck it up in the vice mid-way up the blade then you won't get as much flex since you're not working over the whole length of the knife. Where this blade appears to have broken was through the thumb grippers on the spine since they are natural stress risers. Everything that Noss did in his test were expected results since Shon does flex and break tests on every batch of knives that he heat treats. All in all, I think Noss did an excellent job on the knife and the knife did an excellent job on him... and we thank him for the test

 

[R.A.T.]

As a side note, once we get RC-6 knives shipping good, then we will send Noss an RC-6 to test. Then an RC-5 once they start rolling off the line.

As an edit to this post, I just read the post by ShooterMcgavin and I have to say I agree with him. If the tests were going to be truly objective (instead of subjective) then it would have to be set up with certain parameters that were repeatable. Obviously Noss's tests are not. With that said, I still think the tests have some merit for the overall toughness of a knife as long as the viewers take into account the types of steel, thicknesses, etc of individual knives. For example, when he says the RC-4 is not a good chopper, well, it wasn't meant to be. If he takes a 1/8" thick RC-3 and stands on it and it breaks while a 1/4" RC-5 doesn't break, well, what else would you expect. So my point is the tests he performs have merits as long as they are looked at on an individual basis and not as a comparison test against other knives with different physical makeup.

 

[Cpl Punishment]

I don't think the thumb "gripeprs" are that much of a stress riser, at least not like they would be if the bottoms came to a point instead of a radius. To be technical, the way Noss had it chucked up, and how close his weight was to the edge of the block holding the knife, he was doing a shear test, rather than a bend test.

Any way you cut it, the knife held up extremely well, and will certainly do anything it was designed for with ease.

 

[jawilder]

As a side note, once we get RC-6 knives shipping good, then we will send Noss an RC-6 to test. Then an RC-5 once they start rolling off the line.

As an edit to this post, I just read the post by ShooterMcgavin and I have to say I agree with him. If the tests were going to be truly objective (instead of subjective) then it would have to be set up with certain parameters that were repeatable. Obviously Noss's tests are not. With that said, I still think the tests have some merit for the overall toughness of a knife as long as the viewers take into account the types of steel, thicknesses, etc of individual knives. For example, when he says the RC-4 is not a good chopper, well, it wasn't meant to be. If he takes a 1/8" thick RC-3 and stands on it and it breaks while a 1/4" RC-5 doesn't break, well, what else would you expect. So my point is the tests he performs have merits as long as they are looked at on an individual basis and not as a comparison test against other knives with different physical makeup.

Well said. It's important to keep in mind that an RC-4 is not a Bussy FBM nor is it intended to be. I've got a Scrapyard DCDM that's 1/4 inch thick and I'm sure you can stand on it all day, but I can't get it to cut warm butter.

For what the RC-4 is, it handled wonderfully. Does this mean the prices will be going up since everyone knows how good the knves are :0

 

[R.A.T.]

Agreed. Personally I like his tests since deep down most of us like to blow up and break things and his tests lets us see it in action. Screw science, lets' blow something up!

 

[R.A.T.]

Prices going up? Well, like I said in another thread, since we're going to bail out Wall Street with 700B then I figure we should be able to get 15,000 a piece for Izulas, don't you?

 

[texastonydobbs]

cool test...

 

[Horn Dog]

While I would never use any of my knives in such a manner, I was impressed with the toughness of the little RC-4.

 

[Fletcher Knives]

I think someone sent him that knife. I could be wrong but I got an email the other day asking if we would replace the knife that he tests to destruction and I told them we would. We just want the original knife back for our own testing after destruction. So, to answer your question, he, or whoever sent the knife to him, absolutely gets a new knife.

To stress a point that has already been made: this is common 1095 steel, not some exotic super steel, and we're pretty damn impressed with the heat treat Shon is putting on it.

Awesome. Just awesome.

 

[Jake Bauer]

yep. Good to know that most of us wont be doing what this guy did to that knife, but if we did, we'd get a new one

 

[kgd]

Agreed. Personally I like his tests since deep down most of us like to blow up and break things and his tests lets us see it in action. Screw science, lets' blow something up!

I resemble that remark - as a scientist. Screw Engineering!!!!!

 

[kgd]

As a side note, once we get RC-6 knives shipping good, then we will send Noss an RC-6 to test. Then an RC-5 once they start rolling off the line.

Very cool guys. No, Noss doesn't do scientific testing. But he does excellent qualitative testing and provides something that a scientific test cannot provide. He provides the 'what if' scenario. Of course Noss makes up the 'what if' as he goes. But we all like to see him do it, and we all like to imagine we were the one who thought up his latest torture test.

I like Noss' stuff. I also appreciate the RAT team who recognized there is some value to what he does rather than simply criticize it as all 'non-scientific' and thus non-valid. The fact that Noss takes a random knife and runs it through his battery of tests until it fails is pretty cool. Cheers to him and to the RC-4's robustness!

 

[MRpink]

I'm happy to see the knife handle so much abuse! Like others here, I wouldn't use my knife like that on a daily bases, but it's great to know what it can handle, just in case.