Revolution in forging - Zubeng knives - 67 HRC - 13 000 chops through 1 & 3/4" hemp

Yes, I handled them and talked to the guy through his very broken english, which is much more respectable than my non-existent Chinese. Very nice knives, I will say. Nice wide flat ground blade reminisent of a Busse Steel Heart. I liked them. I am not sure what they do with their steel or if it is as good as they say, but the guy seemed really nice. I was not willing to pay the price he wanted, although I was tempted to go back on Sunday and work the price down a little. The steel they use is a laminate, like San Mai, but folded a few times more like Damascus. He was handing out CD's and I have the one where they cut those 13,000 pieces. Impressive. The cuts are chops though not slices. The blades are 1/4 inch thick roughly and over 2 inches wide.

the only concern is the hardness. The spine is 54, the edge is 62 and the core varies from 36 to 47 which is quite high IMO
 
Some of the knives did look very nice, but the prices are very high. Do you know how they are made, is it a one guy custom operation or more of a production setup? How were the chops made exactly?

-Cliff
 
The chops were made with the rope being fed on a table and wood plank by one guy, while 3 other guys would switch out when each got tired. They would do fairly powerfull chops from about eye level down to waist level. The chops were very hard. In the begining, the knife would sail through the rope but towards the middle, they really had to hit hard to cut through. It was pretty good. They chopped using pretty much the middle section of the blade mostly. These guys were hitting hard and seemed to have a lot of practice at it.

As for how they make them, it seems lik they are a small operation, like a custom shop. The main guy has a few younger guy working with him.

Not sure about the steel though. It was hard to talk to him about it due to the language issue. He did however, compare his steel t the better Jpanese hand made swords. His swords looked nice as well and were priced fair compared to equivalent Japanese swords. Still more than I would pay though. I think he wanted about $1,000 for the knives and $3,000 for the swords.
 
I don't have the patience to get by the 2 minute intro, then navigate all the pop ups that fade in and out after clicking on something. :rolleyes:
 
Please excuse my pessimism, but this smacks of BS to me. A nice mix of:
- 'My steel is superb because it's folded a zillion times in the forging process'.
- Oriental mystique: We all know oriental bladesmiths are inherently superior to American bladesmiths, don't we?

How often do we have to hear this tripe before we call it BS?

Ron Cashen is a forger of decent reputation. He has a series of articles on his website which nicely blow the whistle on some of the hype about forging as well as some comments on the oriental mystique and even some comments on the ABS. Reccomended reading:
http://www.cashenblades.com/hype.html
 
gud4u said:
Ron Cashen is a forger of decent reputation. He has a series of articles on his website which nicely blow the whistle on some of the hype about forging as well as some comments on the oriental mystique and even some comments on the ABS. Reccomended reading:
http://www.cashenblades.com/hype.html
Click to expand...

That maker's name is actually Kevin Cashen and his reputation is far better than decent.

Zubeng knives look to be very good quality, but I also consider their prices to be high. They state that their guards are copper, but in the photos they look like brass.
 
Cobalt said:
The chops were made with the rope being fed on a table and wood plank by one guy, while 3 other guys would switch out when each got tired. They would do fairly powerfull chops from about eye level down to waist level. The chops were very hard. In the begining, the knife would sail through the rope but towards the middle, they really had to hit hard to cut through. It was pretty good. They chopped using pretty much the middle section of the blade mostly. These guys were hitting hard and seemed to have a lot of practice at it.
Click to expand...

That is interesting, I would assume the wood is having as much or more of an effect as the rope. 13 000 chops into wood and the knife still slicing paper sounds pretty decent to me especially as I assume it was all direct cross grain cutting. I would forget about the rope cutting and just do chopping demo's. Did they say what type of wood it was? Hey DaveH you should contact them for a pass around, I have more than enough wood for a few 10k chops.

-Cliff
 
Terry Newton said:
I don't have the patience to get by the 2 minute intro, then navigate all the pop ups that fade in and out after clicking on something. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Agreed. The website is horrible.

People need to realize that flash may be cool but it doesn't help anyone navigate a site. It's truly annoying.
 
That is interesting, I would assume the wood is having as much or more of an effect as the rope. 13 000 chops into wood and the knife still slicing paper sounds pretty decent to me especially as I assume it was all direct cross grain cutting. I would forget about the rope cutting and just do chopping demo's. Did they say what type of wood it was? Hey DaveH you should contact them for a pass around, I have more than enough wood for a few 10k chops.
Click to expand...

Traditional chinese cutting boards are rounds of woods, ie the grain perpendictular to the surface. It is softer in that regard. It is fairly routine when using a cleaver to use the board to hold the knife when not in use by chopping either a tip or rear corner into the block.

Do you think it is less demanding in that case?
 
Much less, cross grain cutting is far more demanding than splitting. The problem with tests like these is that they have no baseline so it is hard to tell what they mean. How would a blade without the "cross forging" compare. How would a stock removal blade made out of 1095 perform? Still when you are talking about 10k anything it tends to catch interest. Compare for example the work Fowler does on one strand of one inch hemp and he usually does only 500 cuts.

-Cliff
 
"Oriental Mystique"...LOL! Like the Asians consipred to earn this attribution. If anything, Occidental Imagination/Ignorance conjured the idea. However, you can't argue that feudal Japanese sword makers as well as warcraft were leaps and bounds beyond the Europeans during that same period. It does sound like BS to me, but I haven't seen a test nor held one. Anyone willing to shell out the cash before passing judgement?
 
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