Sean Couch 1095 Hunter Passaround Review

[Dan Gray]

Sean
if indeed at 58 HRC I'd lean more toward bevel/tip thickness rather than edge geometry . that's a lot of tip lost. On your tester do you have your test blocks?
I think the Rock needs to be retested and make sure you didn't have a fracture in the steel,
from the tip to 2/3 back looks funky
it looks like the brake started from the edge by looking at the angle of brake
if it broke at 90 deg in the tree.
but if it were because it's to hard , it just snapped the spine and the crack followed to the edge,
even if the edge flexed in the process from being thin there, the crack from the spine brake would follow though.. JMO

this style is not meant for target practice on tree's

 

[Laredo7mm]

In the second set of pics I was playing around with the grind on that knife and having some fun with the grinder. It was actually flexing while I was grinding it which was interesting.

On the pass around knife where the tip broke, it looks like it may have started on the spin since the break is right where the false grinds meet. Maybe the intersection of the false edge caused a stress riser point and led to the failure.

It is hard to tell where it started. Does that 45° break on the spine mean anything?

I might just fix this one up and send it back out before I destroy it while testing it.

 

[Laredo7mm]

I just tested my hardness tester with a 62 HRC test block and got a reading of 61.5 on the test block. So it looks like my hardness tester is OK. I whish I could retest the knife, but since it was differentially heat treatred I don't have a good surface to test on now that the blade has been ground.

 

[Laredo7mm]

Here are some more pictures. I decided to destroy the blade and not just fix her up.

Nicer looking grain and some ductile failure a bit further back from the initial break:

Ductile Falure of the non hardened spine:

Bits and Pieces:

Busted up Amboyna :grumpy:

 

[Dan Gray]

Sean
you said you differentially heat treated it
what was the spine drawn to?
and how much did it bend before it broke?
I think 58 rock would have a made a lot of difference for you as far as the edge and point goes..
but that spine I would have brought down to about 45 rock but still dependent on the use it's going to see.
it looks like a clean brake and no bends left behind in any place that I can see.
other than under the wood..did they just snap with little bend?

I water tube my edges most of the time so I can control the spine draw,,

 

[Cliff Stamp]

..since it was differentially heat treatred I don't have a good surface to test on now that the blade has been ground.

You can grind a flat right into the edge straight on and same on the back and test on those. Thanks for sharing the results of the breaks.

-Cliff