Cobalt said:
Yo, Juice, anyone can break a folder. They are not meant for super hard use. Some are stronger than others, but if you need to do any work that might break a folder use a fixed blade.
Depends on the folder, there are lots of tactical folders that are a lot stronger than many fixed blades, most tactical folders are ground way thicker than utility fixed blades. Some are just extreme, for example the Fulcrum IID is ground WAY thicker than a SHBM. Just consider what that implies about how it should be used, and the blade is only 1/3 the length. It is ground so thick it is hard to actually still call it a knife. You should check it out, if only the pictures.
Cobalt said:
Ok stab the Sere 3/4 of an inch into knotted wood and pry laterraly with it.
I did this recently with a Cara Cara, it did 1/4", 1/2" and 3/4", with just bends, this was in both clear pine and knotted spruce (I opposed the bends in repeated trials). At one inch it went almost flat to the wood before breaking in several places at the same time, it was about the greatest achievement in strength consistency I have seen in a knife, everything was perfectly balanced.
It was also fairly difficult to do the one inch bend, I had to do a shoulder lean, and was beyond the point I would do heavy tip work in woods anyway. I really should have measured the torque. The problem is often that most of the tests are not planned. I will be sitting in someone's basement showing them some knives, they will ask something about can it do this or that and I'll give them it and let them try or do it if I don't know.
Later on I'll write it up and most of it comes off as if I say down to examine some specific property when I just have a fairly good memory and tend to take notes and pay attention to details.
Battoning at full force on a folder? Never.
This is actually being advocated now, see posts by Ritter using his folder for shelter construction and see posts years back by Harvey for martial aspects of folders and the extreme spine impacts he has done. Note I was not using full force, wrist swings alone damaged the lock. I noted the impact energies in the review, they are not a significant fraction of a normal adult male's ability.
In regards to the results of the Vision, while I feel the lock came apart way too fast under impacts considering its slow load break point, the lateral strength is the real issue, the handle broke apart without the blade even flexing significantly nor even stressing the wood. This speaks of a lack of consistency of the design, and you can't really argue for annealed liners.
I cleaned up the review a few days back when I was contacted with the offer of the SERE, and when I do the work with that I'll compare it along with the Cara Cara and note the differences. Yes everything breaks, just like all steels go blunt, but it is how much it takes to do so which is important just like you noted that some tips have greater penetration.
Cliff's biggest problem in tests is that he does not offer a summary or his final opinion ...
I attempted this again recently, I started off with just a few sections (food, woods, misc,utility), and intended to rate the performance of the knife in each section from 1-5 and give this in a table along with all the other knives on another page with in the main review a section at the end explaining the rating briefly for each knife.
I kept getting into trouble with trying to get the listings short enough to be a decent overview, but detailed enough to be informative. For example in wood working you basically have carving, trimming, felling, splitting, prying, and then for every section you have handling, security, edge retention, etc. . So how do you meld all of this into one heading.
I figure maybe keep just 4-6 general listings and then in each review do it in more detail and give an average of sorts. The biggest problem is people who would likely skip to the end and just read that which is why I have little desire to do it, the reviews are not intended to serve that purpose, promote a knife, they are mainly just a reflection of things I do to learn about knives and those are the types of people who they are meant for.
He needs to compare more, ie, put several other folders under that stress.
I have done it on occasion, did it with the Chinook for example and much heavier than I did with the Vision. I did it recently with the Cara Cara and have much heavier work planned for the next generation Endura and Delica *MUCH* heavier, want to bet that when I post it I get similar posts to the above on Spyderco's forum - I doubt it. I alreadly talked to Keating about the work with the Chinook.
On a kind of ironic note about liners, while they can be subject to release with impacts, the actual break points are fairly high, I would be surprised if the Sere doesn't take much higher impacts before it breaks.
-Cliff
