Tonight I spent the evening building a big fire with my friends in a little patch of woods we like to explore. Brought a lot of knives with me (Khukuri [Unsure of model], Frosts #760mg Mora, Opinel #10, Brusletto fixed blade with 6 inch blade and a Spyderco Yojimbo) and enjoyed using them. I was especially hard on the Khukuri (Which I believe is from HI), swinging it as hard as I could into iced-over logs then batoning them into sections. I'm going to have to purchase more of these knives, I really like them.
At some point during our campfire discussions I got to telling them all about the destructive knife testing that goes on in the knife community. They were intruiged. I decided the Mora would be fun to let everyone play with.
The first thing we did was throw it into trees. No damage. Went around chopping at some fallen trees. Nothing. Stabbed some logs and pryed it out, nothing. Batoned any branch small enough to fit the blade length. Held the blade in the fire for about half a minute, then repeated said tests. No noticable difference, still no edge damage. They were complaining at this point so I decided it was time to break it. I stabbed it into a log, then hammered it in with the Khukuri. Pryed it out like before, only much more stress was on the blade this time. I got some permanent bends in the blade at first, but just bent it the other way and hammered it roughly straight. Later on we lost about 2mm of tip.
Next, hammered it in real good, put some pressure on and heard the blade cleanly snap.It broke off right after the second "e" in the word Sweden on the tang stamp, or roughly 1 and 3/8th's inch from the handle. I'd estimate the knife was about half an inch in the log when we bent it to breaking point. The break was extremely clean, a perfectly straight fracture perpendicular to the cutting edge. Interestingly, part of the handle on the side I was bending towards broke off too. We chopped with it some more after this and found the tang to still be held in place despite the missing chunk of handle.
After this we batoned what was left of the blade through some old beer cans and a discarded street sign near our fire pit. This was interesting to me, because despite the acute edge bevel in the stainless Mora, the blade suffered no damage aside from some burring after being hammered through a street sign with the Khukuri. Seems to lend considerable weight to the idea that media normally destructive to a blade edge during a chopping or similar use can be handled with a more controlled batonning action.
I'll edit this post in a few minutes with a photograph or two. If anyone would like me to mail them the knife for some more scientific examination or anything, just drop me an email.
At some point during our campfire discussions I got to telling them all about the destructive knife testing that goes on in the knife community. They were intruiged. I decided the Mora would be fun to let everyone play with.
The first thing we did was throw it into trees. No damage. Went around chopping at some fallen trees. Nothing. Stabbed some logs and pryed it out, nothing. Batoned any branch small enough to fit the blade length. Held the blade in the fire for about half a minute, then repeated said tests. No noticable difference, still no edge damage. They were complaining at this point so I decided it was time to break it. I stabbed it into a log, then hammered it in with the Khukuri. Pryed it out like before, only much more stress was on the blade this time. I got some permanent bends in the blade at first, but just bent it the other way and hammered it roughly straight. Later on we lost about 2mm of tip.
Next, hammered it in real good, put some pressure on and heard the blade cleanly snap.It broke off right after the second "e" in the word Sweden on the tang stamp, or roughly 1 and 3/8th's inch from the handle. I'd estimate the knife was about half an inch in the log when we bent it to breaking point. The break was extremely clean, a perfectly straight fracture perpendicular to the cutting edge. Interestingly, part of the handle on the side I was bending towards broke off too. We chopped with it some more after this and found the tang to still be held in place despite the missing chunk of handle.
After this we batoned what was left of the blade through some old beer cans and a discarded street sign near our fire pit. This was interesting to me, because despite the acute edge bevel in the stainless Mora, the blade suffered no damage aside from some burring after being hammered through a street sign with the Khukuri. Seems to lend considerable weight to the idea that media normally destructive to a blade edge during a chopping or similar use can be handled with a more controlled batonning action.
I'll edit this post in a few minutes with a photograph or two. If anyone would like me to mail them the knife for some more scientific examination or anything, just drop me an email.
