- Joined
- Jul 31, 2002
- Messages
- 2,954
First firearm season was this last weekend, and there were a couple knife related things I thought would be worth sharing.
The first, was my uncle's POS Chinese freebie lockback folder. It broke when he tried using it to stab a deer to finish it off!
On the third thrust, the pins popped loose from the handle, and the blade folded backwards up onto his hand. So he chambered another round....
When I arrived back at the farm after sitting all morning, my brother already had a small buck gutted and hanging in the shed. He was gonna make a cut in the neck region, when his blade broke in half. He was not trying to cut bone; just slicing skin and flesh, then *snap*. I asked to inspect the knife, and discovered it was my old Schrade fillet knife. I don't know the model, but this line has the green rubber handles. When I saw it, I wasn't surprised. That thing was so brittle the edge would need to be reground on my belt sander just from running it through the dish washer. I mentioned that Dad had a drop point knife from this same line, and it had similar problems.
The next day, Dad's Schrade drop point with the green rubber handles snapped in half as well! This time my brother was just slitting open the belly to gut it, and it broke. Both blades broke a bit less than halfway up the blade -not right in front of the handle or shoulder.
My big bowie came in handy. Let's see now... We used it to cut the heads off of five deer, and all took one easy swing apiece. I used it to split the chest and pelvis on two different deer, which it cut like cardboard. It suffered no damage whatsoever and I didn't even need to sharpen it. But then, I wanted to see what it could really do. Several years ago I tried to use a large stainless bowie to cut the legs off my deer, and huge scallops the size of half a dime were broken out of the edge, so I wanted to see how my newer knife would handle it. The leg bones are much harder than the ribs or spine, so I knew my knife would likely be damaged. So I cut off the two front legs (the deer was hanging free and unsupported- it may have turned out differently on a chopping block) with one swipe apiece, and the edge did take some nasty damage. It was better than I expected, but worse than I'd hoped. The worst notch was a deflected/rolled section about 5mm long and 2mm deep. I hammered out what I could, which wasn't much, and then spent 10 minutes on a very coarse alumina hand stone to reprofile and repair the edge. I didn't remove the notch completely, in an effort to conserve steel.
I brought along some of my favorite butcher knives and an old F. Dick cleaver to process the rest of the meat, and we had the whole deer cut into roasts, steaks, and stew meat within 1 1/2 hours.
There were lots of other blades involved as well over the course of the weekend, but nothing really noteworthy.
Cheers.
The first, was my uncle's POS Chinese freebie lockback folder. It broke when he tried using it to stab a deer to finish it off!
On the third thrust, the pins popped loose from the handle, and the blade folded backwards up onto his hand. So he chambered another round....When I arrived back at the farm after sitting all morning, my brother already had a small buck gutted and hanging in the shed. He was gonna make a cut in the neck region, when his blade broke in half. He was not trying to cut bone; just slicing skin and flesh, then *snap*. I asked to inspect the knife, and discovered it was my old Schrade fillet knife. I don't know the model, but this line has the green rubber handles. When I saw it, I wasn't surprised. That thing was so brittle the edge would need to be reground on my belt sander just from running it through the dish washer. I mentioned that Dad had a drop point knife from this same line, and it had similar problems.
The next day, Dad's Schrade drop point with the green rubber handles snapped in half as well! This time my brother was just slitting open the belly to gut it, and it broke. Both blades broke a bit less than halfway up the blade -not right in front of the handle or shoulder.
My big bowie came in handy. Let's see now... We used it to cut the heads off of five deer, and all took one easy swing apiece. I used it to split the chest and pelvis on two different deer, which it cut like cardboard. It suffered no damage whatsoever and I didn't even need to sharpen it. But then, I wanted to see what it could really do. Several years ago I tried to use a large stainless bowie to cut the legs off my deer, and huge scallops the size of half a dime were broken out of the edge, so I wanted to see how my newer knife would handle it. The leg bones are much harder than the ribs or spine, so I knew my knife would likely be damaged. So I cut off the two front legs (the deer was hanging free and unsupported- it may have turned out differently on a chopping block) with one swipe apiece, and the edge did take some nasty damage. It was better than I expected, but worse than I'd hoped. The worst notch was a deflected/rolled section about 5mm long and 2mm deep. I hammered out what I could, which wasn't much, and then spent 10 minutes on a very coarse alumina hand stone to reprofile and repair the edge. I didn't remove the notch completely, in an effort to conserve steel.
I brought along some of my favorite butcher knives and an old F. Dick cleaver to process the rest of the meat, and we had the whole deer cut into roasts, steaks, and stew meat within 1 1/2 hours.
There were lots of other blades involved as well over the course of the weekend, but nothing really noteworthy.
Cheers.
