- Joined
- Jan 28, 2007
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- 1,236
What you are about to see is real. It is probably the rarest Mora on the planet...the INFI Mora.
But let me start at the beginning.
A few months ago, I got my hands on about 30 feet of 2" diameter lead pipe, sheathing for underground wiring. The wire was still in it but I only care about the lead, which I will use for alloying in bullet casting (and possibly some fishing lures I would nickel-plate.)
So I had all this lead I needed to separate from the copper. How to proceed?
I thought about just melting the lead off...but I'd get so much crap in the lead that I would have to do a lot of fluxing. Okay, why not cut the lead pipe? Sure, the walls of the pipe are pretty thick - looks like around 3/16ths of an inch - but if you had a strong enough knife, you could baton through 30 feet of lead pipe. Why not?
Of course, you would want a baton that wouldn't wreck your knife. Maybe a piece of solid oak would be good. And the knife would have to be tough as nails.
I didn't have a piece of oak handy. You know what I did have though? A four pound sledgehammer. Abusive? Yes. Only the toughest knife could take this kind of insanity.
I chose a 3.25" mora that was my work knife for a couple of years. Little did I know the discovery I was about to make.
I started by putting the pipe in my bench vise, and hammering the knife straight in by the pommel, and then wrenching the knife up like a lever, cutting the pipe from the inside. It worked okay. I did that for a bit but it was too slow. That's when I decided to start just hammering the spine of the knife. Every once in a while the blade would cock at about a 45 degree angle and I would belt it sideways accidentally. After I cut about two feet of pipe, I would pry it apart, and then cut it off, and chuck it in a pile. It wasn't easy to pry the sheathing apart...I had to wrench the knife back and forth about ten times every six inches along the length of the pipe. The results? Look and see.
Here is one end of the pipe. I cut it off with an oxy torch originally.
I stopped for a second here so you could get an idea of just what I was doing...
I hope this gives you some idea of scale...the walls of the pipe are not 1/4" thick but they are much thicker than the stock of the mora! Also you can see how the knife cocked right here and I gave it a good belt with the hammer anyway...that is why the cut notches out right there in front of the blade. I had cut off to one side a bit and then when I slugged the blade with the sledge it slammed flat, perpendicular to the cut. This happened about a dozen times.
This is the first method I tried...I went back to this for a bit because I felt like yanking the knife hard and pounding on the pommel to see how it would stand up. I also wanted to use the entire length of the blade for cutting aluminum before I tried slicing paper with it later.
You can see the knife bending a little bit under the strain...I was really wrenching on it and the blade actually dug backwards through the lead on the bottom side every time I did this.
How did the knife look after this abuse? Well, keep in mind that I was doing a lot of prying, and I was pounding HARD on the spine of the blade with a sledgehammer with a hardened face for a long time. You could hardly expect it to be unscathed...this knife was ten bucks. It's made of thin stock, not meant to pry or do heavy work. As we've been reminded many times, these knives will not stand up to much.
The results:
The knife is totally fine. It will still cut paper (although it does catch and drag a bit which of course you would expect.)
After 30 seconds with a fine stone it will shave hair again. The handle is not loose on the blade and there is no warp to the thing even though I hit it sideways with the sledgehammer a bunch of times.
The conclusion?
There are only 2 possibilities in my opinion.
1. A chunk of tempered steel is way stronger than most people think, and the whole "my knife has to be a half inch thick because I pry boulders apart" thing is completely unrealistic and is perpetuated by people who don't use knives enough to know what the will do and what they won't do. (unlikely)
2. I have an INFI MORA!!! The only way a mora could withstand this kind of punishment is if it was made of an expensive designer steel...probably INFI. This makes my mora the RAREST MORA IN THE WORLD. (likely.)
The bidding will start at $5000. I can be contacted via email but I do not take paypal as they are anti-gun.
But let me start at the beginning.
A few months ago, I got my hands on about 30 feet of 2" diameter lead pipe, sheathing for underground wiring. The wire was still in it but I only care about the lead, which I will use for alloying in bullet casting (and possibly some fishing lures I would nickel-plate.)
So I had all this lead I needed to separate from the copper. How to proceed?
I thought about just melting the lead off...but I'd get so much crap in the lead that I would have to do a lot of fluxing. Okay, why not cut the lead pipe? Sure, the walls of the pipe are pretty thick - looks like around 3/16ths of an inch - but if you had a strong enough knife, you could baton through 30 feet of lead pipe. Why not?
Of course, you would want a baton that wouldn't wreck your knife. Maybe a piece of solid oak would be good. And the knife would have to be tough as nails.
I didn't have a piece of oak handy. You know what I did have though? A four pound sledgehammer. Abusive? Yes. Only the toughest knife could take this kind of insanity.
I chose a 3.25" mora that was my work knife for a couple of years. Little did I know the discovery I was about to make.
I started by putting the pipe in my bench vise, and hammering the knife straight in by the pommel, and then wrenching the knife up like a lever, cutting the pipe from the inside. It worked okay. I did that for a bit but it was too slow. That's when I decided to start just hammering the spine of the knife. Every once in a while the blade would cock at about a 45 degree angle and I would belt it sideways accidentally. After I cut about two feet of pipe, I would pry it apart, and then cut it off, and chuck it in a pile. It wasn't easy to pry the sheathing apart...I had to wrench the knife back and forth about ten times every six inches along the length of the pipe. The results? Look and see.
Here is one end of the pipe. I cut it off with an oxy torch originally.
I stopped for a second here so you could get an idea of just what I was doing...
I hope this gives you some idea of scale...the walls of the pipe are not 1/4" thick but they are much thicker than the stock of the mora! Also you can see how the knife cocked right here and I gave it a good belt with the hammer anyway...that is why the cut notches out right there in front of the blade. I had cut off to one side a bit and then when I slugged the blade with the sledge it slammed flat, perpendicular to the cut. This happened about a dozen times.
This is the first method I tried...I went back to this for a bit because I felt like yanking the knife hard and pounding on the pommel to see how it would stand up. I also wanted to use the entire length of the blade for cutting aluminum before I tried slicing paper with it later.
You can see the knife bending a little bit under the strain...I was really wrenching on it and the blade actually dug backwards through the lead on the bottom side every time I did this.
How did the knife look after this abuse? Well, keep in mind that I was doing a lot of prying, and I was pounding HARD on the spine of the blade with a sledgehammer with a hardened face for a long time. You could hardly expect it to be unscathed...this knife was ten bucks. It's made of thin stock, not meant to pry or do heavy work. As we've been reminded many times, these knives will not stand up to much.
The results:
The knife is totally fine. It will still cut paper (although it does catch and drag a bit which of course you would expect.)
After 30 seconds with a fine stone it will shave hair again. The handle is not loose on the blade and there is no warp to the thing even though I hit it sideways with the sledgehammer a bunch of times.
The conclusion?
There are only 2 possibilities in my opinion.
1. A chunk of tempered steel is way stronger than most people think, and the whole "my knife has to be a half inch thick because I pry boulders apart" thing is completely unrealistic and is perpetuated by people who don't use knives enough to know what the will do and what they won't do. (unlikely)
2. I have an INFI MORA!!! The only way a mora could withstand this kind of punishment is if it was made of an expensive designer steel...probably INFI. This makes my mora the RAREST MORA IN THE WORLD. (likely.)
The bidding will start at $5000. I can be contacted via email but I do not take paypal as they are anti-gun.
you just raised the bar some for folk who make knives that bit tougher than "normal" ...