Unbreakable material

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UGA Dawg

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Sep 12, 2005
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I was wondering if any of you metallurgists and other whatcha ma call its knew if there was an unbreakable material at all and if mankind will develope a metal or anything that will ever be unbreakable. I post this here because I thought this is where the smartest people were. Please inform me if there is a forum that mainly talks about this stuff.
 
If you mean unbreakable in the literal sense then no there is no such material and probably never will be. At least not in peices big enough to make knives out of :D
All the materials we use today are made of smaller parts. Steel is a crystal with a cubic structure made up of atoms. It has a very high strength in comparison to other materials, but there are still smaller peices it can be broken into. If you could make a blade that was one giant peice instead of a network of little ones you'd probably have something very strong, but it could still be broken down on the atomic level. Don't know how that translates into real world use, but technically its not "unbreakable".
As it is we're not realy anywhere near being able to make a blade out of one big grain of steel, and we're actually working in the other directon. We try to refine the grain structure into smaller peices as it gives a better edge and stronger blade. A coarse grain structure actually tends to be brittle.

Now there are a whole lot of other variables to be taken into consideration beyond the size of the peices making up the material. There are slip plains, and grain boundaries, and elastic and plastic limits on deformation. It can really make your head spin, and I don't know too much about it all.
There is a material that might be close to what you're talking about. Its called liquid metal (LM1 I think), and in the real world using sense, it seems to always bend instead of break, and it always springs back. It does have shortcomings in other aspects beyond flexibilty though.
Its not technically unbreakable though, or we wouldn't be able to cut or grind it :D I really don't think you will ever find a material that is unbreakable, other than quirgs are whatever they're called that make up electrons. And who knows, we may find something smaller than them someday.
 
Yes, it is found in nature, although rare...its a called a diamond. Bit expensive for a blade though, but if cost is not an issue... On a serious note, some of the newer plastics are quite hard to destroy, but for cutley they are far from useable.
 
Hit the Diamond with a hammer!
Then hit the spine of a well made blade and drive it thru another piece of steel.
See link under testing:D gallery
I can make you a knife that might read big maybe bend.
But I challenge you to break more than just a 1/4" of the tip...without the aid of machine. Hammers are fine.
 
Yeah, diamond is actually extremely easy to break, it's how they're rough cut to make jewlry, just hit it on one of the fracture planes(dunno the proper technical term for these) and it shears easily.

An unbreakable super-hard material that can still be formed and worked into a knife blade is the super-ideal material, and will likely not be discovered for.. well ever actually. It's the unfortunate reality, anything that can be made can be unmade.

Modern metalurgy and advancements in heat-treating knowlege have made signifigant strides in some areas, but we're still a loooong ways off from that "ideal". Now, if you just mean "won't break if I smash it with a hammer" or "chop rocks in half" or something then yeah sure, no problem, that's relatively simple and I could name a few knives off the top of my head that I would have full confidence in doing such things repeatedly.

But "unbreakable" means just that, absolutely unbreakable, and any knife that would claim such a thing would first have to go into Sal Glessers knife breaking machine before it would get my recognition as "almost unbreakable".
 
Who? Sal Glesser? Just hop on over to the spyderco forum, I remember a while back he said he'd test any knife someone sent him, complete with test data. Not sure if the offer still stands though.
 
yoda4561 said:
just hit it on one of the fracture planes(dunno the proper technical term for these)
Click to expand...

Cleavage planes. Works on an awful lot of crystals...

Peter
 
I replace broken diamonds every day.They are very breakable.Some of the space age rubber like compounds are far closer to "unbreakable".In a good knife we try to find a median point between hardness and toughness and flexibility.No one steel has it all.
 
Thank yall, that first response. How well will LM1 hold an edge and that space age rubber????? Will that even take an edge, it might sound like a stupid question but is the rubber you`re talking about the same kind I`m thinking of???????????
 
My first vote is THE EARTH. nobdies broke it yet.

my second vote is for 12x 12 x 12" piece of mild steel. Barring explosives i don't think you can break it.

I got one , wanna give it a try.
 
Sure, send it on over. Can I use a plasma cutter,sawsall, or anything else you`d use to cut metal with. Nah, just kidding, besides, does cutting count as breaking???? Because if you ask me cutting is sort of cheating. But yes, that does sound pretty unbreakable. I thought of everything. I suspect that would be, if not , near unbreakable.I was thnking if blades were made of diamond, then they would make the perfect knife because they`re so hard you could cut anything with them, am I right?? Thanks alot for yalls` replies.
 
UGA Dawg said:
Thank yall, that first response. How well will LM1 hold an edge and that space age rubber????? Will that even take an edge, it might sound like a stupid question but is the rubber you`re talking about the same kind I`m thinking of???????????
Click to expand...

To add on to that , I was wondering if yall knew of any maker who made their knives out of this stuff????
 
I'm no metalurgist and I don't know much of anything about LM1, but it seems like i heard something about it being dangerous (toxic) and difficult to work with. a blade made out of a diamond would be crazy hard, but that's not what you want in a knife blade. that's the whole reason you temper a blade after heat treating. if you don't, it's too brittle and will chip or break with any serious use.

Alex
 
UGA Dawg said:
Thank yall, that first response. How well will LM1 hold an edge and that space age rubber????? Will that even take an edge, it might sound like a stupid question but is the rubber you`re talking about the same kind I`m thinking of???????????
Click to expand...

I don't know much about LM1, other than RW Clark is the only guy working with it right now. The manufacturer is still in the testing stages and isn't putting it on the market yet. Here's a thread with about all the info you could want on it though : http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=236043&highlight=LM1
 
light sabers


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