Wear Resistance

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

I was doing some idle musings while the wife was getting ready for church.

I was thinking about edge retention and wear resistance. It occurred to me that some things just never seem to wear out.
Take the rings and cylinder walls of car engines. They last for 100,000 miles or more with no real change in operating ability. I did some head math and that is about 13 billion transits of about 3"...so it travels about 3.25 billion feet. By the time you add in all the time spent at idle, it is probably 5 billion feet. Now, I would like to see a knife that could cut five billion one foot slices and still be usable.

What other things do you notice that never wear out ( besides old jokes)?

 

[mete]

It's the oil ! Pour some nice synthetic oil on the knife as you cut .
When I lived in very cold areas ,I've seen -35 F a few times , I always wondered what happened to the cylinder walls when you start up at those temps !

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

I think the people in those places all have hybrid cars......I know they plug them in every night

I recall hearing the Magliozi Brothers saying that nearly all the wear on a car engine occurs during cold start-up.
I had a friend who went to Alaska as a welder on the pipeline. He said that on the North Slope, they ran some vehicles 24/7 for more than a month sometimes. They would get stolen regularly, because they were just sitting around running all the time.

 

[Bufford]

A mechanic told me that the oil with time becomes impregnated into the cylindar walls and rings, and with synthetic oils it sticks more providing better residual lubrication upon cold starts.

 

[The_cutting_edge]

I think the people in those places all have hybrid cars......I know they plug them in every night

I dont own a hybrid but during the winter the cars are plugged in or they dont start, -40C (which is also -40F BTW) is cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey and we see those temps up here for weeks at a time in winter.

 

[james terrio]

Really cold weather is no joke, back in WI in the winter of '93* we had record lows - as I recall it never got above zeroF for nearly two weeks, with windchills down to minus 70. The whole town basically shut down because so many people just couldn't get their vehicles started to get to work. As y'all said, some city vehicles had to be just kept running for fear of not getting them started again. It sucked.

Y'know what else never wears out? The endless supply of noobs with dumb questions

*it occurs to me that when you find yourself reminiscing about the weather back in the whatever of whatever twenty years ago... old fartdom is close on your heels.

 

[oldrifleman]

*it occurs to me that when you find yourself reminiscing about the weather back in the whatever of whatever twenty years ago... old fartdom is close on your heels.

Welcome to the club, we have T-Shirts Steven

 

[Stacy E. Apelt - Bladesmith]

Y'know what else never wears out? The endless supply of noobs with dumb questions

I have to agree with this. The mods hate summer break, because all the kids decide to become knofemakers and expect to be Nick Wheeler by labor day.

 

[james terrio]

I have to agree with this. The mods hate summer break, because all the kids decide to become knifemakers and expect to be Nick Wheeler by labor day.

You know I don't mean to discourage anyone, heck I'm barely crawling out the noob stage myself. But despite what we've all been told, yes, there IS such a thing as a stupid question. I really feel for you mods. Hey, at least it's not General

 

[Will52100]

Don't think theres such a thing as a stupid question, but there are inquisitive idiots!