What do you learn from destruction tests?

upnorth said:
With all due respect, I see Adam doing nothing more than what many of us have done with our own knives before. Noss does all that and far, far more. I want to know that if I'm in the boonies and break a leg that I can trust my knife to hard use. No one is forced to watch them.
:)
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I agree. And I agree with/understand what brother Singularity is saying as well. Valid points, fer sher!

ETA: Certainly if a knife can survive a torture-test up to a certain point, one can be reasonably assured that it is not like to fail during their own (dare I say, more reasonable or realistic) use... :)
 
upnorth said:
I want to know that if I'm in the boonies and break a leg that I can trust my knife to hard use.
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Except these videos aren't showing any consistent or reliable proof of that. If this guy breaks one knife in 3 minutes by chopping through a 2x4, we have no reasonable way of knowing if the next 5 knives off the line will fail at the same point; the sample is not broad enough. The same can be said for a knife that lasts through an hour of testing and finally arrives at being yanked on by a cheater bar in a vice: you and I have no way of knowing if this particular model of knife can survive this much abuse consistently, because we've only been shown one example.
 
singularity35 said:
Ok then, let's not be scientific. Let's be use common sense. If a knife(say a battle mistress) can only be broken by being clamped in a vise and bent with a cheater bar, then it would probably not be a strain on common sense to assume that another battle mistress would be around as strong as that. It can be much weaker(unless it's defective) that it can stand prying apart a particle board from a frame since it only needs your brain to see that the second task is much less abusive than the first.
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Just remember in every batch of steel there are small differences that can affect performance. Dont get me wrong, I have my opinion on the tests and you have yours, I can respect that.

Common sense also dictates that if that is your only survival blade to take care of it. Your life depends on it. Common sense is also in direct relationship to your culture, education and understanding of reality, but then we are going into sociology again :)

As for those that were not willing to do the legwork:

Here are sixteen knives compared (shame about the pictures, hopefully they will be back in a while).

http://www.scrapyardknives.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=241281&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1
 
singularity35 said:
Yes, but what I'm trying to say is that whether the knife broke with 500 or 501 pound of force, it's a reasonable assumption that it will survive 300 or even 400 pounds of force. It still shows us that the knife is effing tough and that any reasonable use will not destroy it.
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No I am sorry I cannot agree. If you clamp the knife in the vice 4 inches from the tip and it snaps at 501 but not 500, but you get in a real world situation and stab the knife into something and pry (for whatever reason a person might need to do that) and the knife penetrates 1 inch into the substrate, you know NOTHING about what sort of force it will survive.

Sure we can debate proper stabbing and prying techniques, but I hope you can see my point that these demonstrations might well show us that it takes a person a long time to finally break a knife (or in some cases the guy fails to break it)...we can not rule out the distinct possibility that the REASON the person fails to break the knife sooner is simply his limited ability to exploit a weakness that may exist.

Conversely, the reason a knife may break early is that the "tester" has the ability to spot the weakest link and target it early.

I am not suggesting that anyone is falsifying anything...but it has been demonstrated numerous times that "science" suffers from lack of objectivity when testers do not have RIGOROUSLY specified methods.

This is why labs generally have hydraulic presses that have numerous gauges that measure forces etc instead of big hammers, and specially designed fixtures instead of a rusty banged up vice.
 
After reading through most of the posts on this thread I get the impression that ALOT of people on this site shouldn't even own anything sharp . All the whining about how Noss if trashing perfectly good knives . Why don't you whine about all the good cars that are crash tested ? All the clever pointing out that if 2 knives have the same dimentions but are made of different steels and heat treated differently , won't they have different outcomes ? OF COURSE they will ! That's why buying a knife that LOOKS like one of the knives that did so well on knifetests.com DOESN'T mean it will hold up the same way .

If you use your head , what you will learn from knifetests.com is which "specific" knives hold up better under the same extream conditions when pushed to their limits . The average person (me included) will most likely never have to do anything so extream with their knife . But for thoes who's lives DO often hang in the balance based on their gear not failing , it must be pretty high on their list to have gear that they KNOW can take it .

Alot depends on what you need from your knife too . If you're just a mall rat in the city and never cut a damn thing with it , you don't need much of a knife . If on the other hand you do alot of backwoods hiking , canoeing or camping and need it to cut and split wood , clean game , built shelters or even dig with it , then having a knife that will not fail you becomes much more important . If you're 3 days deep in the wilderness and the handle breaks off your cheap a$$ knife , it's a long haul back for another knife , right ?

What I learned from knifetests.com is that for the price of owning 5 or 10 or more average fixed blade knives (as many do) I can own 2 or 3 knives that I can count on not to fail me under pretty much any conditions and have money left over .


HOLD MY BEER AND WATCH THIS !
 
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marthinus said:
Just remember in every batch of steel there are small differences that can affect performance. Dont get me wrong, I have my opinion on the tests and you have yours, I can respect that.

Common sense also dictates that if that is your only survival blade to take care of it. Your life depends on it. Common sense is also in direct relationship to your culture, education and understanding of reality, but then we are going into sociology again :)

As for those that were not willing to do the legwork:

Here are sixteen knives compared (shame about the pictures, hopefully they will be back in a while).

http://www.scrapyardknives.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=241281&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1
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Thanks for not being condescending. I actually understand about standardized tests and all that. I know that some people want to quantify everything. Let me make an example. There's a blacksmith here who forges knives and blades from leaf spring. He heat treats with charcoal and he's not very good at fit and finish BUT, he makes tough tools. Some of his knives may break sooner than others and some are even defective but very rarely does this happen. No standardized tests, no quantifications. But everybody around here knows his knives are tough. And the point is: his knives may not break exactly with the same amount of force but it does take some doing to be able to break any of his tools if used for the purpose.
 
I will add that even a truly scientific test can be successfully run to provide defensible data that is worthless.

This concept gets at "applicability" which is something that appears to be forgotten in these demonstrations (and by the makers of some of these "knives")

Successfully making a knife like object that none of these guys can break may or may not be any indication of how good a knife really is. Personally, I would struggle to see much value in some of these knife like objects that are approaching thicknesses of over a centimeter and lack any sort of distal taper.

Then again, my list of uses for a knife is going to be QUITE different from some other people.
 
unit said:
No I am sorry I cannot agree. If you clamp the knife in the vice 4 inches from the tip and it snaps at 501 but not 500, but you get in a real world situation and stab the knife into something and pry (for whatever reason a person might need to do that) and the knife penetrates 1 inch into the substrate, you know NOTHING about what sort of force it will survive.
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Agree or not, you really can't not have the slightest idea. But then again, you're one of the guys who want everything quantified.

I do sometime find that you tend to complicate things more than they should be.
 
Not another one of these pointless threads where everyone thinks they're an expert in physics applied to metal structures they most likely do not own, talking about tests they will never perform, in hypothetical situations they will never be in; shit not another one of those ^_^
 
unit said:
Successfully making a knife like object that none of these guys can break may or may not be any indication of how good a knife really is. Personally, I would struggle to see much value in some of these knife like objects that are approaching thicknesses of over a centimeter and lack any sort of distal taper.
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I don't think the idea is to make an unbreakable knife. It's to find how much a knife can take. It doesn't mean that if a knife breaks early that is a bad knife. It's just good to know the limits.
 
singularity35 said:
Agree or not, you really can't not have the slightest idea. But then again, you're one of the guys who want everything quantified.

I do sometime find that you tend to complicate things more than they should be.
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Chuck, I am not trying to argue or complicate anything. I am hoping to demonstrate that with a lack of defensible procedures, the results of any demonstration should be regarded as suspect at best.

take a step back, let me pat you on the back and direct your attention to the Ginsu knife demonstrations we used to see on TV in the 1980s. They used to saw on bricks and then slice a tomato with ease. Then saw a tin can in half then fillet a fish. Did you buy one? I did...let me tell you, the materials they tested the knives on and the materials I found MUST have been different, because the results sure were!

Have a laugh, consider what I am saying.

Are the top ranked knives in some of these videos tough? Probably. But do these things have end use value to ME? Not other than entertainment. That is all I am saying. If you see value in them, enjoy it...just realize that if you really believe that you will actually need to call on one of these knives to perform these actions, your results/findings may differ wildly...that is all
 
Mike-The-Knife said:
What I learned from knifetests.com is that for the price of owning 5 or 10 or more average fixed blade knives (as many do) I can own 2 or 3 knives that I can count on not to fail me under pretty much any conditions and have money left over .
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I see your point. I can also see where one might also decide that they don't need a knife at all for the task they have in mind. Perhaps a $30 axe is more appropriate for a lot of wood processing than a really tough mutha of a knife that costs more $$...

(ETA: This is a very interesting thread and it would be a shame to see it go sideways and be closed by a mod if tempers flare and manners are lost... we're doing a pretty good job of remaining civil and on track so far! :thumbup:)
 
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singularity35 said:
But then you're probably right. Going against prevailing opinion is not very healthy in these parts. :p
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At the end of the day, we're all a grown-up version of kids arguing over the toughest comic book superhero or which is better: Yoo Hoo or Quik. I may not agree with everyone, but I'd sit down with just about anyone here and chat knives any time. These types of discussion usually work a lot better in person, anyway.
 
allyourblood said:
At the end of the day, we're all a grown-up version of kids arguing over the toughest comic book superhero or which is better: Yoo Hoo or Quik. I may not agree with everyone, but I'd sit down with just about anyone here and chat knives any time. These types of discussion usually work a lot better in person, anyway.
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Yeh, friendlier in person and beer seems to always be available. :D
 
allyourblood said:
At the end of the day, we're all a grown-up version of kids arguing over the toughest comic book superhero or which is better: Yoo Hoo or Quik. I may not agree with everyone, but I'd sit down with just about anyone here and chat knives any time. These types of discussion usually work a lot better in person, anyway.
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Amen to that. I am directing all of my comments (except this one) at/to Chuck (singularity35) who I feel I know pretty well and would consider him a friend. We may not agree on everything but I would not say that I disagree with him on anything of any real importance.
 
allyourblood said:
At the end of the day, we're all a grown-up version of kids arguing over the toughest comic book superhero or which is better: Yoo Hoo or Quik. I may not agree with everyone, but I'd sit down with just about anyone here and chat knives any time. These types of discussion usually work a lot better in person, anyway.
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This is so good.


ps. Batman and Superman for the win!
 
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