What do you learn from destruction tests?

You eat a candy bar, you get food poisoning, you tell your friends. How many of those candy bars are you and your friends willing to eat to see how large the bad batch was? A single nasty seed in a bag doesn't cost what some people make in a week, the impact is sometimes a bit higher. People weigh reviews differently, and the ability to test ten different knives does not always exist.
 
allyourblood said:
Sure it is. Just as I'm not expecting you to directly compare the sunflower seed itself to the knife, the point of my analogy was not the purchase itself. It was to illustrate that taking one single sample (an individual seed or single knife) from a pool of many (big bag of seeds or entire production line of a particular knife) isn't going to tell you much about the quality and consistency of that product beyond the knowledge that the solitary sample didn't meet a given expectation.

Heck, your own analogy doesn't meet the standard you're holding mine to, as it has elements to it which also don't apply: We're not talking about a consumer buying a knife, having it fail and then deciding to buy another and trying it again. We're talking about the usefulness and validity of having someone perform destructive acts on a knife, and then others extrapolating some sort of reliable sense of quality and strength from that single sample.

To compare it more closely to your food analogy, it would go something like this: A guy across the globe buys a candy bar, eats it, hates it or finds something physically flawed in it (perhaps it's lacking in peanuts or the caramel is hard, or some such). Then you, without having received any further information, determine that said candy bar is not up to par and you won't buy it. You haven't tried it yourself, you haven't heard anyone else having the same problem, and the guy who ate the first one isn't going to ever eat another. But he gives it a 0 rating out of 5, and you apply this assessment to your own opinion of the candy bar. Further still, he tries another candy bar of similar ingredients from another company and finds that candy bar to be of higher quality, and gives it a 5 out of 5.

Really, aren't you going to want to hear at least a handful of people weigh in on the taste, quality and consistency of the candy bar before drawing your own conclusions? Maybe you'd even like the guy to try it again, as -- and this is the important part -- maybe his single taste of that exact piece of candy doesn't speak for the product line as a whole. Is that not reasonable?
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Of course it does, given what I already said, that the manufacturer claims toughness and consistency. Just like the food analogy if I try something new and it sucks, or if it makes someone sick it is a fail and I will not waste my time and money purchasing it...I will not trust it. The funny thing is a lot of people will. You might be willing to take the chance, not me. I.E. CRK GB
 
There is a difference between mature science and primitive science.

Geology began with amateurs wandering around hillsides. Their scientific equipment was a hammer. Maybe a bottle of acid. Were they geologists? No, the term hadn’t been invented yet. They weren’t even scientists, since that term hadn’t been invented either. They certainly weren’t modern geologists, using satellite images and deep sea core samples to trace plate tectonics. But without these amateurs and their clumsy research, modern geology would never have developed.

Early psychiatry involved high flown theory supported by anecdotes from therapy sessions. (e.g., Freud’s Rat Man.) Session transcripts—if any existed—were kept private. To my knowledge the first man who made scientific studies of the psychotherapeutic process was Carl Rogers. He not only published transcripts of sessions for critical evaluation. He also tested the effectiveness of his work. He refined his system as a result of those findings. Later generations scorned Rogers for those tests. Too primitive. Not really scientific. Not up to modern standards. Didn’t achieve sufficient rigor. Imperfect control samples. So what? Naturally his efforts were crude. He was doing something nobody had ever done before.

Crude methods may not attain scientific rigor, but they work. Medieval tinkerers invented wind mills. Water wheels powering grist mills and trip hammers. Mechanical clocks. Caravel’s to explore the world. All before the scientific revolution. Indeed those tools helped make the scientific revolution possible.

If you insist on modern scientific testing knives… Hire an engineer specializing in materials testing. Give him a tenth of what the Large Hadron Collider costs. He can buy and make testing equipment, and score a hundred of each knife to be tested. Let him report his work in peer reviewed journals. To make it really scientific, give matching funds and the same assignment to another engineer so he can replicate the tests. As soon as those results are in, get back to us.

It is an imperfect world. We do what we can with what we have. Some information is better than no information. Imperfect knowledge is better than no knowledge.
 
Maddogg774 said:
Of course it does, given what I already said, that the manufacturer claims toughness and consistency. Just like the food analogy if I try something new and it sucks, or if it makes someone sick it is a fail and I will not waste my time and money purchasing it...I will not trust it. The funny thing is a lot of people will. You might be willing to take the chance, not me. I.E. CRK GB
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No, it doesn't. If you use, solely, the data from the aforementioned knife tests to determine their strength and consistency, that's precisely what you're doing: taking a chance. Is it better than having seen no video of a knife being tested? Maybe. Perhaps even probably. But it's still extremely flawed and nowhere near conclusive. I wouldn't base my own purchases off of them because in my opinion, they really haven't brought me any closer to knowing what a particular knife is or isn't capable of.

That's all.
 
Raymond1000 said:
There is a difference between mature science and primitive science.

Geology began with amateurs wandering around hillsides. Their scientific equipment was a hammer. Maybe a bottle of acid. Were they geologists? No, the term hadn’t been invented yet. They weren’t even scientists, since that term hadn’t been invented either. They certainly weren’t modern geologists, using satellite images and deep sea core samples to trace plate tectonics. But without these amateurs and their clumsy research, modern geology would never have developed.

Early psychiatry involved high flown theory supported by anecdotes from therapy sessions. (e.g., Freud’s Rat Man.) Session transcripts—if any existed—were kept private. To my knowledge the first man who made scientific studies of the psychotherapeutic process was Carl Rogers. He not only published transcripts of sessions for critical evaluation. He also tested the effectiveness of his work. He refined his system as a result of those findings. Later generations scorned Rogers for those tests. Too primitive. Not really scientific. Not up to modern standards. Didn’t achieve sufficient rigor. Imperfect control samples. So what? Naturally his efforts were crude. He was doing something nobody had ever done before.

Crude methods may not attain scientific rigor, but they work. Medieval tinkerers invented wind mills. Water wheels powering grist mills and trip hammers. Mechanical clocks. Caravel’s to explore the world. All before the scientific revolution. Indeed those tools helped make the scientific revolution possible.

If you insist on modern scientific testing knives… Hire an engineer specializing in materials testing. Give him a tenth of what the Large Hadron Collider costs. He can buy and make testing equipment, and score a hundred of each knife to be tested. Let him report his work in peer reviewed journals. To make it really scientific, give matching funds and the same assignment to another engineer so he can replicate the tests. As soon as those results are in, get back to us.

It is an imperfect world. We do what we can with what we have. Some information is better than no information. Imperfect knowledge is better than no knowledge.
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And after all is said and done, along comes some internet pseudo scientific guy who says that the testing is no complete and won't accept the results. :p
 
No taking a chance is trusting solely what a mfg. says to sell you. The same that consumer reports and auto tests do, they test one. seeing one but thru hell doesn't invalidate the results and gives you the ability to make a Moreinformed result, unless your saying Busse INFI , Scrapyard, Sawmprat and Fallkniven just got lucky and their not really that tuff because he didn't destroy your Xnumber of them.
 
AttilaTheHun said:
I learned that there's a guy in his garage who scientifically tests knives. I say and stress "scientific" because:
- All knives are submitted to the same tests
- The tests are documented and repeatable by anyone. Noss uses common equipment that is cheap and readily available.
- The tests are run in a specific order every time, the same order for each knife. Start with easy like cutting cardboard, which every knife can do, but do it anyway. Then webbing. Then wood. Then bend at same angle for each knife, measured.
- Each time, Noss voices observations. Don't let the cussing or emotional tone fool you, there's valuable information. It sounds like a surgery, followed by an autopsy (plus slang).
- Noss is not rushed by time. There is no 5 minute format to match the viewer's attention span like other Youtube videos. If the video gets too long, he breaks it down into several videos but does the job right no matter what.
- The intent is find out what breaks the knife. Once the breakage point is characterized (like hitting concrete for 1 hour), then we have proof that the knife is good for everything in between cutting paper and whatever broke it.
- That's where science meets engineering. Of course no-one will cut concrete with a knife in the real world. In the dream world of science why not? But applied to reality it tells us where breakage is likely to occur and gives us a domain within which the knife can operate without breakage, regardless of what the manufacturer claims or the knife's datasheet/pedigree would have us believe.

This is called "load testing", as in load testing a bridge. In the old days, before computer-aided finite-element-analysis, a bridge would be load tested before opening it for traffic. Engineers would line up 50 full cement trucks on top of the bridge and see if it would hold, knowing that in reality it would never happen. If it held, then the bridge was deemed good enough for carrying day-to-day traffic, which would never even get close to 50 cement trucks at once.
Noss' destruction tests are just like that. Incidentally the tests are identical for each knife and give us a way to then compare knives' relative toughness since they were all subjected to the same tests. It was not the point of the videos really IMHO - in real life do we go around claiming that this bridge is better than that bridge because it took 60 cement trucks? There's other things to consider when comparing. But we can't help it, we like to simplify. As a result it upsets some people who have a strong allegiance to a brand, model, or country of origin when some other knife scores better.
Just like a bridge is easier to cross or handier or more functional or cheaper, these load tests aren't meant to account for this sort of things, they are just load tests to characterize the maximum load of the device.
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I stopped reading your post when you said "scientifically." There is absolutely nothing scientific about those "tests." Not one thing.
 
csmaz said:
I stopped reading your post when you said "scientifically." There is absolutely nothing scientific about those "tests." Not one thing.
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I wonder how many people will understand any scientific knives tests...my guess is very close to none one!


including you...............
 
kurodrago said:
I wonder how many people will understand any scientific knives tests...my guess is very close to none one!


including you...............
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What you talking about, here everyone is a scientists:jerkit:with a great science understanding:rolleyes:they don't accept nothin less than Science Prove;)
 
The peoplw.that have the mental HP to understand and apply metalurgical and metered fatigue will not be arguing on specialty blade forums.... Hopefully they are trying to simplify String and Chaos Theory so that lesser beast (like me) can understand them in theory and pratice. Hell, 52% of Americans still want to argue the Earth is 6000 years old..... I have fish smarter than that :-)
 
PolygonalGuy said:
The peoplw.that have the mental HP to understand and apply metalurgical and metered fatigue will not be arguing on specialty blade forums.... Hopefully they are trying to simplify String and Chaos Theory so that lesser beast (like me) can understand them in theory and pratice. Hell, 52% of Americans still want to argue the Earth is 6000 years old..... I have fish smarter than that :-)
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6000? Who thinks its 6000? Btw String, super string and reoccurring universe theory are pretty simple...I went to Cornell we got it all figured out there...;-)
 
hardheart said:
You eat a candy bar, you get food poisoning, you tell your friends. How many of those candy bars are you and your friends willing to eat to see how large the bad batch was?...
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I suppose your friend asks you how large was the test sample to make such a negative statement and proceeds to eat those candies to obtain more reliable result ;)

Funny thing is, everyone here are recommending knives left and right based on one knife, often used for less than hour, factory edges, etc.. That's never a problem. But if one breaks a knife (or even two of the same type) than it's insufficient sample size and unscientific...
 
Anyone who preaches to buy knife with science evidence of toughness, he/she must suffer from a high chronic delusional reality....because such thing do not exist. LOL.....
 
kurodrago said:
Anyone who preaches to buy knife with science evidence of toughness, he/she must suffer from a high chronic delusional reality....because such thing do not exist. LOL.....
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I'll bet you buy a knife because it's purdy, or tacticool, don't ya...lol
 
Since the GB thing is brought up again.

It is never advertised as hard use.

From Chris Reeve

"This knife is known to the U.S. Army Special Forces as "The Yarborough" and to everyone else as "The Green Beret Knife". It is a no-nonsense, hardworking tool, designed by renowned knife maker and designer Bill Harsey, with function and manufacturing input from Chris Reeve. Made in Boise, Idaho by Chris Reeve Knives, the Green Beret Knife is a using knife that, just like the men for whom it was designed, is efficient, tough and uncompromising."

Tough depends on what the knife is designed for and who is the intended user.

This knife was and I quote:

"Given to the military for a review process... the general commander of the elite American Army special forces Dug Brown put together a team of 25 soldiers to review 100 knives and the Yarborough was what they wanted".

From Mr. Harsey the designer of the knife

You mention some friends of mine in the knife business and the knives they make, they do good work and I have no problem with that however you make some strong accusations about Chris Reeves and my work using the steel called CPM S-30V and I note based on your total posts you have a lot of keyboard time here.

I strongly disagree with your assessment of both the steel and the knife design. This has not been our experience testing this steel for a over a full year before it was on the open market and we chose it above all others to use on several projects where it has proven itself time and again in difficult conditions beyond any doubt. Have you also tested the Strider Knives using the same steel?

How much time have you spent in the field, as a soldier, testing this knife in actual hard knife use cutting conditions?

After reading your "testing" procedures, I wonder if you would use the barrel of your rifle to jack up a humvee to change the tire and then complain that it didn't shoot quite as well afterwards?


Thank you, Bill Harsey

Here is the link to the knife being used within its design parameters

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...Field-Trials?highlight=Green+Beret+field+test

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

http://www.scrapyardknives.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=241281&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

If you want hard use/abuse buy something from Busse Kin. There are plenty of knives out there to appeal to everyone. Buy whatever floats your boat. I dont have a GB, have played with one but Busse Kin floats my boat a bit more as well as forged knives.
 
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I have done destruction tests on most of the brands of candy bars in the English speaking world. I chew them vigorously and swallow.........They almost all passed...:D

I should put on a clown suit and a hockey mask and make some video's........Maybe then the Candy Bar world will take me seriously?
 
Pffft. That is using a candy bar as intended. It has nothing to do with testing candy bars.

You are no more than an armchair candy bar tester.
 
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