What makes a blade look "stubby" - an Exploration

Zuchus

Zuchus

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I dug out my Buck Vantage Pro a couple of days ago. Everything about this knife says I should like it - great S30V steel, nice G10 grip, centered blade, solid lock-up. But I have never warmed up to it. After looking at it for a while I realized that it was purely esthetic - the blade looks too "stubby" to me. Too short for the overall length. So I got to wondering about what makes a blade look too short. I decided to use as a metric the ratio between the blade length and the overall opened length. I proceeded to measure a good portion of my knife collection and compute this ratio. Here are the results, in order from highest to lowest ratio:

Benchmade 710 .444
Benchmade Rift .438
Mcusta Basic .438
Benchmade 707 .435
Benchmade Dark Star .432
Benchmade 773 .430
Large Regular Sebenza .426
Spyderco Native 5 .423
Kershaw Leek .420
Benchmade NRA Gaucho .419
Buck Vantage Pro .402

As you can see, the Vantage Pro is an outlier, significantly below the others. So somewhere between about .42 and about .40 a blade makes the transition to looking "stubby" to me. Not being a knifemaker, I don't quite understand the details of how one designs a folder to control the blade length ratio. Obviously the upper limit is .50 or the blade would stick out of the back when closed. I assume most knife makers try to size the handle such that there isn't too much excess beyond containing the blade. By my calculations, the Vantage Pro's handle would have to be about 9 mm shorter to have the same ratio as the Sebenza, but it couldn't be that short in reality because there isn't enough space to accommodate that. I might try to manipulate the photo to create an image of the Vantage Pro with this shorter handle just to see how it looks.

So, what is my ultimate point here? Just that, as an engineer, I get a kick out of looking at numbers and using them as a tool to understand something. And I learned where the transition point on blade to overall length ratio is, at least for my esthetic sense, on the concept of "blade stubbiness."

(And yes, I did remove the flipper :))
 
I may suffer from the same bias, even if it's not a conscious one. Some knives I like or don't for reasons that aren't entirely clear, but I just know it. Taking two Spyderco examples, I love the Southard and hated the Domino. The Domino felt like a whole lot of handle with a stubby blade, like one of those oddball Cali-legal autos that have had the blade chopped down. Here are their ratios:

Southard is .435
Domino is .407 (even less really, because of the choil--if we only count the sharpened length it's .376)
 
I notice that can affect the way a knife looks is the blade width with respect to the handle width. Another thing to consider is the profile of the blade its self, the length to width ratio and taper.

My son named my Al Mar SLB "Stumpy":D.

Ric
 
If anyone is interested, I actually computed these ratios (and more :D) for all the Spyderco knives listed in their online catalogue.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AgdUpyrQ44jGdDBWWWQyVm43YVl5aVgxdFlEcWs0SUE&usp=sharing

Here is the current list, I broke down the ratios by actual cutting edge length, overall blade length, handle length, and overall opened length. Right now it's set up to list it in order of overall blade length to overall opened length. The first 40 or so are all fixed blades, the first folder shows up with the Dyad Sprint, SpyderSaw and Volpe.

If anyone wants the actual excel file I have the data in just drop me an email or PM and I can send it to you. It's pretty fun to play with the data.
 
Invective - it's good to know I am not the only numbers geek! That list is great. And evilgreg, thanks for the numbers - it looks like the .40 range trips your "stubby sensor" as well.
 
Here's my bad "photoshopped" image (actually done in Paint) of how the Buck looks with the handle shortened to be the same ratio as the Sebenza:
 
Zuchus said:
I assume most knife makers try to size the handle such that there isn't too much excess beyond containing the blade.
Click to expand...
I think the challenge lies in positioning of the pivot. The further it is inside of the handle, the smaller that ratio. Placing it further towards the end of the handle is limited by the size of the washers (and therefore surface area between blade and handle which should contribute to overall stability) and shape and size of the rear part of the blade (which sticks out when closed or is used for locking when open).

Spydercos made the impression on me that most of them have a relatively large handle for their respective blades.
Examples for high ratios that I've found were the BM930 Kulgera with 0.45 and the BM15051 Big Summit Lake at 0.452.
 
Of course, then you have the really short stubby beefy folders with small blades but keeping the handle large enough to get a good grip. Some really stand out.

DPx HEAT/F: 0.380
Spyderco Techno: 0.426
Benchmade MPR: 0.420
Boker Pipsqueak: 0.408
Boker Nano: 0.395
Boker Albatros: 0.392
Al Mar SLB: 0.395
Spyderco Leafstorm: 0.402
Emerson Snubby: 0.361
 
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