Who has ever.....BROKEN......an FRN handle?

FRN gets a bad rep sometimes cause people thing it's cheap or flimsy.


i once put a native (one of the 1st gens) in a vice and pried it to the side. the frn seemed to give way a bit, but the blade broke before the handles did.

now, the native has pretty thick FRN sides compared to the delica or dragonfly, but i maintain to believe the frn is extremely strong.
 
I blew the pivot pin clean out of my friend's FRN Buck Odyssey.

We were cutting 1.5" faced high-density insulation foam for a school project and when cutting a tight radius the knife hung up in the foam. The handle kept turning, but the blade stayed behind.

Turns out that the FRN around the pivot had collapsed and allowed the the pin to torque out of the knife.

I also managed to break the end off a Schrade FRN folder. It was cold out, and I was doing yard work. I had the knife closed on the cement walkway and a tool fell and struch the handle. Due to a combination of the cold and the impact, the plastic basically exploded and rendered the knife unusable.

I don't really like FRN handles. It only costs a little bit more to get something so much better.
 
As my two FRN's from them (Delica and Endura) have what ...appear... to be nearly indestructible handles.

Admittedly this is from only appearance and a strong hand-torquing and moderate hand-flexing (with little effect)

Now I have seen OTHER makers' composite handles which may be ....called.... FRN, but some have seemed flimsy and ....looked.... less "dense." Or "strong".....whatever. Just that way that some materials have a visual appearance of lesser quality.
 
Lavan said:
As my two FRN's from them (Delica and Endura) have what ...appear... to be nearly indestructible handles.

Admittedly this is from only appearance and a strong hand-torquing and moderate hand-flexing (with little effect)

Now I have seen OTHER makers' composite handles which may be ....called.... FRN, but some have seemed flimsy and ....looked.... less "dense." Or "strong".....whatever. Just that way that some materials have a visual appearance of lesser quality.
Click to expand...


There are quite a variety of composites that fall into the FRN catgeory. Different levels of glass filament fill, different binders like Zytel, Grivory, etc. It is impossible to generalize too much on "FRN" performance.
 
The only time I ever broke a FRN handles was on purpose, and I used a dremel. I took the blade and lock at a FRN Jester and made some SS handles with stag inserts for it (the SS model wasn't released those days). So, it wasn't exactly a broken handles after all (technically speaking).
 
i've never broke an FRN handle, but i just can't stand how cheap it looks. ordered the goddard, & upon receiving it i lamented the fact that this great knife design is only available with an astonishingly cheap-looking handle.
 
Forget looks, performance all the way. On the Gerber's Zytel, I felt that if I squeezed hard enough, it'll crack. The Spydie stuff seems to give more
 
Fishbulb: Interesting your story about the Buck Odyssey failing.
But, I believe the scales on the plastic-handled Odyssey are not FRN. Buck describes them as "thermoplastic", and from the looks of them they seem to be a non-reinforced plastic, that is just plastic without the addition of any reinforcing glass fibers as in FRN. But, I could be wrong.
Also, early Odysseys had just a single liner, while later models were upgraded to dual steel liners. Maybe the one you broke was an earlier, single liner Odyssey, with just the thermoplastic scale supporting the pivot pin on one side.

I have one Odyssey with the plastic scales and a few Odysseys with carbon fiber scales. They all seem pretty sturdy to me.
 
He got it right when they first came out, so I would imagine that it had a single liner; although I don't remember for sure.
 
Glesser once said in an old post about FRN handles:

"My company has put more than one million FRN folding knives in the field over the past 12 years. Our problems with the material have been;

1. Larger clips breaking when we made them integral. After 6 changes to the mold over a 9 year period to come up with the right combination, we finally went to a steel clip.

2. When the temperature drops below 40 degrees below 0 F., they become brittle.

3. In a great deal of direct flame, then have burned.

We have driven trucks over them. They have been retrieved from swamps (after 2 years). They have been retrieved from the stomaches of fish. We have been quite surprized at the ability of FRN to withstand and survive.

I will say that most of our FRN (90%) have not been the Dupont product. This is not to say that the Dupont product is inferior....

We break approximately one out of 200 pieces with computerized breaking equipment. Our Endura model generally breaks at about 80 -90 inch lbs (per inch of blade). On a 4 inch knife, that is in excess of 300 inch lbs.....consistently."
 
Personally, I'm a big fan of spyderco's FRN. I don't think it looks at all cheap or flimsy, especially on the 4th gen enduras and delicas. I've never broken FRN and I don't plan to, as I don't plan on using a knife for something it wasn't designed for. If you need a crowbar then use a crowbar.

- Chris
 
I have a first gen delica se that is 12 yrs old. It has been my work/beater knife for most of them. I have layed on it with it in my pocket on concrete working on cars. Dropped it from rafters onto bare slabs, cut drywall, lumber, plywood, plastic, cardboard and numerous other materials. The integral clip is somehow not broken. The slabs are scuffed but fine and I am getting ready to send it back in as it needs a sharpening overhaul. I agree that there are "nicer" handle materials out there but spydies frn is some of the toughest...period. Just bought a new Endura to join my delica as a work knife. Anybody want to guess the handle material?
 
I broke what may have been a FRN handle on a cheap Delica knock off tpye knife. You know the ones that they sell on HSN or in hardware stores? Anyway, I wouldn't have ever bought the knife but the guy I work with knows I am into knives and he found it in the parking lot of the bar he goes to. He gave it to me and that day I broke it trying to cut a small hole in some drywall.

I knew the knife was cheap was I was going slow so as not to break it. I wanted to cut through the paper first and then gouge through the inner material. The thing broke anyway! I was not ever being rough with it or putting that much pressure on the blade.

It broke into about five parts with the lock and and the pivot pin and parts of the handle all in a pile in my hand. It was kind of funny. The lesson for me was, even though the FRN Spyderco uses looks like cheap plastic, it is much stronger than it seems.

I have never broke a Spyderco handle or lock. I have broke a tip or two but who hasn't doen that? Spyderco make nice thin pointy tips which I love. Sometimes they break but not that often. I hate to see the new trend of the blunted tips they seem to be making on some of the newer models. The D-4 and E-4 are good examples of a cop-out. It is a shame but I guess they got tired of replacing broken blades. When I broke a tip, I figuired it was my fault and went on with life, I never expected them to replace my knife over it.
 
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