Wide Blades - Advantage or Disadvantage

wide blade! narrow blade!, any blade! i normally have about 5 blades on me so i'm well equipped for ANY cutting task
 
Well I guess I am in the minority. JK just made me a Kephart with a 5.5" blade that is only 1" wide. My thought is that a long blade that is wide (and is often thick) gets heavy fast. I wanted a light blade with plenty of length for batoning. Obviously it is not for chopping. For notching or sharpening a stick it feels the same as a 4" blade as you are working near the handle. I can put my forefinger on top of the blade and can still do finer work near the point since the blade is narrow. As for balance, the knife balances exactly at the finger notch.
 
Wider blade allows for heavier blade (which helps chopping) without incleasing thickness (which negatively affects chopping).

As already pointed it doesn't allow very pointy tips and it maybe awkward for whitteling: wide blade generally means wide offset between handle and edge, acting as a lever arm, which means the knife is more likely to roll in hand.

But for chopping it is great as seem on machetes, cleavers, axes bits...
 
Seems that we might be confusing width and thickness.

I'm really liking wider blades recently, like the Bk7 and similar. For me a wider blade makes a better all around camp knife for cooking and other tasks. However, my camp cooking needs haven't required much of this lately. I like the asthetics of a blade where the edge drops bellow the handle and creates the fingure guard, much like a santuko style, but to a smaller degree.

I like high flat grinds the best, so having a wide blade allows for great slicing.

Just some thoughts!
 
I am in the wide blade camp for sure! I love that one swing lop and the branch falls silently to the ground. I do carry a SAK for anything that needs a narrow blade.
 
:thumbup:
HornyToad said:
Well I guess I am in the minority. JK just made me a Kephart with a 5.5" blade that is only 1" wide. My thought is that a long blade that is wide (and is often thick) gets heavy fast. I wanted a light blade with plenty of length for batoning. Obviously it is not for chopping. For notching or sharpening a stick it feels the same as a 4" blade as you are working near the handle. I can put my forefinger on top of the blade and can still do finer work near the point since the blade is narrow. As for balance, the knife balances exactly at the finger notch.
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A Kephart is classed as a wide blade and is one of my favourite designs !!!:thumbup:
 
Triquetra said:
I remember one post where someone said that they didn't like wide blades like say a Becker Crewman. I was wondering what the advantage or disadvantage would be of a 5 of 6 inch knife with a wide blade like a Crewman vs something with a more narrow blade like maybe a Kabar.
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I don't think there's that much difference in tasks...sure there are some bushcraft tasks that would be much easier with a narrower, pointy blade (or even cleaning/skinning several doves or squirrels), but with the right techniques, a wider blade will work. As already mentioned, don't confuse width with thickness; you can have a wide blade that is quite thin and still a great slicer, carver and could notch with the best of them.

I'm not Canadian, nor did I sleep in a Holiday Inn Express, but I do carry a small assortment of knives so as to make this debate moot :D

If I'm not carry a couple of Mora carving knives, a simple SAK can do a lot of small notching/carving chores that make a wider blade a tad cumbersome, but for the overall aspect, unless you need to do specific tasks of a very narrow blade, a wide blade isn't really a disadvantage.

ROCK6
 
A wide blade will do most chores well, but there are times such as when boning or similar tasks that a thin slender blade serves better. For that reason I carry both.
 
Rupestris said:
Another benefit to a wider blade is that they tend to have a little more forward weight and a bit more energy when chopping. Of course this doesn't really play a role in smaller blades.
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Hi,
I was looking for pros and cons of a wide blade in hopes of evaluating the spyderco shaman. great wide blade, but they don't really make it that thin: 0.025" tapering up to 0.03" by the tip on this particular knife (not sure about variations among sprint runs, etc)
Just trying to understand rationale on design. And so they also offer manix 2: wide blade with thinner geometry. What advantage were they trying to offer with the shaman?

(I mean I can see some reasons but I want to invite everyone on the thread to chime in. It may help with general theme of the thread)
 
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