Spiral's point is well taken, and I did not take his comments for a cheap shot at all. Just because a leaf spring has a section cut off and is reheated and pounded into a new knife blade shape does not mean that there still could not be some internal flaw IMO. (Of course Dan or other makers among us would be able to comment more intellingently on that point.) The steel would have to be almost molten to eliminate that, and then completely reshaped. Hence the need for testing in any case.
Other companies do make knives for heavy chopping. The difference is, HI is in a whole class by themselves when it comes to that particular activity, and I suspect we have become somewhat spoiled lets say as to what we expect from a knife. I imagine other folks might recoil in horror if they saw some of the chopping torture tests we routinely expect HI blades to pass!
However, these failures appear to be because the tang was overheated when fitting the metal handle.
On mine today I tested the hell out of it, just like Eric did, but in reading Sams comments maybe I was too hard on it. I don't know. Essentially what these have is a big Junge blade attached to an aluminium (edited: Steel! Thanks Eric and Mike.) handle with pommel and front ring brazed on. A blade that big should be able to take the chopping I threw at it in spades, also IMO.
I donned my heavy welding gauntlet, boots, eye protection, body armor, gas mask, etc., and tested this thing this morning and about wore myself out. My right arm feels like a noodle. I chopped halfway through that old redwood 6X6, and then on an ancient creosote soaked railroad tie, then back through the 6X6 to clean off the blade.
I hit very hard or as hard as I could over 100 times before I lost count. I chopped from the sweet spot to the tip, and then choked up on it and chopped from the cho forward, which is harder than it would seem, as the knife doesn't want to hit there. I slapped the sides of the blade as hard as I could 20 times per side, and then chopped with the spine first and blade up. I stopped every once in a while to check the blade with a 5X loupe to look for any cracks.
The blade held up beautifully. When I was taking pics and getting ready to put up the blade, I detected the slightest amount of movement on the front ring. My loupe showed that the brazing on the rear of the front ring had slightly fractured, allowing the ring to move. I then hard tapped the spine on an anvil another 20 or so times, which then loosened the handle as the handle had no support. This also damaged the brazing even more. Not the smartest move on my part.
What I see is that the front ring brazing has broken, which allows the handle to flex slightly in relation to the blade. The handle - bolster and blade connection still seems solid, but in a vice I can move the handle side to side mabe a 64th of an inch now.
So I wanted to get your advice. The tang and bolster on this are fine as far as I can tell. It took a tremendous amount of use and abuse this morning and held up. Keep in mind that railroad tie is probably 70 or 80 years old at least, and is like iron. I still got 1/2 of penetration on each hit before the blade would bounce clear back out of the cut.
Should I A) clean out the chipped brazing and just paste up both sides of the front ring with JB weld, or B) remove the handle, (which I have not done before), and fix it that way. It looks like I would file off the peened-down tang at the keeper, heat up the handle and tap the handle off to the rear, then clean up the front brazing material, and refasten the entire handle with JB Weld. I guess I'd have to file off the front of the handle a fraction to compensate for what I remove from the tang rear so I could peen it down again.
This last would eliminate the 64th of play on the tang in the laha as well. But just doing "A" might be enough.
It should be noted that had I not done those last 20 hits to the spine on the anvil, just doing "A" would probably have been sufficient. I realize now that stressed the handle badly doing that, as it had no front support. It still might be enough though.
I probably should have read Sams post earlier before pounding the hell out of this, but frankly wanted to see what I had before I could really trust it. This blade and tang and bolster are 110% solid as far as I can tell. If I have to, I will send it to Dan in order to salvage this blade with a new handle, as it's that good.
So I may be out some time, and maybe a little $ in the long run, but it's still a great knife.
Here are a couple of post chopping pics.
Thanks,
Norm
P.S. If Steve only write long posts when he's on painkillers then I must be totally stoned.
Being a fast typist can be a problem I guess...
Sorry for the blurry pic. I can't do decent closeups with this camera yet. You get the idea.