gunnerjohn said:
How much time have you spent in the field, as a soldier, testing this knife in actual hard knife use cutting conditions?
As a soldier none. However I doubt that the knife reacts any differently to a given stress simply due to the individual, though the stress of a given task can change. The length of time for the reviews is generally *long* mainly due to the amount of times that work is repeated before I actually published anything on the internet.
I recently got yet another S30V blade which had chipping problems. I have sharpened it three times and saw identical behavior each time and still have not posted about it yet even though the behavior I have seen was confirmed by an independent user.
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?
If I was doing a review and the maker/manufacturer asked me to, which is where the tests in the reviews come from, yes I would do it. Generally I don't tend to draw a lot of conclusions in the reviews, just state what happens and let the reader make up his mind about what it means. I would not find that particular venture overly informative, but not everything that is done in the reviews is for my personal benefit.
Knife Outlet said:
There is also no question that S30V, when it is ideally heat treated, is a little softer and tougher than VG-10 with slightly less edge retention - very slightly less.
You could get all of that in AEB-L at much cheaper than S30V. The corrosion resistance comparison is interesting, I have been meaning to compare a few of them as well as vs D2 and maybe 1095 M2 for awhile. I am just personally not interested in it at all so do the things I am interested in first.
K.V. Collucci said:
He tests knives to destruction that are far more severe than the maker intended.
At times, this is however not the bulk of the work, and isn't even done in the majority of the cases, it is actually rarely done when it isn't requested. It is actually requested by the maker/user who donated the knife in the vast majority of the cases. The really extreme cases, such as cutting the door off a SUV and similar are all user requested and most of them are actually publically requested.
gunnerjohn said:
The Bias is that in all of his testing he is ranking the knives against a Wildlife Hatchet.
In regards to chopping performance there are two ranks commonly used, the hatchet for large knives and Mora 2000 for small knives, though as noted in a few of the reviews there is also speed vs power chopping so I need another reference as well. This of course doesn't indicate a bias, by the same logic Joe Talmadge is biased because he has noted he uses an Endura as a reference, or all of Crucible's testing is biased because they reference common blade steels in the performance of their steels.
If I used random blades as references there would be no common ground and thus it would be difficult to tell what the performance meant. If you are curious as to where this perspective comes from, my method are based off of Mike Swaim's who always used benchmarks in his reviews, I also use methods used by Joe Talmage, Phil Wilson (mainly rope cutting), and many of the other tests are based on user feedback such as Clark comments about unsupported hemp cutting.
Just to show how unbiased I am against that knife, I'l include a link to your comments on it in the review and won't bias the link with my own personal commentary on it. Now you can do the same and everytime someone asks for your opinion on the knife you can give them a link to the review I wrote and *not* attempt to influence them by commenting on it. I already added the link to the main website. It will go up to the public one the next time I update it, which is usually weekly.
K.V. Collucci said:
For the longest time he knocked the Sebenza even though he had never even held one.
I used a Sebenza a *long* time ago, long before the current small Sebenza I own.
Cliff has one standard test and puts every knife through that test one single test. Of course some knives will do better than others!!!
The only test that I do on almost every knife (in recent reviews - the older ones are pretty nonstandard as I was working out methods) is test for sharpness by push cutting thread and slicing light cord, there are other things as well, phonebook penetration, carvings woods and such, none of them are overly taxing and some of them are not done on knives because the results would be trivial (didn't do a hard thrust into a phonebook with the Catcherman for example).
Some are not designed to hack through cinder blocks!!!
This has only been done on a minority of knives, it was origionally done on maker request. It has its purpose both for tacticals (see Justin's work on Knifeforums - who is a soldier if that makes a difference to anyone) and for long brush blades which can see impacts cutting brush.
Knife Outlet said:
Where did all this stuff about S30V having fragile edges come from?
Reports of people with problems. Several have had multiple defects, as in buy two blades, both are defective, return one blade get a replacement, that is defective as well. The problems are also fairly drastic as in gross damage from mild use. VG-10 has been used for a long time by a great many people. How many similar reports can you find.
hardheart said:
If people genuinely base purchasing decisions on Cliff and Cliff alone, that probably isn't the best thing to do, and I don't think even he believes it to be so.
Generally not, if it was then :
-I would not do pass arounds
-the reviews would actually state I write them
-the reviews would not link to other commentary
-I would prefer people ask me questions in email
-the reviews would be more judgemental
and so forth. It should be obvious to anyone who reads the reviews that they are not intended to promote any knife, they are to provide information on performance. If they were promotional I would take out all the parts which show less than optinal performance, all the reviews have them.
gunnerjohn said:
Speaking of axes, I find it curious that Mr. Stamp is willing to judge knives against his axe in chopping ability but has never published the results of how well his axe works in stone and cinder blocks. Why would you ask more from a knife that is not designed for heavy chopping than the axe that is?
Lots of knives are designed for heavy chopping, and will readily match the Wildlife hatchet or even exceed it on small to medium wood, especially harder types as the Bruks patterns are generally optomized for fluidity in soft woods. I have described axe damage in many reviews including having one chop full into a rock accidently and many issues with knots. I also damaged the Wildlife hatchet chopping hard and frozen wood and discussed this on the forums as well, referencing it recently actually.
As for your general disagreement, and your comments about the superiority of that design and that steel. Which knives and steels have you used that it was superior to in regards to corrosion resistance, cutting ability, edge retention (soft and hard media as well as abrasive media), durability, handle ergonomics/security, and scope of work. Have you used any of the knives I suggested as alternatives, was the Beret superior to them?
gunnerjohn said:
Is chopping very hard materials a complete test of a knifes edge?
No one application is a complete test, usually the reviews are not so focused.
Has anyone done any long duration salt spray atmosphere testing of the Green Beret knife or others made from CPM S-30V?
Spyderco I would assume, I have done long salt soaks (salt water + food acids). It does fairly well. However dropping the hardness way down actually reduces corrosion resistance because you have to under soak and thus leave too much chromium in primary carbides, or overtemper which induces secondary carbide precipitation along grain boundries which has a host of problems.
Does anyone have firsthand knowledge of how the CPM S-30V holds up cutting animal tissues and how this compares to other blade steels?
You can do that with mild steel for a long time, flesh is very soft and not abrasive, if the animal is dirty then the dirt can be abrasive.
Has anyone tested this knife while wearing gloves in sub-zero temperatures in complete darkness?
I have used it with gloves on, in sub-zero, probably down to -30C in still air at minimum, generally I don't do a lot of cutting when it is dark though have done when it is so dark that you can lay the knife down and then basically lose it. I don't find indexing to be a problem unless the handle is competely uniform in shape and even then there are balance issues on most due to tang taper, blade orientation, etc. . Many Randall's have very uniform handles but this was never an issue with them for those reasons I assume.
-Cliff
:thumbup:
I like a toothy edge on my working knives