Daggers not sharpened?

U.S. Cavalry swords were issued “dull” depending on the receiving user. Some sharpened them to cut cleanly. Others preferred a blunt edge as a striking/kinetic weapon.

As readers of this forum we prefer sharp. And sharp, clean cuts do bleed more profusely than ragged dull cuts. As bowhunter, I want my broad heads to cut as clean as humanly possible. No clotting = massive blood loss. No blood, no oxygen. No oxygen, no running away leading to long tracking jobs.
 
A good quality metal scabbard should be wood-lined, with a shoulder for the saber grind to ride on, and prevent the edge from touching anything. That Napoleonic sabers were sharpened just before the battle is telling as to the probable lack of wood lining in them...

Yet one Napoleonic General insisted on the importance of saber sharpness, and complained that the French design had a too low a sabre grind, which made the edge less acute and more difficult to sharpen... He mentioned that no other country with a competent cavalry made that mistake...

He, in particular, insisted on the importance of the spear and its sharpness... He described how its wood shaft should have a metal rear end cap so that it never has to be stuck in the ground point first... He mentioned one officer being speared ten times by Cossacks, and still fighting: He attributed this to the dullness of the Cossack points having no metal cap at the rear, and thus being routinely stuck in the ground point first...

Daggers should be sharp as well, even if fairly narrow bladed, unless they are a spike-type four or three sided item.

The Gerber Mark II in some of its variants, such as the anniversary editions, are zero-ground, as are many of the "standard" ones from the 1970s and 1980s, and all the Guardian IIs as well: This makes Gerber daggers, typically but not always, much sharper than all other daggers from the box... An anniversary Mark II, from the box, is much sharper than even the broad bladed Cold Steel Taipan or the hollow ground Al Mar Shadow IV: Even after a re-grind by REK to 17 dps, the Al Mar Shadow IV barely matches a nice Mark II straight from the box, same with the Tai Pan, and even more so with the SOG Desert Dagger...

The price to pay on the Mark II for all this unexpected "as is" sharpness is an overly delicate point, especially on the anniversary models that are done even more acutely than stock models... This is why to me a re-ground Seki-made dagger, while duller out of the box, might end up better after a re-grind, because it will still have a stronger point.

Sharpness is crucially important for a fighting dagger, as Fairbairn duly pointed out. Although the induced angles on a narrow double edged blade may make the dagger seem like a poor "slicing" instrument, the difference is that cutting from the "outside in" is not how a dagger is supposed to make its cuts: The dagger should be narrow to have an acute point (so no broad, or "flared" designs), then that narrow point is easily inserted and is meant to cut its way outwards.

Cutting outward with a trapped point is where even poor geometry will make a severe cut, if the edge itself is sharp.

Gaston
 
Daggers should be razor sharp unless the buyer requests otherwise.

Proper design and geometry is especially critical for a dagger to function properly.

Most daggers are too narrow and overly thick. It is very difficult to obtain a razor edge on daggers with this geometry.

Daggers should have broad blades of a thickness that allows for a reasonably thin cutting edge.

The Cold Steel daggers mentioned earlier are probably the best factory offerings available.
 
Look at it this way: if you puncture someone with a dull dagger, sure, the blade will puncture skin and organs, but it will mostly just displace tissue as it goes through. If you use a dagger with razor edges, it will not only puncture skin and organs but cut all the tissue on both sides that contacts the edges. A "dull" puncture would hurt, certainly, and eventually prove fatal without medical care, but a "sharp" puncture will cause significantly more bleeding and, therefore, much quicker incapacitation. Think of it as the difference between an FMJ handgun bullet and an expanded hollow point. The arrow broadhead analogy was a good one, also. As IDABOW said, bowhunters don't use dull broadheads, since they don't want to chase their prey around all day and over many miles just to retrieve it, assuming they can still even find it, since a dull head wouldn't leave an appreciable blood trail over any distance.
 
Mitchell Knives said:
Daggers should be razor sharp unless the buyer requests otherwise.

Proper design and geometry is especially critical for a dagger to function properly.

Most daggers are too narrow and overly thick. It is very difficult to obtain a razor edge on daggers with this geometry.

Daggers should have broad blades of a thickness that allows for a reasonably thin cutting edge.

The Cold Steel daggers mentioned earlier are probably the best factory offerings available.
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That depends entirely on what function you're looking for. One thing that I think is getting a bit lost in this conversation is that many, if not most, historical daggers were designed specifically to pierce armor. Broad bladed daggers like the ones Cold Steel seems to favor will definitely be better at most cutting tasks, but are definitely not optimal for going through, say, chainmail.
 
None of the Cold Steels daggers are anywhere near the best of the Gerber daggers for sharpness or slicing, simply because they are not zero edged.

Most of the Gerber's Mark IIs waste a lot of potential sharpness with the utterly useless serrations, or by becoming blunter in edge angle from the acute "wasp" waisting. That is why the Gerber Guardian IIs tends to offer a lot more in useable sharpness, having no "waist" or serrations, but they can be inconsistent in the thinness of the zero-edge grinding.

I have owned both Gerbers daggers and Seki-made Cold Steel Peacekeepers, and there is no comparison in sharpness: Gerber wins hand down. Newer non-Seki Peacekeepers also worsen this by having glass-loaded plastic sheaths that are notorious for dulling what little sharpness you have... That is yet another reason to get older Seki-made Cold Steel daggers that are offered in either leather or adequately padded nylon sheaths.

Gaston
 
The comment about the SS not sharpening their bayonets because dull bayonets make wounds that are harder to heal is ludicrous. Until the event of the M9 and the current USMC bayonet, few bayonets were sharpened, as a matter of strength and probably to reduce the chance of soldiers cutting themselves with their own weapons. As far as daggers go, sharp is better, as you do have the ability to cut or slash, but in the end it is the penetration to vital organs that is most important. John
 
A chief advantage of a sharp edge in a thrusting weapon is that it greatly assists penetration in heavy clothing. Clothing can put up a lot more resistance to edged weapons than one might expect, but a sharp edge can help sever the fibers instead of becoming caught and bound up by them.
 
althesmith said:
The SS didn't need particularly sharp weapons since their primary job was murdering unarmed civilians.
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Not having sharp edges because they make the wounds harder to heal sounds like the sort of thing you tell your troops to explain away the fact that they have just been issued dull weapons.
 
DrFish said:
Not having sharp edges because they make the wounds harder to heal sounds like the sort of thing you tell your troops to explain away the fact that they have just been issued dull weapons.
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A very sharp blade will make a cut that will bleed more because less surrounding tissue is damaged to release clotting factors . Clean sharp cuts are easier to sew back together ,heal faster and are less prone to infection . But a sharp blade will also generally cut trough more vessels and organs and thus cause more overall damage and blood loss .
 
This is probably a dumb question, but should the edges of a dagger be extremely sharp?
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The simple answer is no. Unless the edges on a knife are sharp, there's no reason to have any real edges there at all. Then it's better to just have an unsharpened bevel, a triangular blade or in some cases just a pointy round spike.
 
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