- Joined
- Aug 30, 2008
- Messages
- 3,214
I don't remember all the details of this knife, so I hope Christof will correct me if I misspeak here.
Christof calls it a SERE LBK, I call it the Warthog. Warthogs are compact, tough, strong-minded, and armed with some vicious tusks. This knife reminds me of the warthogs I saw in Kenya and Tanzania, hence the name. It's made from differentially heated 5160, 3/16" thick at the ricasso. It tapers from the ricasso to the tip and has a full "scandivex" grind. For a short knife it is fairly heavy. My neighbor--who is now afraid of me--stopped by while I was batonning with the knife. He hefted it and said, "it's heavy." He doesn't know much about knives, but he's right about that; it's a goodly piece of steel.
So, anyway, I've been wanting to abuse this knife a little to see how it would perform. I had a big beef marrow bone I got from the butcher's shop and an idea spring up in my mind--could the LBK stand up to batonning through a bone?
First I tried batonning through some wood. Generally I like to use a piece of wood that is 1/2 as thick as the knife is long, but today I thought I'd push the limit a bit.
This was old seasoned cottonwood that has been drying for the past year. The grain has a little twist to it making the job a bit tougher. I had to whale on this knife to split this big thickness. As you can see just the tip stuck out so I was pounding on the tip and the handle. (I was worried the that scales would be broken lose, but pounded away.)
I ended up re-positioning the knife to take smaller sections of wood apart after I got the knife stuck in too deeply. I saved the split wood to take a picture with, but never did take the pic of the final results. You'll have to take my word for it that with some seriously heavy pounding, I got down to small kindling. After all that pounding, the knife was still cleaning hair of my forearm (I didn't test sharpness before the batonning, but I doubt it got sharper in the process).
OK, so much for wood. I fully expected a decently made knife to handle batonning a small log apart. (Although I really whaled on the tip of the knife and was pleased that I didn't damage the tip at all.) What about bone? I wasn't sure it was a good idea to baton a knife into bone, but I thought I'd give it a go. The blade bounced a bit, but bit into the bone. After a half dozen good whacks, the bone cracked in two (exposing the marrow). The knife had cut about 1/8", maybe a bit more, into the bone before cracking it open. (sorry for the bad focus)
The knife's edge still looked good, and I could not feel any nicks or flat spots in the edge. The edge no longer shaved hair, but it did shave wood easily.
Next I decided to cut the bone lengthwise, both from the cracked spot and from the joint. This was much easier than the initial cross-batonning and the bone came apart relatively easily.
Couple of pictures of the edge: the first after cross-batonning, the second after cleaning marrow and goo off and then stropping the edge. (My one complaint is that it took a good 30-45 seconds of stropping to restore the edge to shaving sharp--maybe I was just too tired from pounding on the knife.
)
I don't know how relevant this 'test' is, but I was curious to know how well the knife would hold it's edge or suffer damage. It seems a little extreme, but I found it informative: the knife came through with flying colors. The edge held up really well--likely because of the both the geometry of the "Scandivex" edge as well as Christof's heat treatment of the 5160. I hit the handle several times and am glad that I'm not sending the knife back to Christof for re-handling or repair. Now cleaned up and stropped, it's ready for anything else I can throw at it...hmmm....
Christof calls it a SERE LBK, I call it the Warthog. Warthogs are compact, tough, strong-minded, and armed with some vicious tusks. This knife reminds me of the warthogs I saw in Kenya and Tanzania, hence the name. It's made from differentially heated 5160, 3/16" thick at the ricasso. It tapers from the ricasso to the tip and has a full "scandivex" grind. For a short knife it is fairly heavy. My neighbor--who is now afraid of me--stopped by while I was batonning with the knife. He hefted it and said, "it's heavy." He doesn't know much about knives, but he's right about that; it's a goodly piece of steel.
So, anyway, I've been wanting to abuse this knife a little to see how it would perform. I had a big beef marrow bone I got from the butcher's shop and an idea spring up in my mind--could the LBK stand up to batonning through a bone?
First I tried batonning through some wood. Generally I like to use a piece of wood that is 1/2 as thick as the knife is long, but today I thought I'd push the limit a bit.
This was old seasoned cottonwood that has been drying for the past year. The grain has a little twist to it making the job a bit tougher. I had to whale on this knife to split this big thickness. As you can see just the tip stuck out so I was pounding on the tip and the handle. (I was worried the that scales would be broken lose, but pounded away.)
I ended up re-positioning the knife to take smaller sections of wood apart after I got the knife stuck in too deeply. I saved the split wood to take a picture with, but never did take the pic of the final results. You'll have to take my word for it that with some seriously heavy pounding, I got down to small kindling. After all that pounding, the knife was still cleaning hair of my forearm (I didn't test sharpness before the batonning, but I doubt it got sharper in the process).
OK, so much for wood. I fully expected a decently made knife to handle batonning a small log apart. (Although I really whaled on the tip of the knife and was pleased that I didn't damage the tip at all.) What about bone? I wasn't sure it was a good idea to baton a knife into bone, but I thought I'd give it a go. The blade bounced a bit, but bit into the bone. After a half dozen good whacks, the bone cracked in two (exposing the marrow). The knife had cut about 1/8", maybe a bit more, into the bone before cracking it open. (sorry for the bad focus)
The knife's edge still looked good, and I could not feel any nicks or flat spots in the edge. The edge no longer shaved hair, but it did shave wood easily.
Next I decided to cut the bone lengthwise, both from the cracked spot and from the joint. This was much easier than the initial cross-batonning and the bone came apart relatively easily.
Couple of pictures of the edge: the first after cross-batonning, the second after cleaning marrow and goo off and then stropping the edge. (My one complaint is that it took a good 30-45 seconds of stropping to restore the edge to shaving sharp--maybe I was just too tired from pounding on the knife.
)
I don't know how relevant this 'test' is, but I was curious to know how well the knife would hold it's edge or suffer damage. It seems a little extreme, but I found it informative: the knife came through with flying colors. The edge held up really well--likely because of the both the geometry of the "Scandivex" edge as well as Christof's heat treatment of the 5160. I hit the handle several times and am glad that I'm not sending the knife back to Christof for re-handling or repair. Now cleaned up and stropped, it's ready for anything else I can throw at it...hmmm....
