What's the purpose of having a wide blade?

I

inline46

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Mar 30, 2009
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I'm not stating an opinion here, I just want to know the advantages of having a wide blade. Knives that come to mind that have wide blades are the wide leaf shaped blades of many Spyderco's, or the blades on many Zero Tolerance knive's. Performance wise, what is width good for?
 
For stabbing it opens a bigger hole and causes a lot more trauma (for a straight stab).

For prying it allows for a more strength with a blade that is still fairly thin (i.e. a blade with a 3/4 inch profile and 1/8 inch thickness has similar lateral strength to a 1.5 inch profile with 1/16 inch thickness...generally speaking).

It looks appealing to many...and believe it or not, that is probably the BIGGEST reason manufacturers use it a lot.

It allows a smaller angle to be used from spine to edge and this results in slightly better slicing performance in thick media (like cheese, or sausage).

Those are some of the reasons I can think of....
 
I like them to use as a spoon to get more peanut butter with :D

I do like wide blades, I like a tall flat grind and the performance it has since the grind doesnt have to be as steep as it would be on a shorter knife of equal thickness.
 
Big bellied blades are meant to help cut, slice or chop, depending on the size & design. Wider blades have more weight to aid in cutting/slicing and their natural curves assist in fine control for skinning & other chore work. In general, they help to maintain a constant cutting edge contact with your target by following the motion of your arm.

The width can be adjusted to give balance to a knife, or to provide weight towards the front, middle or handle depending on what you need the knife to do.

For MA, I like big bellied knives because they can both stab and cut deeply. Thin blades can't cut as deeply.
 
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inline46 said:
I'm not stating an opinion here, I just want to know the advantages of having a wide blade. Knives that come to mind that have wide blades are the wide leaf shaped blades of many Spyderco's, or the blades on many Zero Tolerance knive's. Performance wise, what is width good for?
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For Spyderco knives, it's inherent in the design because of the hole opener.
 
unit said:
It allows a smaller angle to be used from spine to edge and this results in slightly better slicing performance in thick media (like cheese, or sausage).
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If there is one drawback to a wide blade it would have to be the MUCH worse performance for slicing cheese. The biggest amount of resistance in slicing through cheese is the friction between the cheese & the side of the knife, that is why there are cheese slicers that use a wire to slice the cheese, thus eliminating most of the resistance during the cut.

For slicing most other foods then I agree completely that a wide & thin blade would slice much better than a narrow but thicker blade.
 
Wide blade profiles also suck for opening mail because the tip is not pointy enough to get inside the sealed flap as easily as a narrower blade profile. :D

Has anyone ever tried to open a letter with a ZT 0300? :)
 
Wide flat-ground blades make straighter cuts in stiff media like cardboard. The sides act as a rudder to keep the edge on a straight path. And of course, they are better for applying spreads like peanut butter.
 
You can also get more life out of the blade, as it wears down you will still have a fairly shallow grind to work with, so they don't need regrinding of the primary bevels once you've used the hell out of them for years.
 
Reeek said:
Wide blade profiles also suck for opening mail because the tip is not pointy enough to get inside the sealed flap as easily as a narrower blade profile. :D

Has anyone ever tried to open a letter with a ZT 0300? :)
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no but i dont have a problem with my 350=)
 
Gadgetaholic said:
If there is one drawback to a wide blade it would have to be the MUCH worse performance for slicing cheese. The biggest amount of resistance in slicing through cheese is the friction between the cheese & the side of the knife, that is why there are cheese slicers that use a wire to slice the cheese, thus eliminating most of the resistance during the cut.

For slicing most other foods then I agree completely that a wide & thin blade would slice much better than a narrow but thicker blade.
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By "wide blade" are your talking spine thickness or profile?

The friction on the side (face) of the knife is a factor, but the angle of separation is quite significant also.

The wire works because it is thin...and has an advantage over most blades because the spine and cutting edge are effectively the same thickness.

If the blade spines are the same thickness, the angle of the face grind is going to make the difference in how the blades perform. This is why a deep FFG blade will cut better (even in cheese) than the same (spine) thickness blade with a shallower grind or profile.
 
Also a wide blade gives superior cutting performance for its weight as it concentrates the mass of the blade directly behind the cutting edge, resulting in less "work" (in the physics sense of the word) needing to be done to complete the cut by increasing the sectional density (mass concentration over a surface area.)

Since a knife literally works like a molecular pry bar (unlike a saw, which removes material in the form of a kerf) the cutting medium must be pushed out to the sides to continue the cut. If you were to try taking two knives of equal blade length and weight, with one having a thick and narrow blade and the other having a broad and thin blade, the broad and thin blade will have much improved cutting ability. However, the thick and narrow piece will be more laterally strong.

Hope that all came out in a way that makes sense. :p
 
Wide blades are easy to palm with your hand and use as a scraping tool. You get much more control holding the blade directly instead of the handle.
 
Thanks for all the replies guys. I never thought about how a wide blade reduces the cutting angle on a flat ground blade for a given thickness. The reason i asked this question is because I recently rotated my edc and i switched from a Spyderco tenacious, (a wide blade, which i love) to a Benchmade nagara (a beautiful narrow blade which i also love:)) and i am loving how much easier it is to get into my pocket without having that "big" leaf shaped blade getting in the way of my hand when i dig around for my keychain.

I then began to wonder what i was giving up by going to a narrower blade. If all you need is a sharp edge, it doesn't seem like it would matter how wide your blade is. If you need to do slicing (AND you need a thick blade(?)), or spreading, or scraping, or prying then i guess a wider blade is better, but you can still slice and cut pretty darn well with a narrow blade. I suppose the tip is supported better on a wide blade too, yes?

I think i'm going to look for more narrow blades for carry in the future, but I still like to know the performance benefits of each. Any other benefits to a wide blade?

Thanks again!
 
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