I don’t want to say this, but Ka-Bar has become sort of like “The Collector’s Armory.” I don’t think their knives were ever particularly good – they tend to snap off right at the guard – but the US Marines needed an Official Knife and that was what they went with.
source: blade forums
Combat knives need to be able to withstand lifting 200lb on the middle of the blade, by the handle. That’s typical stress a fighting knife might encounter. That’s why the solution to the problem is generally: listen to the Japanese. Japanese weapons’ tangs are an extension of the blade and there is no compromise of blade-strength at all in the design. Cooking knives, like I make, are another story: stick tangs are completely acceptable because you are not going to try to block a katana strike with your gyuto sushi knife.
Masterpiece tanto by Kunimitsu (14th C)
I chose the Kunimitsu as an example because a) like the Ka-Bar it has an unusual false edge and b) I love the little sanskrit character he carved into the blade. In case you don’t understand how this is done: the blade-smith goes to all the trouble to make as close to a perfect blade as they can, then they chisel into it. There is no “whups” allowed. On a Japanese war-blade only the edge is hardened, hence the distinctive edge-line, so the blade back is still soft enough to carve with a chisel.
All of this is me doing ruthless set-up. Imagine being an ordinary blade-maker and having someone comparing you to masterpiece cultural treasures from Japan? It’s simply not fair. Cry me a river.
You’re probably thinking, “wow, that’s tactical as all fuck!” Then, you notice the logo. What is that?
US Space Force
I’ve been working with my brain-ratchet all morning trying to figure out how anyone in space will ever need a combat knife. Do these goobers fantasize about duking it out with Post-Soviet space mutants, in orbital zero-gee? If so, the whole dynamics of hand to hand combat will change dramatically. As usual, that’s my cue to say: “Time to get a gun.” Space combat will be characterized by weapons systems that do not have blue polymer handles and elegant gray phosphate finishes. The sad thing is, I can see a scene in a movie where the intrepid Space Force soldier needs to jump away from their orbital nuke platform, to rescue Sandra Bullock from unscheduled re-entry: they jam the knife blade into the thin aluminum of ${something}, tie a line around the handle, and leap to catch her flailing leg. At which point, the handle snaps off at the guard and our heroes thank Ka-Bar all the way down. Because the steel was already weak but it didn’t like being frozen in the cold of space.
I don’t want to be unfair, but it looks like Ka-Bar has just decided (like Collectors’ Armory) to cash in on the collectors/LARPers.
I found this wonder at Task and Purpose [task and purpose] They come with a matching scabbard, so you can see it better against the blackness of space.
Look at the dumbass handle retainer – a little piece of nylon with a snap. Imagine having that badass knife strapped to your leg, you’re about to draw it and plant it in the side of the Soyuz so you can tie a rope to it, etc., and you’re fumbling with that goddamn wimpy little snap. A badass tactical knife needs some kind of quick release. Ideally something powered with a .22cal blank that shoots it out into your hand and puts you into an uncontrollable spin as you re-enter from orbit.
This little darling is available today for just ${?} at Amazon, [amazon] except it appears to have sold out. I guess the collectors/LARPers bought them as collectible investments. One thing I guarantee is these things will never wind up in a museum of national treasures like the Kunimitsu.
“I’ve been working with my brain-ratchet all morning trying to figure out how anyone in space will ever need a combat knife.”
Watch “Machete Kills in Space”.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2002719/
Knives. On spacecraft. Clearly these were designed by someone who never thought about launch weights and is obsessed with sci-fi action movies. Even a useful multitool (like a tank wrench) with a bayonet attachement would be silly.
Space craft are akin to submarines and tanks, a place where handguns and knives have little or zero value unless you have a saboteur aboard. The crews go out knowing they’re going to die if anything happens, and that no one will come to rescue them. So why wouldn’t the weapons of choice be lasers or missiles to prevent anyone getting near, and self-destruct explosives if hostiles get close enough to board?
Nothing wrong with the original Ka-Bar they were wartime production done well for the most part but you have to remember the context. Even well oiled and parkerized the high carbon steel rusted badly when exposed to salt water. The leather sheath and handle swells up when wet and then cracks when it dries. The Ka-bar was expected to last a few days, a few weeks at most.
The high carbon steel was chosen because it was cheap, predictable in hardening and tempering, held an edge, and could be sharpened, if you were so inclined, with a rock. A piece of random concrete will put a marginally usable edge on it. Mil-spec Ka-Bars were , as I understand it, 1095 steel differentially tempered so the false edge, back, and bolster are softer. in the genuine article the tang doesn’t generally crack and fall off. I’ve seen knives bent pretty bad at the cross guard after being used to pry open crates. The man just shoved the blade in and, using his weight, bent it back. How long it lasted after that, or how many times you can do that, are unknown. The one common weakness to real mil-spec Ka-Bars was the tip of the point pretty commonly snaps off if stressed laterally. No big deal because stabbing is not its most common use. Then again missing a bit of the tip adds to the picture of a dirty, smelly guy with anger control issues about to shove a large piece of rusty almost sharp steel into your guts. That sort of encounter can ruin your whole day.
This was like much of the rest of the military gear. WW2 leather shoes de-laminated and rotted in a few days of stomping through salt marshes. Cotton canvas field gear didn’t last long. Cotton uniforms softened and was ripped to shreds in days. Marines were simply marched back, told to strip, and resupplied with all new kit.
The Ka-Bar was never designed to last. It was not supposed to be a heirloom. It was supposed to be good enough with a little to spare. It was a utility knife vastly more likely to be used to dig, hammer nails, cut roots, open cans and chop kindling than to be used in a fight. Although it works pretty well in that roll. You might sharpen it, most were not resharpened, because everyone knew that after a week or two you tossed it out and got another.
All that said, I think most of the good qualities more reliably applied to earlier versions. The Ka-Bar name, and company producing them, has been sold and sold again. Current owners lament the previous owner’s trading the name, and quality, for profits and claim to have put thing right. Maybe. As with so many things I still suspect that a lot more attention is paid to appearance and a lot less to less immediately apparent qualities. There are many sources for a knife that looks great but will shatter if pushed, won’t hold an edge, and is generally useless for anything but as a LARP prop.
Same idea with a different bit of kit, and a fun video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvmbuv-Tzng
Up there with the legendary Swiss navy knife.
That USSF knife looks like it should be in an advertisement in a Buck Rogers’ comic.
Addendum: Similar to the description of katanas, this is how I remember kitchen knives when I was a kid, a single piece of steel from tip to tang with a fitted wooden handle bolted on. These lasted for decades.
https://www.dreamstime.com/old-kitchen-knife-wooden-handle-old-kitchen-knife-wooden-handle-isolated-white-background-image179601066
It’s akin to early Les Paul guitars, a single “log” from the tuning head to the bridge with the body halves bolted on. He did that to make them stronger.
The mission statement (if you will) for that knife is sharp pointy thing to tear a hole in a pressure suit. Which seems like a reasonable sort of weapon for space combat. Of course, that mission statement does kinda presume there’ll be human combatants to use the pointy thing on… and that the pointy-thing-wielder will be trained in whatever actual combat maneuvers make sense in zero gravity, if any… and…
prior USMC enlisted infantry, and I remember some of the more… enthusiastic? people wanting to get Ka-Bars, because: “That’s the USMC knife”
I tried to persuade them that while the typical Ka-Bar isn’t a “bad” knife, it’s also not a “great” knife, and it’s a bit overrated and overpriced for the product. I don’t think anyone listened to me, which is just as well, because at least the standard Ka-Bar has a reasonably useful blade shape, and if they were left to their own devices, they would have likely got some sort of “tactical” monstrosity with a tanto point, serrations, and a very strange handle…
When looking at that first picture, I do not think that the thickness of the tang is the problem here, but the shape of the transition from blade to tang and the hardening. This is why I think so:
1) The crack form implies hardened steel, but the knife should ideally not be hardened directly at the tang, or it should be tempered back to spring at least. Here it looks like it snapped off without any plastic deformation.
2) it seems there was either no or just a very tiny radius at the transition from the tang to the blade. That leads to stress concentration which can easily overload the steel. It can also lead to the blade shaping off during quenching.
That being said, I do not like this design at all.
“snapping off” not “shaping off”. Damn you, autocorrect!
Huh?
Me, I thought they’d be used for either stabbing or for slashing in combat, not for leverage.
John Morales@11>
That’s a fairly common mis… (sorry, my vocab sucks tonight)… mistake? One way I heard it explained was that a combat knife is like a combat boot – combat boots aren’t for killing people or fighting, but for being all-around reliable and dependable boots in the various conditions you would need to rely on boots in combat scenarios, etc.
So, a combat knife is more or less just a useful designed, mid-sized, fixed-blade knife that is supposed to be pretty durable, low-maintenance, and versatile. It’s most likely to see use in opening up pallets of MREs, cutting rope, fashioning a makeshift tentstake, as well as all the things you really aren’t supposed to do with a knife, but that an enlisted grunt is going to do anyways – digging, prying, screwdriving, somethingsomethingbatterycontacts, etc., which is where I would guess the “200lbs” stat comes in – more likely from someone pushing it in and prying with all their force, or for jamming it in a crack or similar and using it to pull up on or as a foothold or similar…
lochaber,
OK.
So… a combat knife is not a knife suitable for use in combat, but rather a knife used by a combatant when not in combat. Unlike Masterpiece tanto.
(BTW, I can’t but think of the axe when I see your nym, so very apposite!
(I got that from D&D))
There are such things as combat knives. For example, I own two low serial-number Gerber MKI and MKII combat knives. Those are stainless steel blades with aluminum bronze handles cast onto them. They are short of 3/8″ thick at the tang and I forget how wide they are (wide, OK?) You could pin a jeep to a wall with one and the jeep would tear. I am pretty sure Achilles carried a Gerber MKII. I am pretty sure Caesar was stabbed with a MKI. Shit happens like that.
oh, way back then, when Gerber didn’t suck…
Intransitive @6
IMO, that style of kitchen knife is mostly done because it’s quick. It’s been replaced by the injection moulded plastic because that is even quicker.
The closest any space force sucker will get to space is when briefing a USAF pilot on launching a satellite kill missile.