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Thread: School Me on Knife Points

  1. #21
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    I don’t carry one anymore, but I did find the modified tanto point to be useful for construction/carpentry type chores. The first edge near the tip is handy to use for chisel-like tasks and the point or L of the edge is useful for tasks like cutting a pattern out of paper or cardboard. I don’t do as much of that kind of work anymore, but reminiscing kinda makes me miss my old benchmade mini Stryker, it was a good tool I carried and used daily for over a decade.
    im strong, i can run faster than train

  2. #22
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    Quote Originally Posted by 314159 View Post
    Warning: PF Thread drift.

    School me on why so few "fighting" knives lack any kind of hand guard, even if only on the bottom. Duelist's obviously being not included.

    The act of thrusting against a potentially impenetrable obstacle with your bare fingers ready to slide forward gives me the willies. Yet many many tactical-ish knives have a vestigial hand guard or none at all, particularly folders. Since I haven't carried a survival knife since I left the Navy when we still had 15 carriers... Is there something in the way "real" knife fighting technique rarely requires a thrust I'm missing?
    The following are my impressions and observations, and may be completely wrong, but I don’t think I’m terribly far off: In the very vast majority of cases, very little “knife fighting” goes on in the “real world.” If someone gets shanked, they are not usually in a fight but are being murdered, or were murdering someone and got stabbed/cut with the nearest handy possible blade, whether a cheap POS kitchen knife, the pocket knife they may have had, or a screwdriver. Slashing attacks happen, of course, but stabbing tends to be more effective if killing is the goal.

    Most folding “tactical” knives are primarily designed to look cool and separate people from their money. I admit to liking looking at them as much as anyone else, because they look cool, but I mostly don’t have any. IMHO, the sheath knives that prompted @Stephanie to start this thread are similar in concept. For folding knives, in most cases, finger guards are not a priority since they make the knife bigger and more awkward to produce from the pocket, being another thing sticking out the side. There used to be a traditional pattern folding knife that had a collapsing finger guard, but I haven’t seen a new one of that design in a very long time. It always seemed a little bit of an affectation and a bit fragile, to me. If you want a knife designed for sticking in belligerent humans, the first step in designing that is to forget about making a folding knife, IMHO. Folding knives limit size, add mechanical complexity, and introduce weaknesses to the tool: holes and hinges and locking devices that can fail. If I decide I need to have a blade as a potential weapon to backup my gun, I pick a stout sheath knife, as pictured above. If I decide I need a locking blade folder as a cutting tool, I pick a Spyderco with a full-flat ground blade and plain edge because I find that the blades cut well, edges are easy to maintain, have ergonomically designed handles with well-executed choils to keep my fingers where they belong, and the locks work well. Stabbing someone isn’t part of the equation.

    Well-designed folding knives are designed primarily to do what knives do most of the time: open packages, cut up food, and do the cutting parts of work (cutting wood, trimming bushes, prepping fire making material, food prep, etc). Very rarely is a guard included in that for the reasons mentioned above. Even in combat zones, most of the work done with knives is the same as at home: in other words, not cutting/stabbing people (even though that may still happen). The vast majority of the cutting stuff I actually did on deployments was accomplished with a basic SAK.

    The man who made the knife I pictured above is a student of Ed Fowler, who insists that his blades all have real finger guards to prevent the exact problem you are describing. Many hunting/skinning/work knives have vestigial or no finger guard, because they can get in the way, but Mr. Fowler felt that cutting your dominant hand while doing your work (whatever that might be) because your hand slid up into the edge was detrimental to your health and getting the job done. But, he designed mostly single-side finger guards because he believes the top one (except in the case of a double edged dagger) was intended to lock or block the blade of a opponent in some knife-fighting fantasy, but mostly just gets in the way of actually using the knife.

    TL;DR, and this is just my opinion with no offense intended: folding tactical knives are designed the way they (no guard, blade designs, etc) due to a lack of clarity of thought on what knives are actually for and how they are actually used.

  3. #23
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    "Most folding “tactical” knives are primarily designed to look cool and separate people from their money."

    I should have gone with one of my favorite truisms. "(Fill in name of profession here) have boat payments too."

    The mystery is solved by placing "Knife makers" in the sentence.

    This is oddly comforting to me.
    Last edited by 314159; 06-25-2021 at 11:30 AM.
    My apologies to weasels.

  4. #24
    My only gripe with Tantos involves sharpening them or more accurately, attempting to sharpen, fucking up the transition, and reprofiling. Tiny brains can only handle so much.

  5. #25
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    @Duelist

    You'll appreciate this beauty from another former Ed Fowler apprentice, master smith Rick Dunkerley. (I bought this years ago from a bladeforums member in TX as I recall.)

    It's a beauty. (Mokume guard, forged 52100)

    Name:  dunk4.jpg
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    There's nothing civil about this war.

    Read: Harrison Bergeron

  6. #26
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    Quote Originally Posted by blues View Post
    @Duelist

    You'll appreciate this beauty from another former Ed Fowler apprentice, master smith Rick Dunkerley. (I bought this years ago from a bladeforums member in TX as I recall.)

    It's a beauty. (Mokume guard, forged 52100)

    Name:  dunk4.jpg
Views: 427
Size:  52.4 KB
    That looks like a beautiful and functional knife.

  7. #27
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    Quote Originally Posted by blues View Post
    @Duelist

    You'll appreciate this beauty from another former Ed Fowler apprentice, master smith Rick Dunkerley. (I bought this years ago from a bladeforums member in TX as I recall.)

    It's a beauty. (Mokume guard, forged 52100)

    Name:  dunk4.jpg
Views: 427
Size:  52.4 KB
    Yes! That is lovely and appears very functional.

  8. #28
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    Regarding use of a knife, SouthNarc has made the point on TPI that a knife is far more likely to be used against unarmed multiple attackers than a single attacker armed with a knife.

    Although I carry a knife at least partially to serve as a backup to my gun(s), the times I actually needed my knife had nothing to do with fighting. One was described above in this thread, and another was cutting my son free from a car seat harness with a stuck buckle.

    Anyone who has kids knows how much they like escalators, and escalator injuries from stuck shoe laces and other loose clothing are surprisingly common. A few weeks ago, my wife was at the gym, and informed a lady on a treadmill that her shoe was untied. That lade did not respond kindly to my wife and did not tie her shoe. Within about 30 seconds, the shoelace became caught in the treadmill, causing the idiot to fall. All of this leads me to the conclusion that the design of the blade and point should be determined more by the possible need to work in close proximity to another person safely. If being used for defense, the attacker is unlikely to notice the finer points differentiating a clip point from a tanto point.

  9. #29
    Quote Originally Posted by 314159 View Post
    Warning: PF Thread drift.

    School me on why so few "fighting" knives lack any kind of hand guard, even if only on the bottom. Duelist's obviously being not included.

    The act of thrusting against a potentially impenetrable obstacle with your bare fingers ready to slide forward gives me the willies. Yet many many tactical-ish knives have a vestigial hand guard or none at all, particularly folders. Since I haven't carried a survival knife since I left the Navy when we still had 15 carriers... Is there something in the way "real" knife fighting technique rarely requires a thrust I'm missing?
    Two things help keep your fingers off your blade, shape, including guard and texture.
    Texture only works well in a firm grip. If you are cold, wet, damaged, graying out etc…… grip may not be firm enough for just texture to help.
    A canoe/choora shaped handle and or guard helps keep your hand in place even with a less than firm grip.

    A lot of old daggers had handles and butt caps designed to keep your hand on the handle.
    The trick is getting the right shape and texture without getting too bulky or limiting the use of the knife.

    I have wood and other training dummies and have tested my preferences.

    I like having both shape and texture on a handle.

  10. #30
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    School Me on Knife Points

    Deleted because I did not think my post worked properly the first time.


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    Last edited by BillSWPA; 06-26-2021 at 10:54 AM.
    Any legal information I may post is general information, and is not legal advice. Such information may or may not apply to your specific situation. I am not your attorney unless an attorney-client relationship is separately and privately established.

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