Junk Knives!

[Mortblanc]

Yesterday was our "Independence Day" over here. We will not get into the political details of that holiday except to say that while surfing my e-mail I saw an add from one of the low line knife suppliers giving me free shipping on any purchase.

We all know what that means.

I have a butt-load of cheap knives heading toward my house!

https://knives.budk.com/search?w=wahoo%20killer

I discovered these Wahoo Killer knives a couple of years back and ordered a couple just to see what they were.

I was surprised to find that these Mora knock-offs are surprisingly good!

I had to regrind and reshape the edge profile, but the steel is acceptable for light duty use.

I also decided that at the price of $3 US I could afford to take one apart to see what it was made from. That effort took more than I had expected.

I clamped the knife in my bench vise by the blade and took a 1# ball peen hammer to the handle. I was expecting to see it snap and fly across the shop, but after a half dozen hits I tired of that game. You could not tell the knife had been touched.

I decided to test the tip strength and hammered the blade into a 1" pine board. No joy there either, the blade simply penetrated the board and I had to split it apart to retrieve the knife. Actually I just batoned the blade until the board split.

I am convinced that one could drive two or three of these knives into a wall and use the as a scaling ladder!

I finally just clamped the blade in the vise and took a hacksaw to it just to see how the handle was attached to the blade. I found that under the softer rubber coating on the outside the interior of the handle was solid resin and the blade tang was firmly in its grasp, even though the tang was only about 2" long.

That does not sound like much but after I tortured this poor specimen to destruction I am sure that the only thing that would make this blade totally fail would be to expose it to enough heat to melt the grip and draw the temper from the blade.

After all that I decided to order several of these knives to use as cheap gifts, mostly to newbies and such. Since their retail price is so low I refuse to pay more for shipping than for the item so I wait for these promotions and order three or four of them with free shipping.

Where else would I be able to get a good cheap knife for less than a cup of fancy coffee?

[Mortblanc]

My load of cheap knives arrived on Saturday.

$8.97 US and the free shipping arrived in about 9 days.

I need to go out in the shop and hit them a lick on the power sander since the blade has a severe double bevel, unlike the Mora Scandi grind that goes to the edge.

It takes about three or four swipes across the sanding belt to remove that extra bevel and they sharpen up nicely.

I usually do not worry about a razor edge on these knives since they are rough use blades. I just smooth out the double bevel and run them across a carbide V sharpener of some kind, then run them across a ceramic rod and forget about them.