...make stronger knives

Yep! If your knife is going to be a hard-working tool, you gotta put screws through the scales to make sure you have that all-important mechanical connection. Epoxy fails. Even good epoxy, properly mixed, fails.

Epoxy has come a long ways. Many helicopters flying around held together by epoxy. The EC-120 is a good example, the entire nose section is glued together, no rivets.

I pin according to the function of the knife. The two outside are pinned with 5/16 Corby Bolts with a flared brass tube. The one in the middle is a castrating knife, blade ground like a straight razor, I hope the users is not going to be chopping wood with it, he's going to get a serrated blade.

i use adhesive, peen my pins and flare my tubes, in 6 years i've never had a set of scales come off

There are thousands of accounts of glued and pinned scales never falling off, the merits of space age adhesives etc... In the final analysis - The strongest adhesives, epoxies and pins under ideal conditions are infinitely weaker than the weakest mechanical connection.

Good point. All chemical bonds degrade over time. The strongest adhesive is weaker than the weakest mechanical connection.

Holding layers of aerospace material together is an application where mechanical connections are not feasible and very different from holding knife scales to a tang where mechanical connections are possible. What rotor is held to the turboshaft with adhesives?

If the pins are peened and stand proud of the scales, you essentially have a rivet. If your pins are flush with the scales and are round like the roundstock you used for the pins, then you have a pin, period. The scales may not come off BUT the fact remains that a pin is weaker than a mechanical connection.

The "function of the knife" is something no maker every knows for sure. We can only say what the tool will "probably" be used for. And, if you overbuild the tool it doesn't matter what it's used for because it was designed to perform outside it's "intended use envelope." When you overbuild things that can make the difference between a good outcome and a bad outcome, you never come up short.

ps Your "flared brass tube" appears to be a "chamfered brass tube" done with a countersink. A flared tube is very different from a chamfered tube because only one is a mechanical connection. A typo on your part I'm sure.

sir while i appreciate your enthusiasm for your position
its a knife, its not a connecting rod on a race engine
it's not a heat sheild on the space shuttle
it's a knife,
when skinning an animal there is almost zero torque applied to the handle scales
when processing wood for a camp fire, again very little torque is applied to the grip
i'm almost 50 years old, i grew up on the bayous of south louisiana hunting and fishing
and living in the woods
i spent 6 years in the army, many of those years in the field
i've taken 2 pound sledges to my knives to test them
i've subjected my knives to forces way beyond anything normal knife usage would entail
i've taken said sledge and driven my knives into tree stumps and stood on them to test the blades
etc.
again, thank you for your passion, but imho you are misguided about your thinking about the lateral and torsional forces
knife handles are subjected to
if you are building a knife for spec ops guys who are in a hostile environment where every fraction of a percent counts
then maybe i can see getting twisted up about it
but beyond that one exception, there are too many thousands of knives out there being used everyday,, for way too many years
to support your demanding that the knife world must yield to your line of thought
i pray you have an excellent day sir

Well stated!

I’m going to agree that to insinuate that pins are insufficient is wrong. That being said, the claim that mechanical connections are superior is hard to refute.

Are we having conversations with ourselves?

I am not a wizard who can predict exactly what a knife may or may not be called upon to do. Any knife may be used to cut, pry and wedge in ways outside its "design envelope" in situations where tool failure has consequences - I have personally witnessed this. When things are OVERBUILT there is less of a chance of failure when used outside their intended use envelope. You can cite examples of glued and pinned knives never failing when run over by locomotives but the fact remains - A knife held together by mechanical connections is stronger than a knife held together by pins and glue. To say or imply anything different is wrong.

thank you for sharing your opinion

Using pins and glue instead of mechanical connections is fine. By all means, use pins, wrap a pinned and glued knife in C4 and detonate, then write a testimony of how well the knife stood up. You can even celebrate using pins and glue. But, don't make the mistake of stating or implying that pins and glue are as strong or nearly as strong as mechanical connections. In other words, just be honest.

1. I’m never going to use a hunting knife to split firewood/chop down a telephone pole/trim up the pecan tree in my yard.

2. As a guy who has used a knife a LOT, actually butchering animals (ranging from pigs, sheep, goats, cows, elk, deer, turkey, etc), whatever Victorinox and Dexter Russel attaches their rubber handles with works quite well. We actually had a knife get dropped in a meat grinder before. It was all manner of mangled, and the plastic handle was still attached.

Do you also know that your knife will never be used to pry a window or door to free an injured person or force something in an emergency? Emergencies are called emergencies for good reason and we usually don't expect them.

It's actually quite fascinating that people have a hard time accepting that pinned and glued knives are all well and good but they are not as strong as knives that are bolted together.

thanks for your opinion

No, but I also don’t expect my Glock to open a car door either. Trying to turn a slicing tool into a pry bar makes about as much sense as making a flip flop double as a hammer.

Using a pistol as a pry bar or a flip flop as a hammer can’t be reasonably compared to using a knife as a wedge or pry.

It's actually quite fascinating that people have a hard time accepting that pinned and glued knives are all well and good but they are not as strong as knives that are bolted together.

Let's not over look the most the essential part of the knife, the blade! I don't care if you have (6) 1/2 bolts and nuts running through the handle. If that blade is brittle or too soft it's a piece of junk, like the junk from Pakistan and China. Heat treat is still the heart and soul of any knife. The grind too is as important to each particular application. Back in the days when I team roped and trained horses, I only carried a serrated knife in case I had to cut a rope in an emergency, and I've had to cut colts loose from sitting back and almost breaking their necks. No doubt that mechanicals are superior to pins, Bob Loveless proved that, he was the father of mechanicals. Peening a pins is less prone to failure as well, I do that with through tang knives. I'm sure we can also debate that hidden tang knives are not superior to full tang knives, that might be the next futile debate!

Sarcasm is by far more destructive than constructive. (the preacher in me is coming out now)

Be blessed.


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