Just the tip?

[Netherend]

How many of you have broken your knife tips? I feel like I have been lucky with my knives and have yet to break any of them.

I was watching a knife center clip today and the native chief salt was praised for its strength despite having a thin tip.

A few months back I was browsing blade forums and saw a post on the stretch 2 and chief where Sal responded to a poster and advised that they avoid prying with their knives.

I personally do not pry with my knives.I do keep an Izula around as a beater/scraper and I have on occasion done a few questionable stabs with my spydies to create space between two objects but I guess I’ve been lucky because I’ve yet to break a tip.

I am sure there are probably some databases of returned knives that can capture the real data on broken tips but I am curious to hear from folks here who have broken tips. Maybe you can help us avoid the same fate and educate us on what NOT to do.

How did you do it? Was it just the tip? Did you save the knife or was it a total loss? Did you turn your military 2 into a paramilitary 2?


Knife center video that I referenced :

[Guts]

I've broken a couple that I can think of. In both cases I knocked the tip against something by accident. Damage wasn't that bad and it was only a tiny piece that broke off. I just removed material from the spine and carried on. No big deal in my case.

[Skywalker]

I've broken tips off of at least a reground ZT808 (drop) and a K390 Urban (prying) ...maybe more I can't remember.

I've definitely also rounded some over from poor sharpening technique.

[Coastal]

Never broken one.

[zuludelta]

I've broken the tips of two Spydercos, both PM2s, an older model in S30V, and a more recent one in S45VN. Nothing major. I lost, at most, a millimetre on both tips, and they were easily repaired/restored by me using files and coarse diamond plates. I still have & occasionally use the S30V one, while I gifted the S45VN one to a relative at some point.

Both times happened at work, were accidents entirely my fault, and would have probably damaged the tips of any other folding knives I own. The first broken tip happened when I misjudged the strength needed to slice through a thick slab of cardboard I was holding in my free hand & I ended up driving the knife hard into a load-bearing metal beam behind the cardboard. The second broken tip happened when I dropped the PM2 tip first from about a height of 5 feet onto a concrete floor.

I'm not really too worried about breaking the tips of my folders. Damage & wear & tear are just facts of life for those who use our tools in an industrial setting. It's something that can happen to even the most careful of us, and it's easy enough to recreate the tip on a knife as long as the damage isn't too extensive.

The funny thing is, I've used a Yojimbo 2 as my main work folder for years and I've never broken its tip, despite the common refrain on the Internet that it has a fragile tip (not saying that the Internet is wrong, just that my experience has been contrary to the popular narrative).

[Scandi Grind]

I've never broken a tip, but I am very strict on using knives only for knife like tasks. Unless the knife is obviously capable of prying, I don't even think about it. I don't tend to stab hard things either because I have never found a reason to. My TOPS Fieldcraft is one of the few knives I own that I wouldn't be afraid to pry with, but I haven't run into the need to yet.

[James Y]

I've chipped off a very tiny part of the very tip of one off my Tasman Salt SE's, when I accidentally hit the tip against a glass tabletop while cutting through something. It bent, and when I tried to gently bend it back using the Sharpmaker, the bent part kind of flaked off. So even an H1 tip can be broken under the right (or wrong) conditions.

I have bent the very tips of a few other knives, with a different result. I accidentally did the same thing with my G10 S30V Native 5 PE, and was somehow able to restraighten the tip, and there is no weakness, nor any sign that it was ever bent. Same with my Dragonfly Salt SE, which I accidentally dropped tip-first about 3 feet onto a linoleum floor. Also, another Tasman Salt SE's tip bent while doing some rough cutting outside in the yard, and I was able to restraighten that one with no problem, and no sign that it was ever bent in the first place. I guess you could say these very tips had rolled. In all cases, it was only a very tiny part of the ends of the tips. I restraightened all of them gently, using a Sharpmaker white rod.

Jim

[Zipper]

I can’t recall breaking the tip off any knife. Even stabbing, like when I used a fixed blade knife with dogs for wild boar hunting (don’t hunt that way any more). The stabbing was never a wild frenzied attack!

Like most here are saying, I use my knives for cutting. Occasionally I may hit something unintended and chip a blade along the belly. Those accidents just sharpen out.
I did repair a mates PM2 S110V he broke the very sharpened tip off. I can’t recall how. Just a couple of millimeters, but still noticeable. It is his only Spyderco and only pocket knife he carries. So it gets a lot of use at work and play and he doesn’t baby it.

[KeepCalm&Carrion]

I've chipped off a very tiny part of the very tip of one off my Tasman Salt SE's, when I accidentally hit the tip against a glass tabletop while cutting through something. It bent, and when I tried to gently bend it back using the Sharpmaker, the bent part kind of flaked off. So even an H1 tip can be broken under the right (or wrong) conditions.
Jim

My story's pretty much the same as yours, but swap out the Tasman for a Byrd hawkbill. That's one of the main reasons I'm so excited for the SE Gooney, which will have that nice reinforced tip.

[xceptnl]

Dropped my ffg Catcherman off the cutting board and onto the hardwood. Snapped off about 2mm of the tip and I had to pull the remnant out of the floor with my Leatherman.

[Brock O Lee]

I dropped a PM2 once and broke about a mm from the tip. It sharpened right out.

The only knife I pry with is a Swiss Army Knife in LFP, and then I use the bottle or can opener.

[Jesla]

I’ve broken a few over the years, all on purpose. All were restaurant kitchen knives that had tips bent too much to be straightened. Even after trying to get them straight, sometimes there is no choice but to discard the tip and just re-profile the spine to create a new/fresh tip. I even went so far as to carry a 6” piece of 4x4 to use to snap them off. I don’t do non-knife task with my knives so no broken tips yet….

[Wandering_About]

I've broken about 2mm of the tip off a Delica... it was my first one and that knife saw some things, heh.

[Mat_ski]

I’ve broken a tip of a native 5 when I accidentally dropped it.

Never broken one in use.

I do occasionally use tips to dislodge legos for my son and so far they were strong enough for that.

[Chieftjs]

I’ve only broken the tip off of one knife in over 50 years of carrying one. Thankfully it was not a Spyderco and better yet that company replaced the blade for a small fee and I have it to this day.

[SRT392HEMI]

Only on a Kershaw once, never a Spyderco thank goodness.

[Fastidiotus]

I wouldn't say I've broken a tip. I've run them into hard odjects being careless while cutting. I can always sharpen out the damage though, I've never snapped the tip of any knife off.

[PaloArt]

I've broken tip only with my clumsiness when my Paramilitary2 in S30V fell on the concrete, 1mm tip broken off. Other than that I treat my knives as cutting tools and not screwdrivers. Abusing the tool for something it hasn't been designed for and complaining about it as makers fault is not something I ever understood.

[aicolainen]

Two times, as I can recall. Both were deliberate misuse, so I was neither very surprised nor was I disappointed with the knives involved.

First time was a borderline emergency. I was on a SAR deployment in the mountains when the wireless headset of my VHF failed. While I thought I had prepared for such a situation, I had not prepared thoroughly enough. As backup I had a wired headset in my backpack, where I also kept a multitool. Not sure exactly which MT I carried at the time, but I believe it was a 1. gen LM Wave.
It very quickly became apparent that no implement on the MT was suitable for the tiny phillips screws that secured the cover plate for the iCom accessory port. My last resort solution was to use the tip of my Fällkniven WM-1. It didn't exactly break off the tip, but it was definitively messed up and a wee bit shorter than before this incident.
This event was also an important lesson for me, and changed my approach to multitools for the backcountry. Up to that point I would rather mindlessly throw a fully featured, heavy multitool in my backpack and believe that it would/should cover everything. After this episode I analyze my tool needs before every trip and put together the lightest combo of multitools and/or dedicated tools that actually cover my needs.

Second time was pure laziness. I was troubleshooting an issue with a dishwasher, and after crawling into a very cramped space that was a pain to access, I realized I had to separate two panels in order to progress further and non of the tools I had on hand proved capable of this task. Not very enthusiastic about the thought of working my self out only to repeat the whole ordeal of getting into position again, I decided to give it a go with my EDC at the time, a DF2 Salt SE. H1 is tough, right? Not that tough, as it turns out. Snapped (bendt beyond recovery) about 1mm of the tip and learned another lesson about laziness.

[Evil D]

I've chipped the edge off from the very tip... meaning not any further into the blade than the edge bevel runs. I haven't actually BROKE the tip of a blade off since I was much younger and dumber.