This TUSK was a replacement for another TUSK which suffered which suffered gross failure under light prying.
As a reference the chopping ability of the TUSK was compared to a small hardware store hatchet, $15. The hatchet was sharpened but the geometry of the bit was not changed. Limbing a small tree about 8 foot long and about 4-5 inch in diameter. The TUSK penetrated the soft wood easier than the hatchet due to its thinner blade profile and sailed through the limbs which were about one inch at max. The tree was then sectioned into foot and a half lengths. The limbs were also diced up for compost. The TUSK was then used as a sledge to knock apart a a hard wood chair that was assembled by wood joints. The TUSK had suffered no visible wear on the blade, no scratching of the coating. The edge bit into an old shirt with no significant difference from before the cutting.
UPDATE : the above is not meant to be extended to all hatchets in general. Specifically the Wildlife Hatchet from Gransfors Bruks would easily out chop the TUSK on light and heavy woods and out cut the TUSK on most materials.
The TUSK was compared to several other knives over a wide range of cutting tasks and various utility applications :
The TUSK had impressive edge holding on rope, cardboard, and wood. Its slicing performance high due to the efficient high flat grind and balance and the serrations handle tough stiff materials. It did well brush cutting and trail clearing. The handle has the necessary length and width making for a very comfortable grip and is lightly textured for security. However it it significantly limited in scope of work due to the low durability in regards to edge prying.Kevin McClung examined the knife and determined that it failed due to baton work on the spine. This type of impact was labeled abuse and a refund or replacement was not offered and he also refused to return the broken TUSK. This statement contradicts statements McClung has made on steels, as in his articles ABC's of Steel Selection for Cutlery he calls D2 too brittle for anything but light use slicing knives, yet the D2 Uluchet easily handles the work which broke the TUSK as did the Ontario knives for example, which took spine hammering hard enough to knock chips out of the steel, but yet still handled the edge prying without gross damage.
His position also directly contradicts one of the main promotional aspects of his knives - the "selective tempering". Drawing the spine hardness on a knife is done specifically to increase the impact toughness yet his determination was that it failed due to a lack of impact toughness while knives with fully hardened spines handled the same work without gross failure. McClung would ignore these points in any responce and concentrate instead on insults and lies as a smokescreen.
The failure of the two TUSKs was mainly discussed on Knifeforums where McClung was a moderator. As a gross abuse of moderator abilities, as was common when McClung was critized and his points contended he readily locked and then deleted threads. He also freely used personal insults and encouraged such behavior to avoid discussing the actual relevant issues. Since this review other problems have been reported with McClung's blades and the maker responce is similar using personal attacks and then editing and deleting threads. Relevant discussion can also be seen on the usenet group rec.knives which had a number of threads on the failures of the TUSK.
Comments can be emailed to : cliffstamp[REMOVE]@cutleryscience.com .
| Last updated : | Mon Jun 16 14:31:08 NDT 2006 |
| Tue Jun 15 10:47:55 NDT 1999 |