High Performance Jobs?

When you think "high performance blades" what tasks are you thinking of? Also, are you thinking more of cutting/chopping capacity or endurance?

Jerry, I think you provided the answer in the question. It's almost axiomatic that there is no such thing as an "all purpose" knife, since many features would have to be compromises.

"High performance," almost by definition, has to be very task-specific. A scalpel might be pressed into service for opening envelopes or slicing tomatoes, but it would make a lousy tent peg whittler.

Ah grasshopper.... Are you not aware of the Millennium Scalpel and Tent Peg Sharpener?

Sir, I bow before your wisdom. Please enlighten me.

Don, NEVER take me too seriously...

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I am not sure exactly what happened there. Sorry. I certainly didn't say that! I was only trying to draw an arrow with the keyboard. Nevermind.

I only meant to comment that I thought more people would add some more high-performance jobs.

Well, I guess I'll put my .02$ in, in a utility knife I require that the blade be easily sharpened, have good cutting ability, and be tough.

I have worked in construction most of my life, and am curently working for a sign company. What is asked of the knife I cary is to cut paper patterns, open paint cans and prize open sign cabnets, cut and strip wire, open cardboard boxes, scrape paint off metal, scrape plastic lettering, cut rope, cut gravel encrusted geo-cloth, open morter mix bags, cut lexan strips and coar plast, use like a chisel and tighten or lossen seal tight locking nuts and probly a few other things that I cant' think of right now.

I know your not supposed to use a knife as a pry bar, but I am not climbing 100' + down a ladder to get a screw driver or a set of wire strippers. A lot of times all you have is a knife and you have to make do.

The toughest knife I make, and I guess that means the one from which I demand the highest performance standards, is my Retribution Combat knife. When I set out to design and make it, I had already been making a lot of tactical knives for a number of years, and these were stress tested in a great many ways. The problem with the combat knife though was that I couldn't fully anticiapate what it might ultimately be used for. I had a pretty good idea that its least likely application was as a killing knife, which is what most "tacticals" are designed to be.. What other tasks the modern military might ask of it is well beyond my experience however. Although I had some military experience, that was many years ago and battlefields are different all over the world.

I was pretty certain it would dig in some gravel filled dirt; chop, cut and slice things edges should never be ask to deal with; certainly be used as a prybar whenever one was needed; endure weeks and months without any maintenance at all; and probably never be re-sharpened. Opening cans would be easy, but would it cut other metals as well? Cutting rope was ok, but how about braided cable? Could it saw through the sidewall of a steel belted tire or cut nails? One Marine asked my how the handle would hold up if it got covered with gasoline or deisel fuel. "Why," I asked? "Hey sometimes you open fuel drums with whatever you have in your hand," says he.

This isn't like having to settle for a dull knife for skinning a whitetail. This is the real world, someone's life might be riding on your knife situation. It's a sobering thought.

What about electricians? As a kid I used to help my dad, an electrician, do commercial and residential wiring. Often we resorted to pocket knives to strip Romex, which is a hell of a lot more abusive to knife blades than hemp. (Like the man said earlier, usually a knife is at hand and the tool you need is somewhere else.)

I still insist that kitchens are hazardous duty for knives, as well. Talk about banging and chipping? Consider Corian and the like. What do you guys think?

Good topic.

I agree on kitchen knives. That's one reason I don't make them. It just might be the most hazzardous environment a knife can face.