The promotion from the Boker USA website :
Colonel Rex Applegate (1914-1998), member of the American special unit "Office for Strategic Service" (O.S.S.) during WWII, author of several technical books on military hand-to-hand combat and well-known designer of knives, made his revised design of the legendary Applegate-Fairbairn® combat knife available to us. Jointly, we optimized this knife reaching the limits of what was humanly possible: Matte-finish blade of 440-C-stainless steel (58HRC), handle of polyamide reinforced with fiberglass, additional integrated weights for balance, a massive brass guard and serial numbering for quality control. The A-F combat knife is available either in the COMBAT version with dagger grinding or in the UTILITY version, where only one side of the blade is sharpened. Either version is available with saw-tooth blade and Kydex® sheath or with a smooth blade and Cordura® sheath. With their circular eyelets, both sheath versions allow a variety of attachments.
The Boker Applegate-Fairbairn is ground from 0.185" stock and weighs 250 grams and is slightly handle heavy. which is 0.625" high. The primary and secondary edges are ground at 22 +/- 1 degrees per side with an edge thickness of 0.035-0.050". The primary serrations are of a fluid wavy pattern which are ground at 30 degrees included and are 0.065" thick at back. The secondary serrations are chisel tip ground with the point inline with the edge and the scallops ground at 27 degrees and are 0.075" thick at back. A shot from the Boker USA website :
A shot of this one :
NOTE : The knife was used, donated for a review so it was sharpened before any work was done with it.
A few quick tests which allow a decent perspective of blade performance.
With the plain edge, push cutting 3/8" hemp required XXX +/- XXX lbs, with XXX +/- XXX lbs, on a two inch draw. The serrations are very ineffective on rope, even with 30 lbs applied, with a two inch draw a cut could only be made halfway into the cord. Pointing sections of hardwood dowel the Applegate could form a one inch tip in XXX cuts.
The point on the Applegate has a decently slim profile, it tapers 1.9 degrees distally through 2.6", and the blade is 1.0" wide at the back of the point. With a 50 lbs push it sank 98 +/- 1 pages into a phone book and with a hard vertical stab penetrated 581 +/- 11 pages.
After the stock testing the blade was used in a variety of ways to get a feel for its scope of work, round out the stock testing profile and examine aspects of long term use.
The Applegate-Fairbairn combat knife was used for a variety of cutting on woods and other light vegetation.
The combat knife chops very poorly, on a small piece of Alder it takes 30 chops to cut the limb free :
In comparison a decent chopping blade like the Camp Tramp takes the limb down in just a few hits. Thus the Applegate has little ability to chop or cut wood for a fire. However with some careful scouting a lot of dead woods can be gathered which are easily broke off :
With the obtuse edge the combat knife doesn't make shavines well, but it can gather grasses very easily for first stage tinder. As the wood gathered was bone dry the grass is easily enough to produce enough flame to ignite the wood, just assemble it in layers with the smaller wood at the bottom :
There is far more grass there than necessary to catch the wood on fire, however as a general rule of thumb, always use a lot more tinder than necessary, it doesn't do any harm to put in more grass or shavings and you don't want to have it go out and have to rebuild the fire all over again.
If dried grass isn't available, or it has been raining then the Applegate really has problems because it doesn't scrape wood well as the top sharpened edge which prevents an overhand grip, and as well tends to cut apart batons which means a lot of energy which should go into batoning the knife through a small round goes into cutting apart the baton instead.
The new in box edge on this knife was very obtuse, more than 20 degrees per side so in order for it to be sharpening on most jigs and v-rod systems it would have to be reprofiled first to reduce the angle, without power equipment this means a lot of time for the user.
The grip is well swelled in all axis so it locks well in the hand, it is also free of finger notches or other specific grip indexes so it is very versatile in orientation from hammer to icepick.
The surface texture is also slightly rough and the grooves also aid in retention so a secure grip is possible even with the handle is covered with sweat, but in extreme conditions such as when it is covered in oils or fats hard thrusts are not possible without ramping up onto the guard.
The Kydex sheath for the Applegate-Fairbairn combat knife has a secure fit to the blade, no rattle and hold it very securely in place with no strap or other secondary retention system.
To release the blade the handle is lifted out by pressing the thumb against the sheath so the guard can ride over the two retaining "lumps". The blade can then be drawn out as normal.
Comments can be emailed using cliffstamp[REMOVE]@cutleryscience.com or by posting in the following thread on Bladeforums :
More information can be obtain at the the CRKT website.
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