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Post by smithgrange on Jul 15, 2021 13:55:57 GMT
9 months ago, I bought two swords from Scorpion in Missouri. One came with the blade warped 1/4" off-center, and the other folded over sideways the first time I used it. These swords were not tempered, they both were dead soft. I got the feeling Chris Palmer might not feel it is necessary to temper blades if he gets the vibe you might not use them. Chris offered to "repair" the one that came warped, that somehow made it through his stringent quality standards in warped condition. I refused the repair, based on obvious quality control issues. He refused to refund my money, and stated that he could not re-sell the piece. Then the next email he sent me, he warned me to keep the smatchet or he would just re-sell it. I sent it back anyway, on principle alone, and told them to keep their garbage. I was too disgusted with the smatchet to discuss the other catastrophic failure with him. It would've done no good. The swords in the videos are not the quality of sword you're going to receive from Scorpion. The test swords on the videos were tempered properly. They kept my $450, and possibly made more money off the return which Chris said he couldn't re-sell that he said he's going to re-sell. I would upload photos, but I see no option to do so. Anyone who can tell me how, I'll upload pics to share. From what I've seen on this forum, this is a fairly common occurrence with Scorpion.
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tera
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Post by tera on Jul 15, 2021 17:48:34 GMT
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Post by smithgrange on Jul 15, 2021 19:29:59 GMT
There you go Attachments:
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 16, 2021 18:26:28 GMT
This seems to be happening a lot. A lot of excuses from the vendor, but no fixes. Just more problems
And this isn't an attack or in any way hostile on my part, to any mod who thinks so. If stating a fact is an attack, maybe scorpion swords should look at themselves instead of the comments
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Post by Kane Shen on Jul 16, 2021 18:34:47 GMT
That was a big bend. Even a 15-buck machete would not behave like that. What did you hit with it?
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Post by RufusScorpius on Jul 16, 2021 19:48:15 GMT
Bad blade alignment on a semi-hard target like rolled newspaper could cause a bend like that. Interesting that it took a set at such an angle. I would like to know more about what exactly the sword was doing when it bent - a video would be excellent if one exists. The tempering is suspect, but since I have neither the sword to examine or any personal dealings with Scorpion, I will therefore leave my speculations as to the quality control out of it. On the other hand, it's better to bend than break- so there's at least that much on the plus side.
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Post by randomnobody on Jul 16, 2021 19:59:32 GMT
I'd say almost 90-degrees off for a bend like that, but I dunno. It's awfully thick to bend that badly... Something went very badly here.
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Post by RufusScorpius on Jul 16, 2021 20:14:28 GMT
I am going to have to speculate as to the cause of the bent blade, but as a general rule it doesn't take too much of a bad alignment followed with bad technique to bend a blade like that. I've seen such things happen before, and it's not pretty, but not the end of the world either. Again, on the plus side, the sword didn't snap and that is actually a good thing. Katana's were soft in the middle and designed to bend rather than break, and they bent quite a lot. The cure is to straighten out the blade and go find a better teacher.
As far as Scorpion swords, their website has a fairly clear section on how to take care of the blade and what the results of a bad cut will be, as well as how to perform a proper flex test and so forth. They advertise the blade will bend rather than snap if a bad cut is made, and from the photos the OP showed and the limited information I have to work with about the dynamic of the bending event, I would say that the blade performed as advertised.
I also want to make it clear that I am not taking sides, I'm just making educated guesses from the limited information I have to work with in this one particular case. I cannot condemn the sword without knowing how it was bent in the first place, and I can't defend Scorpion apart from pointing out what their own website says about their product.
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Post by RufusScorpius on Jul 16, 2021 20:31:45 GMT
I'd say almost 90-degrees off for a bend like that, but I dunno. It's awfully thick to bend that badly... Something went very badly here. You can come in with the blade as little as a 15 degree angle while using a horizontal 90 degree swing like a baseball bat and that will cause the sword to bite into the target and want to follow the blade alignment while the user is pushing the blade sideways. That whipping action would be more than enough to create that 40 degree bend in the photo. Not saying that is what happend here, i'm just pointing out how swords get bent from bad cuts.
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Post by Lonely Wolf Forge on Jul 16, 2021 23:16:24 GMT
it takes almost no force to bend a dead soft unquenched blade.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2021 0:20:46 GMT
I'd say almost 90-degrees off for a bend like that, but I dunno. It's awfully thick to bend that badly... Something went very badly here. You can come in with the blade as little as a 15 degree angle while using a horizontal 90 degree swing like a baseball bat and that will cause the sword to bite into the target and want to follow the blade alignment while the user is pushing the blade sideways. That whipping action would be more than enough to create that 40 degree bend in the photo. Not saying that is what happend here, i'm just pointing out how swords get bent from bad cuts. Yea I've seen someone make such a bend in an untempered blade before. But the nut case hit it on a tree, so makes me wonder if this guy hit a tree lol
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Post by smithgrange on Jul 17, 2021 0:22:20 GMT
I cut at an angle into the end of a sawn maple trunk from a downed tree in my yard. The wood had been dead two years. The thing bent with not much effort. FYI, I'm accustomed to long blades. I've been using knives for almost fifty years, and I remember when Cold Steel was a startup with cheap paper magazines. So in my experience, this failure was the sort which I only have gotten with the thick copper knives I made experimentally in high school.
A $200 blade made of properly tempered 1095 musn't take a set. If anything, it might break, but bend? This blade is untempered soft, as was the smatchet. My old Incolma machetes flex like fiberglass.
I made no video of that moment, and the smatchet I returned. I might try to video the other sword when I get time this week.
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tera
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Post by tera on Jul 17, 2021 0:37:29 GMT
Not throwing stones either way, just curious.
Did the bend happen on impact and the attempted follow through of the cut, or was it made worse by trying to free the blade from being stuck in the dry wood?
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Post by Lord Newport on Jul 17, 2021 0:44:31 GMT
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Post by smithgrange on Jul 17, 2021 1:14:46 GMT
That was the result of three good strikes on the end of the tree trunk. I like to reiterate that these swords are 1/4" thick, 1095 steel.
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Post by L Driggers (fallen) on Jul 17, 2021 2:03:26 GMT
This was a very bad heat treat, or no heat treat.
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Post by smithgrange on Jul 17, 2021 2:09:48 GMT
Yes it was, times two blades
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Post by Tom K. (ianflaer) on Jul 17, 2021 3:06:29 GMT
9 months ago, I bought two swords from Scorpion in Missouri. One came with the blade warped 1/4" off-center, and the other folded over sideways the first time I used it. These swords were not tempered, they both were dead soft. I got the feeling Chris Palmer might not feel it is necessary to temper blades if he gets the vibe you might not use them. Chris offered to "repair" the one that came warped, that somehow made it through his stringent quality standards in warped condition. I refused the repair, based on obvious quality control issues. He refused to refund my money, and stated that he could not re-sell the piece. Then the next email he sent me, he warned me to keep the smatchet or he would just re-sell it. I sent it back anyway, on principle alone, and told them to keep their garbage. I was too disgusted with the smatchet to discuss the other catastrophic failure with him. It would've done no good. The swords in the videos are not the quality of sword you're going to receive from Scorpion. The test swords on the videos were tempered properly. They kept my $450, and possibly made more money off the return which Chris said he couldn't re-sell that he said he's going to re-sell. I would upload photos, but I see no option to do so. Anyone who can tell me how, I'll upload pics to share. From what I've seen on this forum, this is a fairly common occurrence with Scorpion. For the education if the forum and not to bash you or anyone else: You are misusing the word temper here. Temper means to make softer so as to alleviate brittleness from hardening. So, the term “heat treat” often refers to several processes with tempering being one of them. These “swords” appear to not have been hardened or possibly very badly over tempered
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Post by smithgrange on Jul 17, 2021 3:23:44 GMT
Thanks so much for the reminder, Tom. I still say xerox for anything that makes a photocopy, and I still instinctively say Coke to mean any sweetened, carbonated drink 😁 You are absolutely correct about the necessity for accuracy in terminology.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 17, 2021 3:29:59 GMT
Let us begin with twenty more questions.
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