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throwing knife selection
- Thread starter GAgunLAWbooklet
- Start date
Dude, ive tossed knives for well over 30 years....anything that is not made to throw will break eventually. Also, idk how much you have trown but there is a couple different ways to throw. The guy in the vid only makes 1/2 turn on his. Mine usually make 1-1/2 turns depending on distance to target. The depth of the knife sticking comes from how well you can throw to constantly stick along with your ability to throw hard enough to keep your blade down to this amount of spins.
You usually always throw holding the blade. You dont ‘let go’ of the knife as much as you let it leave your hand with a kinda ‘slide’ . Anything sharp on the cutting edges is prone to stitches....especially just learning.
The reason the guy in the video is “finding targets” is he is looking for rotting wood. It is easier to stick a knife in. Putting a knife in green wood is hard. (The same would go for putting a knife into flesh) The movies you see here someone tosses a knife into someones chest from across the room and they fall over dead or dying, does not happen.
My .02 would be to get some throwing knives and practice a bunch before you go to finding something that you seek, that you probably wont find easily. I have bunches of great blades with tips broke off because i thought they would make a good thrower.
Watch the vid, the first one, but watch how he throws....watch his knife when it leaves his hand.
You usually always throw holding the blade. You dont ‘let go’ of the knife as much as you let it leave your hand with a kinda ‘slide’ . Anything sharp on the cutting edges is prone to stitches....especially just learning.
The reason the guy in the video is “finding targets” is he is looking for rotting wood. It is easier to stick a knife in. Putting a knife in green wood is hard. (The same would go for putting a knife into flesh) The movies you see here someone tosses a knife into someones chest from across the room and they fall over dead or dying, does not happen.
My .02 would be to get some throwing knives and practice a bunch before you go to finding something that you seek, that you probably wont find easily. I have bunches of great blades with tips broke off because i thought they would make a good thrower.
Watch the vid, the first one, but watch how he throws....watch his knife when it leaves his hand.
41mag, two Glock FM 81 knives just arrived at my house.
We'll see how they work.
Until I get good with them, I'll only throw them at a special backboard made of sheets of corrugated cardboard 4" thick, tightly compressed, with a single sheet of 5/8" OSB board behind all that. This should be a very forgiving target that won't snap the tip of the blade if it hits at the wrong angle.
Later I'll move up to a normal knife and axe target, made of lumber or a round cut from a tree trunk.
P.S. I throw from either the blade or the handle, depending on my distance to the target. Holding the blade as you suggest is great for a half-rotation, or a 1.5 rotation throw. I am guessing those distances would be about 10 feet and 30 feet. But if I hold the handle and throw it, that's good for zero-rotation hits (5 feet) or 1 full rotation at about 20 feet.
We'll see how they work.
Until I get good with them, I'll only throw them at a special backboard made of sheets of corrugated cardboard 4" thick, tightly compressed, with a single sheet of 5/8" OSB board behind all that. This should be a very forgiving target that won't snap the tip of the blade if it hits at the wrong angle.
Later I'll move up to a normal knife and axe target, made of lumber or a round cut from a tree trunk.
P.S. I throw from either the blade or the handle, depending on my distance to the target. Holding the blade as you suggest is great for a half-rotation, or a 1.5 rotation throw. I am guessing those distances would be about 10 feet and 30 feet. But if I hold the handle and throw it, that's good for zero-rotation hits (5 feet) or 1 full rotation at about 20 feet.
P.S. Somebody on YouTube did a torture test of the Glock 81 field knife. Chopped bricks and cement blocks in half. Pounded it into a wooden post with a hammer and then stood on it, even bounced his full body weight on it with only 1.5" of the tip of the knife in the wood, and the rest of the blade sticking out in the air horizontally. No breakage and only a slight, barely visible, bend of that last 1.5 inch. He also stabbed this knife thru one side of a steel military ammo can a dozen times. No damage to the tip of the blade.
Day 1 of practice, on a target backer that is mostly cardboard, with only a little wood as a frame. It didn't take long to stick the knives almost every time at "half a rotation" distance. 3/4 of the time they'd hit correctly and stick with one full rotation ; from the farthest distance I tried, requiring 1.5 turns before hitting the target,
maybe 1/3 of the time they would stick.
They did hit the wooden frame of the target at bad angles several times. No damage to the knives from that! However, each knife has been nicked in the handle by the blade of the other knife which was thrown right after it, and just happened to go to the same precise spot on the target as the first knife had hit, and stuck.
After several bsckyard throwing sessions,
my 4-yard throws of 1/2 rotation are sticking 90+ percent of the time,
and The accuracy is good. If the first knife sticks near the center of the target, I have to intentionally aim the second one higher or lower so as not to smack the first one.
But it's happened enough times already that each knife handle has dozens of gouges , nicks, and cuts. Even the blades have been dinged up from hitting each other.
I still can't get a consistent throw back from around 8 or 10 yards. Even if I get two consecutive sticks in a row, often one knife will be tipped up at a 30° angle and one knife will be tipped downward at a 30° angle.
One has slightly over-rotated and one has slightly under-rotated, and yet I threw them from the exact same line onnthe ground, using what I thought was the same amount of force, same arm movement.
my 4-yard throws of 1/2 rotation are sticking 90+ percent of the time,
and The accuracy is good. If the first knife sticks near the center of the target, I have to intentionally aim the second one higher or lower so as not to smack the first one.
But it's happened enough times already that each knife handle has dozens of gouges , nicks, and cuts. Even the blades have been dinged up from hitting each other.
I still can't get a consistent throw back from around 8 or 10 yards. Even if I get two consecutive sticks in a row, often one knife will be tipped up at a 30° angle and one knife will be tipped downward at a 30° angle.
One has slightly over-rotated and one has slightly under-rotated, and yet I threw them from the exact same line onnthe ground, using what I thought was the same amount of force, same arm movement.
I tried throwing a big lock-back knife (5" blade) and a tiny cheap boot knife.
Both broke within minutes.
Well, the big lock back is still functional, but the blade is badly bent and one of the wooden grip panels is shattered and not repairable.
And this was on my corrogated cardboard target, not wood.
LESSON: knife throwing is really tough on knives that are not made specifically for that activity. It's like a torture test.
My sweet spot is 4 yards, although I can do 3 yards if I hold the blade closer to the tip and I can do 5 yards if I place my hand further up towards the center of the knife.
I prefer to grab the blade with the saw-edge spine resting against my palm. However, I have experimented with using the sharp knife-edge side against my palm, and the edge does not cut me as it slides out of my hand.
These knives are significantly longer and heavier than any knife that I've used for throwing before (at least extensively with a lot of practice). The Glocks are much better as throwing knives than the 9-inch long, 6 inch long, and 5 inch long throwing knives I've owned before. They rotate more consistently, and when they hit point-first they drive in straight and deep.
Has their ever been a recorded ( on books ) self defense situation where a person used a throwing knife? Just curious if so that would be badass
Yea man. In Under siege, Roadhouse, etc. All the classics, man.
