Hi Folks and Happy New Year!
Ever since I have seen and collected the M9 MPBS, I wondered and somewhat marveled at the design of the handle and tang arrangement; the fat rod screwed onto the relatively small tang of the blade. When I learned about the USMC long tang version, I read and heard the universal opinion that the long tang was a much better design. I presumed they were talking about the strength of the design rather than the ease of construction. I am no engineer and would not know how to calculate a strength comparison between the two systems, but I would think that BUCK would know everything about it. I was hoping that someone would be able to tell me from their research which design is the stronger of the two and by how much. Is it a matter where both are about the same, or is the short tang M9 simply an over engineered, but flawed system? Not to be dismissed is the rather fragile screw tap at the end of the long tang version.
In my opinion, when all the pieces of the short tang M9 go into place and are properly torqued, they should be as strong or stronger than the long tang version. Especially when the handle is pressed against the cross guard (even though it’s “just plastic”) there is tremendous leverage against bending of the blade.
Maybe I’m wrong and maybe it makes little difference, but I don’t think I could find a better place to ask the question. The pictures below of the long tang version M9 are taken from another web site and are not my own. Thank you very much.
Marv
The next question to be answered is Which is stronger, the Phrobis M9 or the OKC 3S?
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