What does Full Tang actually mean?

What exactly does full tang mean when it comes to knives?

IS it important and does it make a knife stronger?/Better? and Compared to what???

And what is the meaning of "Stronger"?

Let's quickly look at the word "stronger" This means different things to different people and what those people do with the knife. Unfortunately these days as it appears on YT and elsewhere, "strong" means being able to use the knife in all sorts of applications that a knife was never meant to be used in. For example: levering/prying, bashing the daylights out of metal objects, cutting through steel pipes and the like. Smashing down brick walls. Breaking rocks apart with blade or pommel etc etc. Maybe you are laughing right now but let's face it there is a plethora of videos showing this kind of treatment to knives. It's all kind of funny as I grew up thinking that the main job of a knife was to be able to cut effectively, either during hunting, fishing or camping etc. I don't remember having to slice my way through car doors, refrigerator doors, cut down steel piping and stab away at bricks and rocks, I guess I was missing something. AND for military usage I can't remember the last time some military buddies told me they were slicing through car doors, beating the shit out of brick walls or trying to cut through steel cables! Smashing windows, ok, piercing fuel tanks ok, stabbing vehicle tyres ok, cutting ropes and some levering.



In fact I've had manufacturers contact me and ask me just to check I'm not going to bash the sh*t out of their knife have it fail and then slag off the knife and say that it wasn't strong!

If I want a lever I go get a pry bar or destroy a screwdriver/chisel/lump of steel, not my knife!

 I reassure them I'm not doing the above. That's a job for tools from the hardware/demolition  center, if you happen to be near one not counting improvised tools.

All knives no matter how good the manufacturer says they are, will break or become damaged at some point with the above kind of treatment. Look at what EXTREMA RATIO say about their products. I've even had an infamous STRIDER get damaged when I was using it to remove a stuck axel bushing (because I never had the correct tool with me at the time), and I broke a small part of the tip off. If I never did this then the original tip would still be there 13 years later LOL (i did remove that bush replaced it and got mobile!) . Just read the fine print of the good manufacturers and see what they warranty their knives against, you'll find none of them warranty them against abuse even if it's a military end use.



Let's get back to "Full Tang"

So I figured I'd give it a definition: A full tang knife is a knife blade where the tang is pretty much the full width of the knife at the ricasso ie the full width of the ricasso. This piece of metal then will extend along the full length of the handle of the knife. The tang in this case should not be machined out or have material forged from the tang. It will possess holes for fixing of the handle scales (if not a moulded handle) I would call this type of tang a "machined" tang or a tang which has undergone stock removal.

NOW the important point to note is there is NO substance in saying that the full tang knife as I have defined it above is more stronger/rigid/less flexible than a tang which has been "machined out", in other words has undergone some sort of "stock removal" whether by forging, water jet cutting, CNC machining, drilling or hand grinding. A solid piece of metal may not necessarily be as strong as a carefully designed tang which has had metal removed

However, a poorly designed  or heat treated stock removal tang will definitely not be as strong as an equivalent solid tang. I wonder how many Japanese Samurai's Katana's were busting off at the handle???

Why do manufacturers remove material from knife tangs? There are many answers but here are just a several: 

Overall weight savings, Why?

to: reduce shipping costs believe it or not.

reduce/recover material consumed (excess material can be recycled)

increased strength with reduced weight ( imagine an RSJ girder, now image the same piece of steel as a solid chunk, right, it's not going to work is it.)

Reduced overal weight of the end product- obvious handling advantages.

Added flexibility of the tang to prevent accidental tang breakage- for example in tangs which have been narrowed down (I don't mean a "rats tail" tang here BTW).

Finite Element Method (analysis) says they (manufacturers) can!

If this type of engineering/mathematical analyses are used, it can tell the engineer exactly where material can be removed without affecting or compromising the overall safe strength of the knife.
Material can not simply be randomly removed from the tang without some serious consideration to the resulting mechanical integrity in terms of safety. At the least destruction testing should be conducted under controlled conditions.


From a marketing standpoint and practical design standpoint.

There is a certain kind of confidence that comes from those words "full tang" and this marketing strategy is a very powerful one. No one likes to hear about hollow handles with almost no tang, half tangs, rats tailed tangs, stock removal tangs, stick tangs etc. But the fact remains that a well made knife is a well made knife regardless of the tang. The only knives I've busted were ones that were poorly heat treated  and they will always break with a brittle type fracture, usually quite suddenly without warning and with almost no force applied to the blade. The results of this could be serious injury to user or bystanders!


 Design requirement will necessitate a "full tang" and at other times a stock removal type tang. For example knives where the tang is kept the same but the blade shape varies may help to aid in bulk heat treating as the same mass of metal will always be present in the tang.