Knives and other blade related content

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Every time people talk about tantos it's like they have never even seen one.

Tantos are frequently said to penetrate materials better in a stab. Clearly this is the opposite of the truth, all else being equal, because tantos typically have a MORE obtuse point than conventional knives and may require more force to penetrate a given medium. Knives designed for penetration are extremely narrow with very acute points like stilettos.

People say tantos are harder to sharpen. In fact it's the easiest possible design to sharpen because you're just dealing with two straight edges. The hardest part of sharpening is handling the belly curve without ruining the tip or leaving a weird demarcation point where the belly meets the straight. A tanto is like sharpening two thin wood chisels, very physically easy and simple. You are leaving behind a geometrically perfect point automatically as a biproduct of merely sharpening the tip edge as a straight plane, and this compensates for the obtuse tip geometry as far as penetration is concerned.

The advantages of a tanto are specifically the ease of sharpening, the longer straight edge for a given blade length without relying on a clip point to achieve that (clip points have several drawbacks), full edge presentation for it's width when thrusting just like a dagger or broad head so that no tissue can be pushed harmlessly out of the way by the spine, and a increased tissue destruction at the maximum penetration depth due to the obtuse point geometry which compensates for a short blade length.

Penetrating armor is NOT something this design is good for at all, and if you can't sharpen a tanto then you basically can't sharpen at all, no sharpening job could be easier than a straight edge with no curve. It's baffled me for years the way people perceive this design.