How to choose a large knife for survival or general camping use.
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An axe or machete, a small woodworking knife and a folding saw would serve you better if you have the room in your pack, but if you want to carry just one tool, a well balanced camp or bowie knife is a good option in many areas of the U.S.
If you do choose the One Tool Option, you will be in good company. Most indigenous peoples around the world carry just one blade and it is usually a big one, like a machete, bolo, parang, kukuri, etc. The men of these groups would traditionally go off on multi-day hunting trips with only one large knife. Remember, it's not the only thing they have to carry and weight carried equals calories used; so there is going to be a tradeoff between tools carried and ease of travel.
Knife List: (Dis = discontinued model. NOTE: Blackjack is now Bark River Knives).
Top row. RT to LT: Corona RS 7265D Saw , Cold Steel Trail Boss, Blackjack Skinner (Dis), Collins machete, Arken-saw tube saw, Wetterling Hunting Axe, Cold Steel SRK, Condor Golok, Sven Folding Saw, Fallkniven S1, Fiskars Hatchet, Cold Steel Spearpoint machete (Dis), Corona RS 7245 Saw, Cold Steel Master Hunter, Hardware store hatchet, Cold Steel MTC Kukri (Dis).
Bottom row by column , Lt to right. Cold Steel Trailmaster and Recon Scout, Kukri blade blank from Camilus, Cold Steel Barong machete, Becker BK2, Browning Crowell/Barker Competition knife. Blackjack Rio Grande Camp Knife (Dis), Blackjack Kampa (Dis), Ontario Heavy Machete
Note: Cold Steel had fixed the problem with the sharp shoulders on the tang/blade juncture by the time I made this video in 2010, but I was not sure how long it would take for the problem knives to work their way through the sales chain (I think many ended up as "factory seconds"). This made me very suspicious of the larger fixed blades from Cold Steel for several years and I ended up selling the two CS bowies you see in the video.
TRANSCRIPT:
Hi Guys, Tuhon Bill McGrath here. I wanted to talk to you a bit about how to choose a large knife for outdoor camping and you know emergency survival use.
As you can see I own a fairly decent number of outdoor knives and gone through different models and manufacturers from the time I was a teenager and the Boy Scouts up till now.
You know, your your tendency as a American male is try to get one tool that does everything because that's the, you know. the ultimate in coolness. But really it's hard to do that. The classic outdoor survival combination was really an axe or a hatchet and in the old days, a small knife and you know, a skinning knife or whatnot and a small pocket knife. In modern Bushcraft, camping use they’ll include a folding saw on that (list). I generally carried a bunch of different folding saws small hatchets and sheath knives.
A machete is a useful tool, not only if you're in the jungle but if you're looking to make a camp mattress; getting some, cutting some cane, or Cattails, or whatnot, to make a mat or camping mattress or to thatch a roof in a survival situation. A lot of the Indian tribes where I live would make a wigwam out of Cattail rushes woven together in kind of a half circle beehive type shape and so that's a good tool to have even if you're not in the uh in the jungles cutting vines.
But anyway what I want to talk to you about is the knives I finally come down to if you have to use one big knife. An axe is, you know, definitely a better wood cutter, you know.
When I was in the Boy Scouts you know small hatchet like that little hardware store model was our common hatchet and I've gone up through the years, you find that, you know, when you get up to a two-handed axe and this is a nice small two-handed axe from Cold Steel there that I actually like. It’s inexpensive 25 bucks and it does the job pretty well. You have a good amount of leverage there. You have a heavy head, compared to say that Wetterlings there, which is an 18inch handle it’s about as small as I can get two hands on. But the larger one you can really do
some good wood cutting with that. But that's not something going to fit inside a day pack too easily. It's going to have to be strapped to the outside; they get some weird looks from people on the trail. So there is a use for a bowie knife as an all-around tool that you have on you if you're out there day-hiking or whatnot. You might have this in your pack when you're on the trail or put it on your hip when you're at camp.
Now how to choose a bowie knife or a camp knife? The the ones I have here are two Cold Steel models, You’ll see a Trail Master and the Recon Scout. And then the two Camp knives are from the now defunct Blackjack knives, a Moran and a Kampa and I like the idea of this size knife.
It's versatile if you just want something on your hip if you don't want to carry a big backpack around. For many years the Cold Steels are my favorite, but I ran into problems. The Cold Steel
tang is cut with a water jet cutter from a different company and they'll go in and put the handles on it (Cold Steel) and it's a very sharp corner very much like this kukri blade blank you see here. So you see that corner there it’s very easy to get a stress fracture in there and especially in cold weather, or if that angle is very sharp I've had cases where I've broken the Cold Steel Recon Scout there, and I’ve heard of other people doing it with the Trail Master there, right at that
juncture where the guard meets the tang. You know, batoning is a a common cause of that stress fracture, batoning through wood.
The two black jack knives are a full tang as you can see here, going all the way through. so they don't have that sharp demarcation right where the tang meets the blade. That company's out of
business so you can't go with those. (I was wrong here. They are now Bark River Knives)
So I found something recently that kind of meets the bill. This is a Browning Barker. It’s a good quarter inch stock and you notice it has a a tapered tang and what I like in that type of configuration and you see the handle is also tapered is it gives you good a good amount of length so you can do cutting chores like you could with with a short machete cutting vines or cattails or brush like that has good reach but it's not so heavy and clunky you know this Camp knife from Blackjack with that full stock almost to the edge; doesn't start to taper until here. It's a good chopper for wood, but if you're trying to cut through light vines, you want a velocity, you don't want weight. So that can get a bit heavy, so a tapered tang like on this Barker here from Browning gives you a nice balance. You have nice reach like you would on a machete, a short machete, but your hand doesn't get fatigued from cutting through something light and not having that stopper impacting the wood. The stock at the base here is quite thick, the same as my K-Bar BK2 here which is a an excellent, uh, basically a wedge with a handle on it for uh for splitting wood. And you could very easily get away with these two knives, the machete and the BK2 and do a lot of work with those.
Or in my opinion you could get a camp knife with a tapered tang, thick stock in the back, you know, tapering right down to a point. You have nice balance because of that the heaviest part of the blade stock is close to your hand, but you still have good reach. You don't have that fatigue cutting lightweight objects. You need velocity as you would with, you know, a say a Rio Grande Camp Knife. So consider something like this when you look for a camp knife: tappered tang and
Blade.
You notice there's no cross guard here. I'm not that big on Cross guards. (see note below)
Now God-forbid, you would have ti get into a fight with one of these that little bit of a cross guard is not going to really save you. It's not a uh a D guard or even a Bell guard, like you would on a full-size sword. So I'd be more worried about balance and ease of use, rather than having a guard on it.
I like Micarter handle slabs the if you're going to use these Kraton handled blades from Cold Steel make sure you wear some gloves or you going to really abrade your hand after a bit of work. They are comfortable though. They absorb shock but you wouldn't want to wear a leather
glove.
So if you do end up with just one blade on your person think about something with that distal taper, thick going down to thin in the blade and thick going down to thin in the handle and I think you'll find this to be a a nicely balanced type of blade.
Browning discontinued their Barker models at the end of 2009. You can still find a few of them on the net. I think they go for around 100 bucks, but if not, a lot of custom makers will do that type of work for you.
All right. thank you take care.
Train Hard, but Train Smart,
Tuhon Bill McGrath
A note on guards. At the time I made this video (2010), my pet peeve with many knife companies was the small cross guards had on their knives. I thought it was better to know you had no guard than rely on a guard that was too small to protect your hand from an opponent’s weapon, (especially on a camping knife, where it could interfere with with camp chores). I should have said I single quillon guard (as on the Blackjack Skinner) is better than a cross guard on a camping knife; since the single quillon guard can protect your hand from sliding up the blade, while still allowing for all your normal camp chores.
PHOTOS:
Blackjack Skinner and Cold Steel Drop Fored Survivalist. (Notice how I have ground down the top quillon on the Cold Steel knife to allow the thumb to put pressure on the spine when wood carving.)
Cold Steel Barong Machete and Ka-Bar BK2. I still want a mechanical stop on a knife to keep your hand from sliding onto the blade. A less expensive way to do this on a camping tool than a separate cross guard, is to build the stop into the shape of the handle.
