Choosing a Survival Knife


How to Choose the Perfect Survival Knife by Survival-Goods.com

7 comments:

Geodkyt said...

To be honest, I prefer a longer knife (8"-9"), because it chops so much better without being all that much harder to do precision work than a 6"-7" knife.

Of course, I back up my BFK (right now, an OKC3 bayonet) with a smaller knife, lanyarded to the same rig.

JB Miller said...

Knives are a very personal and subjective matter. That info graphic has a lot of good points still like materials, full tangs, etc.

Never can have too many knives...

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

Since when is O1 a stainless steel? It's need about 20 times more chromium. It's one of the basic-est of carbon steels.

Anonymous said...

Tbolt, got a link? My google fu fails me today.

New Jovian Thunderbolt said...

O1 Steel. Oscar 1. It's in wikipedia.

It's Oil quenched carbon steel. What Abraham Lincoln's axe edge and whitlling knife was made out of. Iron with a little less than 1% carbon and trace other elements. It's get's sharper than most and is easier to sharpen and easier to dull than most too.

Stainless has like 10% chromium in it.

These are all generalities. The knife blade metallurgy discussion is a deep deep hole you can lose yourself in. Knifemakers are crazy.

Vinosaur said...

All of the steels are mixed up on that chart. The stainless are in the carbon column and vice versa.

It also doesn't even cover edge shape and the options. VERY few people know how to properly sharpen a knife.

mac said...

HowTo FAIL.

The example blade featured in the diagram is a Ka-Bar Big Brother and violates half their rules. It's double-edged (serrated/saw on the back). It is significantly larger than a 6" blade, when you consider the handle to be 4-5", which would be comfortable for a full-sized blade. In fact, the actual Big Brother has a blade over 9", overall length more than 14". The tang is a narrow stick tang. And it has a top guard, making it much less useful as a survival blade. A top guard interferes with placing your thumb on the back, or choking up on the blade.

Add in the flip-flop of the carbon/stainless steels (the Big Brother's 1095 isn't listed either). And top it off with the red background with stars in the banner, giving it a commie feel.

I don't think these guys know what they're doing, for survival or anything else.