Not
all knives are created equal,
nor is all steel the same; a knife, like any tool,
is created to do a job and depending on the job, the knife, and the steel in
it, will be different.
In
a survival situation, the best knife to have, is the one in your hand! And as the writers at Field & Stream
wrote, “Any knife is better than none in an emergency”1.
But,
if you’re sitting in your chair at home, trying to decide what knife to take
with you in case of an emergency, what do you pick? Is there a right or wrong choice?
Fixed blade
or folder?
If
you are going to use your knife to baton pieces of wood apart, so you can get
to the dry wood at the core and make kindling and fuzz sticks, cut browse or
blaze trees, then you will want to use a fixed blade sheath knife, not a
folding knife. If you are planning on
using your knife for repairing gear, skinning small game, whittling trap
triggers and fishing gorges, and other small tasks, then you will want a
pocketknife.
Fix blade
sheath knives
knife ... can be invaluable for a lot of different jobs: blazing, cutting browse, repairing leather goods, and making fuzz-sticks for starting a fire”2.
Pocketknives
Some
pocketknives have multiple blades and/or tool blades and it can be an all-around
wilderness tool. Generally, the blades
are thinner than those of a fix blade knife and can be ground sharper.
About
pocketknives, Colonel Townsend Whelen noted in On Your Own in the Wilderness
that, “The best all-around type is the so-called trapper’s knife ... with
one blade for rough usage and another for finer work in close quarters. The first blade, with a rounded point, is
excellent for general skinning, the second blade, with a point sharp enough to
lift a splinter from your hand, if need be, can be kept for more delicate
skinning ... Whatever other knife you have, you’d better have one of these that
you can keep in your pocket...”3.
Big versus small?
With knives, size is a personal
preference, bigger isn’t always better, and size truly doesn’t matter if the
knife does the job it was designed for.
If you are going to use your fixed blade knife to hack and cut browse,
blaze trees or baton wood, then you will want a knife that is five to six
inches (13 to 15 cm) in length and one to two inches (5 cm) in width.
Obviously, pocketknives fold and fit
into your pocket so the blades are smaller, usually no longer than four inches
(10 cm) at the largest.
What to
look for...
The
Pathfinder School4 suggests a knife blade with a flat spine and
sharp 90o angles on both sides.
The reason for this is in a survival situation,
you can use the flat spine of your knife to scrape sparks from a ferrocerium
rod or to strike against a piece of flint to throw sparks and start a
fire. Without a 90o spine on
the back of your knife, you will have to use your blade to scrape sparks from a
ferro rod and this will quickly ruin the edge (for more read From a Little
Spark May Burst a Flame...©, HERE).
and this will ensure that your knife is strong enough to act as a tool. For both pocketknives and sheath knives, you want a grip that feels good in your hand, a cracked scale on a pocketknife can leave you with blisters and a grip that is too big for your hand can slip. Additionally, fixed blade knives must have a good sheath, whether it is leather, nylon or Kydex
is a personal preference.To rust or
to not rust?
Unfortunately,
not all steel is created the same. Some steel is more rust resistant, and some
produces better sparks than others. Steel
is an alloy of iron and some other elements, such as carbon, sulfur, manganese,
tungsten, or chromium. This mixture of
elements is what gives an alloy of steel its own unique properties.
with the oxygen in the air to form a protective layer that makes stainless steel highly resistant to rust. Just because stainless steel resists rusting doesn’t mean it won’t, it can and it will under the right conditions, just not as quickly as normal steels. Stainless steels rust when exposed to salt water, grease, moisture, or heat for prolonged periods of time.
High
carbon steel doesn’t have chromium in its makeup, and because of this high
carbon steel knives are prone to rusting quickly and require more care to
maintain, but they are easier to sharpen in the wilderness. Also, they throw more sparks when used as a
striker with flint or ferrocerium.
So,
what is the best steel for a survival knife, high carbon steel4 or
stainless steel? The Pathfinders School
suggests that a survival knife should be made from high carbon steel, because
it throws more sparks, if used as a striker, and because it is easier to
sharpen.
So, what did Col. Whelen carry?
The late Colonel Townsend Whelen
carried a fixed blade hunter’s knife, with a 3-½ long blade, and a stockman
pattern two-bladed folding knife, both of which were made with high carbon
steel.
Personally,
I carry a high carbon steel fix blade boning knife with a six inch (15 cm) long
blade that is one inch (2.5 cm) wide at the base and 1/8
inch (3 mm ) thick. It has a full tang
and is comfortable in my hand. I have
carried this knife for the last 15 years and have been very pleased with
it. I also carry a Kershaw Leek Pocket
Knife (1660) stainless steel folding knife in my neck sheath. It has a SpeedSafe Assisted Opening button, which
means it can be easily opened one handed – a plus if you are injured in the
wilderness and can only use one hand. As
my back-up survival knife that is kept in my survival kit, I carry a pocketknife
with a 2 ¾ (7 cm) long, high carbon
steel blade made by the Colonial Knife Company. It no longer has any scales, but that is fine
by me as it feels good in my hand, and it has an awl, a bottle
opener/screwdriver and a can opener blade which have all proved invaluable in
the field.
Don’t forget to come back next week and read “Not All Steel is Created
the Same ©”, where we will talk about which high carbon steel is the best for
your survival knife.
I
hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me
on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE. Don’t forget to follow me on both The
Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE,
and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube. If you have questions, as always, feel free
to leave a comment on either site. I
announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at
bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.
That
is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!
Notes
1 Field
& Stream, December 2008 – January 2009, page 110, HERE
2
From On Your Own in the Wilderness, by Colonel Townsend Whelen and
Bradford Angier
3
Ibid.
4 Information
on The Pathfinder School can be found, HERE
5
Some knives have a full tang, some with a partial tang that only extends
partway into the hilt, and some are forged with a “tail” that extends
through the length of the hilt.
Sources
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accessed May 17, 2023
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