As a certified (and perhaps certifiable) knife knut, over the years I’ve arrived at personal preferences and developed strong opinions about what I believe is man’s most essential tool. I’ll share some of those thoughts here today.
First and fundamental, I never go anywhere without a knife. That habit, instilled in my Country childhood, may be at odds with common practice these days, especially since September of 2001, but I’ve never wavered. I always have at least one knife on me at all times.
Second, I refuse to abuse the knives I own and carry. No matter how little or how much I paid for a knife, a sharpened blade is for cutting stuff — period. It’s not my prybar or my screwdriver or my paint scraper. Emergencies and true survival situations notwithstanding, there’s no honest reason for me to destroy a knife because I’m too lazy or too stubborn to reach for the right tool.
Third, I rarely sharpen my knives. I don’t have to, because I maintain them. Long ago I committed to never letting a knife get deadly dull — dressing the edge is a regular thing for me, even mid-task. I’ll hone if I need to, but seldom do I need to.
Fourth, I’ve learned that real knives cost real money. Oh, there are exceptions, like any other product, when value outshines investment. And yeah, it’s possible to pay too much. But generally and overall, quality costs more than crap.
And finally, Americans should own and carry American knives. Though the golden age of American cutlery is but a memory now, we still have plenty of made-in-USA choices, from mass-produced to hand-forged.
Through trial, error and experience — which is by no means comprehensive — I’ve come to believe that anyone who’s serious about edged tools should acquire a “set” of four go-to blades. No matter what else we have, these would be the best of each type we can afford:
- A multi-blade slipjoint pocketknife:
- A locking single-blade folding knife;
- A medium-sized fixed-blade knife; and
- A hatchet, small axe or functionally similar tool.
American-made, of course.
Expect to pay between $50 and $100 for a pocketknife from Case (my preference), Buck or, if you can find one you like, Great Eastern. You’ll spend $100 to $200 on a solid folder made by Benchmade or Zero Tolerance.
The fixed-blade knife — what we used to call a “sheath knife” — is, to me, the heart of the set and presents the most difficult decision. Whether it’s a production model from ESEE, Benchmade or Buck, a semi-production knife from Bark River, or a handcrafted offering from the likes of Lon Humphrey, Andy Roy or Mike Malosh (among others), it’ll take $150 to $350 (or more) to check this box.
And then there’s the axe. A made-in-USA Estwing hand axe can be had for as little as $50. Axes from Hardcore Hammers range from $60 to $250. A machete, though not a direct replacement for a proper axe, is a reasonable option, and the street price of an 18-inch Ontario these days is $45.
Those of you who know knives can see that I didn’t even come close to naming all the makers I could’ve. I didn’t talk about parangs or goloks as subsitutes for an axe. You can quibble with my projected costs, too, either high or low. That’s fine. This is a starting point.
So, then, based on my numbers, we’re looking at paying between $350 and $900 to fill the bill for a four-piece set of American-made edged tools. A person could spend a bit less or a whole lot more. Shopping the secondary market can soften the blow somewhat.
For most of us, even the low end of the range is financially daunting. But I still contend that everyone should do it.
“Quality in a knife, an ax, or a saw — or any other tool — has to be judged on proper design, suitable material, and honest workmanship. To the expert, just ‘hefting’ a tool — trying its weight and balance — and running an eye along its edge tells him a lot. The maker’s name may influence his opinion — some — but the test will be in the using: will the knife take and hold a keen edge, does the ax hang right and swing true, can a saw bite deep and smooth and not chatter or run out of the cut?”
from the “Woods Tools” chapter of the Boy Scouts of America Fieldbook (1967)
But are there good reasons to spend less than that? Is it ever justifiable to buy imported tools?
Sure. Among the plausible reasons:
- You have a carefully tended moral objection to spending more than, say, $20 on a knife. You don’t appreciate quality, value or craftsmanship.
- You simply can’t afford what it costs to buy American, buy quality, or buy a tool that you can hand down to your grandchildren. Maybe you’re saving up ’til you can.
- You’re in the market for a knife that you can stow in a tackle box, a chuck wagon or a bug-out bag and forget about it. You’ll rarely need it or use it, and you don’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on a spare or “just in case” tool.
- You’re buying a kid their first knife. You remember how you mistreated your own original knife — not because you weren’t taught the right way or didn’t know any better, but because you were a kid.
- You want a “beater” knife — that is, you know up-front that you’re looking for a decent tool that you don’t have to worry about breaking.
- You’re chronically absent-minded. Everything you own has at some point been misplaced or lost forever.
- You’re a serial tool-abuser. You have neither the discipline nor the respect to take care of something that takes care of you, whether that takes the form of misuse or simple neglect.
Still, you don’t want to buy knives made in China or some third-world shithole. I get that, and I’d like to offer some alternatives.
By the way, if you know that you’re hopelessly forgetful or irresponsibly abusive — or if you’ve ever said something like, “It’ll be a cold day in hell ‘fore I drop a hunnert bucks on a knife!” — then just go ahead and buy cheap Chinese knives. And I don’t mean the good stuff, either. I’m talkin’ about flea-market junk. You deserve no better.
Otherwise, start by reducing the number of tools in your set from four to three. Don’t worry about the locking folder.
Consider this trio: a Victorinox Recruit (Switzerland, $25), an Old Hickory hop knife (USA, $18), and the Ontario machete I mentioned earlier (USA, $45). That set will get the job done for less than $100, though you’d still have to buy (or make) a sheath for the Old Hickory fixed-blade.
Still too dear? Fine — go for an Opinel No. 6 in carbon steel (France, $16), a Morakniv Craftline Basic 511 in carbon steel (Sweden, $12), and an 18-inch Tramontina machete (Brazil, $18). The total tab for that humble but very capable set comes in under fifty bucks.
Best I can do.
I personally own all six of the knives I just recommended. The quality and utility of Victorinox pocketknives need no further endorsement from me. A funky, quirky Opinel, either a No. 6 or a No. 8, lives in all of my picnic and camp-kitchen kits.
The Old Hickory is homely and crude but effective, and it carries the legacy of so-called “trade knives.” A Morakniv, with its stick tang and a hollow plastic handle, isn’t the best fixed-blade knife you can buy, but it may be the best value in the knife world, and I wouldn’t feel under-equipped in a survival situation if that’s all I had.
In fact, there’s a Mora in every one of our bug-out, get-home and last-resort kits.
An Ontario machete rides with me in the Ranger and has dispatched miles of tangle and brush on The Mountain. My trusty Tramontina remains in storage in Ohio, a battle-scarred veteran of 20 years of suburban yard work.
My point is that I didn’t come up with these recommendations by surfing the Internet for an hour. I’ve put every single one of these tools to use, some of them for decades.
And not one of them was made in China.
I mentioned the secondary market earlier, in passing, and I encourage you to explore it — whether it’s eBay or a buy-sell-trade page on social media, it’s possible to save 50% or more by buying used.
Be careful, be choosy, and be patient.
My own set may change once I retrieve all of my edged tools from storage in Ohio (and that can’t happen soon enough). I’m definitely making good use of what I have with me in Ozarkansas, though. Right now, my go-to set looks like this:
- Case two-blade trapper pocketknife
- Benchmade Griptilian folder
- Bark River Gunny fixed-blade
- Hardcore Carpenter’s Hatchet
Occasionally, depending on the task at-hand or my mood, I’ll pull the Gunny out of service and replace it with my Lon Humphrey Delta or Bark River Bravo 1.5. Sometimes the Griptilian steps aside for a Benchmade Bugout. If the work I’m doing requires a larger tool, my Hardcore Original TR Axe comes along for the ride; on the other hand, if I’ll be mostly slashing vines, the Ontario machete gets the nod.
But the bottom line is that having a set, having a system, takes maximum advantage of tools and skills. Nessmuk carried three into the woods, and so did Horace Kephart. For my own reasons, I choose four.
There’s a final challenge, one that I impose on myself. Whether I enter the woods with three tools or four, sometimes I’ll intentionally limit myself to using only one for everything I do. The exercise has a couple of effects.
One, it shows me a knife’s full range of capabilities, demonstrating that I can do more with (what I thought was) less. And two, it forces choices about what truly needs to be done and what doesn’t. I mean, if all I use is my pocketknife, I won’t be felling a tree, bucking one that’s down or splitting kindling — and if I need dry wood for a fire, what can I do with what I have?
Using each tool, not only individually but solely, even when it’s not ideal for a particular task, pays dividends in sharper skills. I believe it’s worth practicing.
Carry a knife. Take care of your knives. Spend your money on American-made knives when you can. Those are basic practices born of principle, and they apply — or can apply — no matter who you are, where you live, or what you do for business or pleasure.
Once you make a habit of always having a knife on you, you’ll wonder how you ever got along without it. The more you use it, the more uses you’ll find for it. It’s not some EDC fad — it’s essential.
I’m retired and live in the woods, surrounded by a culture in which neither custom nor law presumes to dictate what I may and may not carry. Maybe you work in a cubicle farm and live in a condo in a hyper-regulated suburb.
Different environments channel us into making different choices about knives and other tools. That doesn’t mean, however, that you have to limit yourself to a two-inch penknife. Evenings and weekends, get outdoors. Look for (and put yourself into) situations that make use of a three- or four-tool set.
Open envelopes and packages. Slice fruit, sausage and cheese for a snack. Grill a steak and cut it with your belt knife. When you pitch camp at an RV park (whether you’re in an RV or not), buy a bundle of firewood and use a hand axe to split it into smaller pieces.
The more you do, the more familiar you’ll become with the tools you’ve chosen. You’ll learn their strengths and their shortcomings, as well as your own — the objects themselves are only part of the equation. The rest of it is something called skills.
In the end, that’s what we’re really working on. Edged tools are but the means.
A simple Camillus Cub Scout knife, given to me when I was eight years old (and pictured near the top of today’s post), opened the gate to what would become a lifelong passion for sharp’n’pointy things. I’ve tried to share some of that passion, as well as experience gained along the way, in this blog post.
I hope it strikes a spark of interest in a reader or two. If it does, then it was well worth the time invested.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable
#LetsGoBrandon #FJB
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