Day 20: What’s the best survival knife…
My personal favorite survival knife…
I just put on a massive discount (see now above)
Knife characteristics, what to look for in a survival knife: Knife characteristics and what to look for in a survival knife is about as beat up a conversation as what is the ultimate bullet to use in a survival gun. Having said this there are what I will call some Universal truths. Some of these so-called Universal truths are born of experience not of my own but of others. If we can stand on the shoulders of giants why wouldn't we? However, let's give them credit when possible as they did the leg work in advance. One of my primary mentors/influencers are Morse Kohanski and David holiday. Both men have spent their entire lives dedicated to primitive living skills, wilderness survival, military instruction and just plain learning how to go out into the Wilderness and not need to come back, unless you want to. With that in mind, I will attempt to sum up Morris's knife requirements. He found out that you need a continuous curve in the blade so that it cuts with a draw cut not a press cut. It’s valuable to have a non-super pointy tip because it's going to bust off anyway with hard use. Your knife needs a Pummel on the bottom to crush things or to be used as a hammer. A robust not breakable knife has a Full Tang so that you can baton with the blade and not break it. Your knife needs an indestructible handle. There are other attributes to look for in knives just like there are other attributes to look for in vehicles or shoes but those attributes make them more suited for one task and less suited for another. One of the most do everything and therefore do nothing well knives I have ever played with is the Tom Brown tracker. It reminds me of a Subaru Baja. The Baja is not a car or a truck and therefore does neither car nor truck things well. A great alternative might be the Tops knives, brother of Bushcraft or BOB knives. If you can find one, a Skookum bush tool is about as perfect as they come. Simply put, all of the best design characteristics have already been created and had the bugs ironed out over thousands of years of use in places like the jungle or Lapland or the desert. If you take the design characteristics of knives like the laplander Puuco or Leuku and add modern-day construction techniques to them such as super steel and a Full Tang you get an ultimate survival knife. This can be said of the jungle parang or any of the Filipino or Indonesian jungle knives. This can also be said of the simple machete. If it was good enough for your ancestors and you improve on it with technology without changing design characteristics that gives you the Ultimate Survival blades.
