Knives Galore

3 Comments

• #1 by RoninUT on September 2, 2010 - 3:16 am

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  I bought one of these knives a few months ago before they were available on Amazon. Like other reviewers, I was surprised how BIG the knife is. In fact, I’ll go ahead and say it’s TOO big for delicate work. You won’t want to use this knife for carving small, precise cuts in wood, for example.

  There is a custom knife maker who makes a similar knife that costs several hundred dollars. These are a great bargain. But they do have two major drawbacks, in my opinion. One is the size, but more importantly, the serrated portion of the blade is a HUGE drawback for me. Serrations are great for cutting rope, but for any other type of cutting, a plain edge is best. When doing heavy cutting with a knife, the closer you get to the handle, the more leverage you have, and the safer it is to make the cut. By placing the serrations right against the handle, this forces you to use a part of the blade farther away, and consequently, you have less leverage.

  The knife comes with a small screwdriver kit inside the handle, but most people will want to remove that and replace it with more traditional survival knife contents like fish hooks, matches, fishing line, etc.

  One big plus that sets this knife apart from other hollow handle knives is that the handle and blade are one solid, continuous piece of metal. In other hollow handle knives, the handle and blade are separate pieces joined together with bolts, welds, glue or other means, creating a potentially dangerous point of failure. This knife does not suffer from that weakness.

  If the blade were 3 inches shorter and had no serrations, I’d have given it a solid 5 star rating. Good news is, Schrade makes a smaller version without the serrations. I have one on order and will review it soon. I expect it will earn the 5 stars, but I’ll have to see it in person first.
  Rating: 4 / 5

• #2 by J. SOULE on September 2, 2010 - 4:40 am

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  This knife is huge, with a 7.5″ blade and 5.2″ handle it’s over a foot long and weighs a pound and a half. It comes with a sheath that is appropriately designed for this big knife with a hard plastic insert, heavy duty canvas, snaps and velcro. When you strap it to your belt it looks menacing even in it’s holster.

  But besides its looks it’s also a very PRACTICAL knife for survival and self defense. The blade is so sturdy and long that it could penetrate completely through a mountain lion, split wood in an emergency, use as a spear tip, or finer purposes such as skinning, food preparation, and woodworking.

  The entire knife is machined from a single piece of high carbon steel!! I’ve never seen another knife that equals the durability of this one. There are no rivets, no pieces to break, and no wood or plastic to wear out.

  The only “part” that can be removed from the knife is an aluminum cap that screws into the threaded steel handle. The cap looks like the end of a hex bolt which gives you an excellent grip to tighten or remove it to access the hollowed out handle. The space inside the handle is about the size of a “c” battery which is enough room to store some small emergency items such as matches and firestarting material. Don’t worry about the hollow handle compromising the strength- the steel walls are still about 1/8″ thick all the way around. The exterior of the handle is knurled for excellent grip and round which makes it comfortable and natural in your hand.

  I don’t believe you could break this knife if you dropped it from a plane, left it in a forest fire, ran over it with a bulldozer, dropped it in the ocean to rust for a year and them smashed it with a 20-pound sledgehammer.

  You should get as many of these as you can afford while tools like this are still available! It’s getting harder and harder to find things like this and it’s a great value at $50. I paid twice as much at a local store and then returned it once I found them online.

  Rating: 5 / 5

• #3 by J Wolf on September 2, 2010 - 7:30 am

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  Alright, first of all if you didn’t take a good hard look at the size of this thing, start there. This is a HUGE knife. It is absolutely not practical for taking around town and will probably get you stopped at the door of any establishment if you try to take it in.

  That being said, this knife won’t leave my side when I go to Iraq. Being in the military I wanted a good weapon for those “just in case moments” that come with being in urban combat. This blade is exceptionally well crafted and as the previous reviewer stated you probably could do some serious abuse to it without it breaking. It certainly can stand up against tough hides as I’ve been using it as a skinning knife on occasion. It doesn’t come all that sharp, but if you take the right sharpening tools to it, it will cut through leather like butter. And I’ll say it again this knife is extremely durable, you can tell the moment you pick it up that this thing will last you a long time.

  Now, the above is what I’d expect from a knife, but what earned it that 5 star rating from me is the pleasant surprise of a fully functional screwdriver and attachment set that is just awesome. I use it a lot in the house for regular maintenance since with the metal knife blade it handles a bit better then the plastic screwdrivers when I get sweaty hands.

  I absolutely recommend this for campers, outdoors men, soldiers in a combat zone, fishermen, skinning, and generally looking scary as heck with a blade the size of your forearm.
  Rating: 5 / 5