Best Bushcraft Grind?

[rscornutt]

There is not an overall "best." What works best for you will depend on your location, what you want the blade to do, etc.

I have found that, in the SE US, a scandi or convex is as good as it gets. For me, at least. I would be fine with either, even though I prefer the scandi a little more.

Most times, I will carry either a Bark River Bravo 1 or Aurora on my belt, and have a puukko (or Mora 510) in my pack.

 

[KingMC]

Whichever grind is on the knife you have with you, for use in the outdoors you'll have a hard time noticing too many differences between an FFG, Sabre, or Scandi except when directly comparing them side-by-side.

I like FFG, I think it looks the best out of any grind and seems to be the best for more knife tasks compared to the sabre/scandi. Since I backpack camp I usually take 2-3 knives with me, a big chopper/small utility/folder setup, and I find myself doing food and wood prep as all of my knife tasks.

With wood prep I find the FFG to be the best at splitting small wood via batoning, the long steep sides of the blade making it much easier to penetrate the wood from the top and keeping the angle of the split gradual so it's easiest to keep the knife moving through the wood. The Sabre/Scandi setup means the blade gets thicker faster when wedging it into wood, so the wood might split faster but it'll take more effort to get the knife into the wood in the first place. With all other wood prep I find that a sharp edge makes the type of grind irrelevant, the wood curls regardless of the grind.

With food prep an FFG is the best as it offers the best slice geometry which allows smoother cuts and less mutilation of the food, a majority of kitchen knives are flat ground for good reason.

All my current knives that I take out into the woods are full-flat, not intentionally but just because my favorite knives tend to have full-flat grinds.

 

[seacucumber]

I'd want a fighting knife for a bear attack. The daggers with strong military histories tend to be flat/convex, hollow, or fullered. For most cutting, I'd want scandi knives of various thicknesses. I'd try to use a thin one when possible.

A few specialized knives would perform better and probably be lighter than one multitask knife. I want to know why someone would carry only 1 knife for fighting and cutting wood and mostly vegan food.