Bush Craft knives

dbltap45acp

dbltap45acp

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Dec 19, 2008
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Excuse the ignorance guys, but what makes a knife be labeled bushcraft. Is it a design of the blade or what? I see that term thrown around a lot and was curious. I carry a Busse FBM with a Fehrman Thru Hiker piggy backed when I go on hikes or camping. Sorry for the noob question.

Thanks in advance
 
well, to some they might be a bushcraft, but traditionally a scandi ground O1 carbon steel blade samwhiched between two wooden handles is a bushcrafter. DanKoster does one of my favs for custom bushcrafters, using modern handle and blade materials (3v and Mircata) Its a very nice knife.
 
this might help.
grinds2.jpg
 
The whole idea of a "bushcraft" knife is BS to me. Any knife that can carve wood is a bush craft knife. It is marketing and no different than have a "tactical" knife makes you a better fighter.
 
psy-ops said:
The whole idea of a "bushcraft" knife is BS to me. Any knife that can carve wood is a bush craft knife. It is marketing and no different than have a "tactical" knife makes you a better fighter.
Click to expand...

Exactly.:D

My Nimravus was just as much a bushcraft as any Scandi ground blade with mears's name on it. Just the same as my RC6, the only dif is Ray has to carry an axe with'em, I dont.:D
 
As illustrated above, a scandi grind is a flat saber grind with no secondary bevel. A bushcraft knife is a knife that you can use while performing and or making various crafty things out of other things found in the bush. The main characteristics are a comfortable handle for prolonged use because anything made or done in the bushcraft way takes hours and hours; a point well suited for piercing and drilling into wood; a very sharp, acute and easy to field-sharpen edge (hence the scandi grind but not requisite); and somewhere between 3.5 to 5.5 inches in length.
 
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Awsome, thanks guys, thats exactly what I wanted to know. You answered it they way I was thinking.
 
I don't generally view the term bushcraft as a marketing ploy (but it certainly is sometimes used as such), just that the particular knife was designed with bushcraft in mind. The "bushcraft" knives that I have are significantly better at woodworking that most of the others that I own. There are many different takes on what kinds of knives are best in the woods, so you will see many different designs referred to as "bushcrafters". The ones that jump immediately to mind are scandi or convexed knives with little belly and a spearpoint.

This is by no means expert advice:o, just my two cents. I hope it is of some help.

Edited to add: It looks like this has already been answered better than I can do while I was pecking out my reply.:)
 
To me any knife that works well for you to work with wood projects is your Bush Kraft knife. When I hear the word Bush craft knife I think first of a Mora or Helle or one of the other Scandi edge knives. My woods Kraft or bush craft knives double as hunting knives Generally we think of a 3-5 inch blade that is pretty light in weight. Since I don't chop with my knives, I like them thin and made to slice.
 
My thinking exactly! I'm with udtjim on this. I'm more likely to have one of my scandi's or Dozier's on my belt than anything else. I use my knives to slice & cut, not chop. I'll also have a small folding saw in my pack for larger wood, shelter construction, etc.

AJ
 
I'd call Bushcraft sort of a combination of survival and primitive skills.

I think most knives can be used for bushcraft type skills, but I'd say a "bushcraft" knife is some sort of scandi ground knife like Mors Kochanski who wrote the book Bushcraft uses or a fulltang Scandi grind knife like Ray Mears who really pimped the term, designed, the Woodlore.

Of course now the term has been popularized and people picked it up everybody is labeling knives as bushcraft.
 
I think the term is pretty meaningless. To my mind the phrase “the bush” is an Australian thing similar to “the outback”. I don't know what kind of history or prevalence Scandi grinds have had there but I doubt it is of significance compared to other types. Certainly in England one does not speak of the outdoors here as “the bush” and I doubt they do in Scandinavia. I think it is just a rename / branding thing and a manifestation of cultural vandalism. Field knife – bushcraft knife – someone will invent another phrase soon enough when the market trend gets stale.
 
I think the term Bushcraft is alright, it is a hobby of working on primitive skills. No problem there.

However the idea that there is some kind of designated knife to bushcrafting is BS because whatever can be carved with a "bushcraft knife" can be easily be done with a SAK. Most people don't say, "my bushcraft knife is a SAK," they are always referring to a small FB. I own a Fallkniven F-1 and I love it but over the holidays I had my SAK trekker and it made better fuzz sticks and carved walking sticks better than my F-1 + with the saw it can save more time because there would be little need to baton certain cuts.

My bushcraft knife is a machete and a SAK.
 
Well, it seems like everyone is pretty much on the same page. Its good to know that there are a lot of like minded people on this site. It helps keep consistancy atleast.
 
A Bushcraft knife is one that can help ya Smooth it in the outdoors rather than Rough it !!!!:D:thumbup:
 
pitdog has a good definition.

for me, the idea behind a bushcraft knife is that you should be able to do moderate wood working, good batoning, and lots of food work (including scraping, skinning, processing, not just botcher block stuff).

So things you might do include working brush shelters, or leantos, carving bows or atl-atls, butchering game, chopping up food, splitting wood, making figure 4s....

Heat, shelter, food- if the knife does a good job helping you get comfortable amounts of these 3, it's win.
 
Mors Kochanski and Ray Mears advocate the scandi grind because it is good for woodworking, easy to sharpen to a good edge since there is only one bevel, and the low cost and availability of knives like the Moras (which Kochanski uses exclusively, at least I've never seen him use anything else). Ray Mears also spent a lot of time in Scandinavia when he was learning his skills and that is the predominant knife used there. He designed his own knife, the Woodlore, as basically a full tang scandi with a contoured handle to his liking. His knife became a cult item and that's where most "bushcraft" knives took their inspiration.
 
I do think that there is often a strong scandinavian influence, but I would also say that as with many leukus of various lengths, the full convex bevel is right up there with the scandi for a lot of people in a bushcraft knife. There's also some full flat grinds with convex finals and other things- About the only thing that's not very common for bushcraft is the hollow grind.
 
If any knife were a bushcraft knife, no one would go to the trouble of giving them a name and a niche. Using an EnZo Trapper on certain tasks is a joy. Using a Recon Tanto on the same tasks is not. Likewise, if you were a groundpounder, you may in some situations prefer the Recon Tanto to the EnZo. It is really about the tasks YOU are doing, versus the tasks the KNIFE was designed for.

I know a guy whose "Bush" knife is an SAK, because he doesn't do much of anything with it other than open up a Mountain House when he is all set up on a glacier. That does not make his a "Bushcraft" knife, it just means that he prefers it to his particular tasks. Surely, many knives can do what "Fighting" or "Tactical" knives can do, but this does not make them as well suited to the application.

Get the knife you want that does what you need it to. If it does the things you need it to, it really doesn't matter what label is given it.
 
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