Cheap Knife Woods Day! Featuring other knives too...and a toad!!!

[stabman]

Well, yesterday I headed out to the woods with my brother.
On the way there though, we stopped at Canadian Tire, where my brother bought each of us one of these awesome, huge and cheap knives:

9.5 inches of Chinese produced 420 steel blade goodness.
$16, since they're discontinued; $44 normally.

It will chop down a tree...

...and looks snazzy next to a very expensive axe:

You can also split wood with it:

Using the Spyderco Tuff to smooth out the insides of the split, due to its intended purpose:

While I went off chopping more trees, my brother decided to stab his knife into wood and pry a bit to test lateral strength...not the best idea!

Handles:

Spine:

 

[stabman]

Cooking steaks:

Knife posing:

More steak action:

Some woods shots:

My brother's homemade twig stove works great for carrying fire.

Smoky goodness:

Mmmmm...steak...

Fire!

The moon and some planet or other:

Some of the knives I brought (they all got used to some extent):

Cheap knife likes to pose.

Moar fire!

 

[stabman]

And...Double Toad Goodness!!!
Boker War Toad with a real life toad:

 

[22-rimfire]

So, what are your conclusions with regard to the big knives? Good value? Junk? Good enough?

 

[Heartland_edc]

I gotta say, I really enjoyed the pictures with the toad. Little guy had no clue what was going on, but he certainly didn't look too concerned!

 

[stabman]

So, what are your conclusions with regard to the big knives? Good value? Junk? Good enough?

For the $16 price tag, I'd say they're a good value.
You can use them for regular knife tasks, and even chop down trees of up to 4 inch diameter with no issues.
Just don't pry with the tip!

Mine worked to cut green whippy vegetation too.

For someone who was headed out to the woods and wanted an inexpensive knife, it would work.
Apparently the original version of the knife was a partial tang, and people kept having the handle break apart.
You can read lots of reviews complaining about that.
They redesigned and went to full tang, but the horrid reviews probably kept people from buying them.

The tang does sit proud of the scales though, and has sharpish edges; with gloves it was fine, but I'm sanding it down.
The handle is a tad blocky too, but being wood, it is easy enough to shape.

My knife is still sharp despite me using a bunch all day, and has no chips, dings or rolls.
Blade is 0.150" thick.
For $16 you can't go wrong.

The sheath is damn cheap, but the whole knife was cheap.
Had a lot of fun, and it made my inner teenager very happy. :thumbup:

 

[stabman]

I gotta say, I really enjoyed the pictures with the toad. Little guy had no clue what was going on, but he certainly didn't look too concerned!

He was totally chillin.
That was the only toad we saw on the way out; the temperature had dropped to the point where all the others were not active.
That guy was big enough to still have body heat sufficient to grab the few bugs that were active.

I was moving so slowly so as to avoid spooking him, and then it turned out that he didn't care at all.
Almost like he was just waiting there for us...
My wife said "Maybe he heard about the other toads getting famous on Bladeforums and wanted a photo-shoot of his own."

 

[Heartland_edc]

Haha! That's great!

Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

 

[onojoe]

Always enjoy your camping posts, makes me jealous sitting here at a desk

 

[palonej]

Looks like you guys had a great time Stabby!! I will be 'smelling' those steaks for a long time!!
Thanks for posting the pics!! Love the toads!
Joe

 

[stabman]

Always enjoy your camping posts, makes me jealous sitting here at a desk

I could see that.

Looks like you guys had a great time Stabby!! I will be 'smelling' those steaks for a long time!!
Thanks for posting the pics!! Love the toads!
Joe

Toads are pretty cool. In a humourous reversal, rather than licking toads, the toad licked me!
It licked my finger right after I took the final picture.

 

[BlueSpartan007]

That third to last picture is an amazing shot! Can't believe you got that close, although he didn't seem to mind the attention! Another fan of the toad. :thumbup:

 

[stabman]

That third to last picture is an amazing shot! Can't believe you got that close, although he didn't seem to mind the attention! Another fan of the toad. :thumbup:

I seriously couldn't believe it at the time.
I thought he'd probably bolt when I bent down to place the knife by him.

I think sometimes they can tell when no harm is intended. :thumbup:

 

[Anaries]

Neato story and didn't have to buy a book :thumbup:

 

[BlueSpartan007]

It certainly appears so. Thanks for sharing!

 

[stabman]

Neato story and didn't have to buy a book :thumbup:

Dammit, I should have put it in book format. :grumpy:

It certainly appears so. Thanks for sharing!

It was way too cute to not share.

Didn't see any other wildlife that day, although we sure heard a lot of birds around.
No coyotes howling this time though, which is unusual.

 

[stabman]

It was also cool to learn that I haven't become too much a knife snob to enjoy a cheap knife.

 

[craytab]

Great pictures and write up as usual :thumbup:

The moon and some planet or other:

That would be Jupiter my friend!

 

[stabman]

Great pictures and write up as usual :thumbup:

That would be Jupiter my friend!

Neat! :thumbup:
Thanks for dropping some astronomy info on me.

 

[19-3ben]

I feel like if this toad gets any more love here on BFC, we're going to have to make it a Facebook page!