Fixed blade for new camper

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ItsKYRO

Joined
Sep 17, 2017
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Hey all, i just ordered my first tent to go solo camping, super excited. I am on a bit of a tight budget but was wondering if you have any suggestions for a quality fixed blade for a beginner camper?

Also, the traditional knife community on this forum is the absolute best.
 
Lots of options depending on what you'll be doing with it........Maybe some more details?
 
Good knives for not a lot of money......start with Condor Tool and Knife or BPS Knives. The Condor Terrasaur has a good reputation, the BPS Adventurer is one of the best bang-for-buck outdoor knives.
BPS Adventurer
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Condor Terrasaur
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Larger Condor Wayfinder and Condor Mini Bushlore
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I find the leaf shape blade of the Condor Joe Flowers designs quite useful
Condor Cavelore and Oetzi knife
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Without a bit more info on what you plan to use it for its hard to give solid advice. Like do you want a big knife that you can process wood with? Or just a small to mid size that you can carve a tent stake and use for food prep and some cooking or maybe clean a fish?

Do you definately want a stainless steel blade or will you take a bit of time to maintain a non stainless knife? The non stainless is "generally" easier to sharpen.

Or maybe you just aren't sure what you may use it for since you're just starting to get into camping? and just want a knife simply to cut things if needed?
 
Puukko (to me includes Mora)
I like the classic Mora N°1 and N°2 with wood handle.
Available in Carbon Steel and Stainless
The Cold Steel Fin Bear (stainless only) is also good.

Easy to resharpen: just lay the bevel on the stone to keep the factory edge angle, and forget a micro bevel.
It usually takes just a couple swipes each side of the blade, followed by stropping.

If you want used, I would suggest a made in Colorado, Western L66 (leather washer handle) F66 (AKA "Black Beauty") or W66 (wood handle)
The Western __66 was THE deer woods sheath knife from the 1940's to the late 1990's or later.
 
afishhunter said:
Puukko (to me includes Mora)
I like the classic Mora N°1 and N°2 with wood handle.
Available in Carbon Steel and Stainless
The Cold Steel Fin Bear (stainless only) is also good.

Easy to resharpen: just lay the bevel on the stone to keep the factory edge angle, and forget a micro bevel.
It usually takes just a couple swipes each side of the blade, followed by stropping.

If you want used, I would suggest a made in Colorado, Western L66 (leather washer handle) F66 (AKA "Black Beauty") or W66 (wood handle)
The Western __66 was THE deer woods sheath knife from the 1940's to the late 1990's or later.
Click to expand...
Not a 66, but this old Western has been a great camping knife. I wouldnt use it for regular battoning but I also wouldnt want to use most battoning knifes to fillet a fish, which the Western does pretty well, and I always have an axe or hatchet when I'm camping anyways. The modern equivilant is the Buck 105, which I think is even better. The point is alot more manageable for anything besides skinning and the straight, squared off spine is better for scaling a mess of Rockys.

RIMG0171 by C, on Flickr

RIMG0181 by https://www.flickr.com/photos/153108294@N08/, on Flickr
 
afishhunter said:
Puukko (to me includes Mora)
I like the classic Mora N°1 and N°2 with wood handle.
Available in Carbon Steel and Stainless
The Cold Steel Fin Bear (stainless only) is also good.

Easy to resharpen: just lay the bevel on the stone to keep the factory edge angle, and forget a micro bevel.
It usually takes just a couple swipes each side of the blade, followed by stropping.

If you want used, I would suggest a made in Colorado, Western L66 (leather washer handle) F66 (AKA "Black Beauty") or W66 (wood handle)
The Western __66 was THE deer woods sheath knife from the 1940's to the late 1990's or later.
Click to expand...
Since this is the traditional section, old school knives like the Mora Classic deserve mention......The Mora 1 or 2 is a good choice, but I'd go with finding a good older Erik Frost model on Ebay or where ever. Those laminated blades with the hard O1 core are really good. Mors Kochanski was a big fan of the Mora Classics also, and used them for years in his survival teachings.
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As for Nordic knives, Puukkot are really good, but for general camp use I'd go with a Lappinleuku style. Stromeng makes some bulletproof leuku style knives, and if you can find an older medium sized Marttiini Lappinleuku(~6") they are really good at general stuff, even food prep.
5" Stromeng
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6" Marttiini Lappinleuku
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With a couple puukkot
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None of these are terribly expensive either......
Also in the old school camping knife vein, the knives used by two of the best known survivalists that created the base of what we know today as camping and woodcraft, specifically Horace Kephart and George Washington Sears, are relevant. Both the Kephart and the Nessmuk are still popular today. Kephart carried a couple knives, a medium (~5") fixed blade of his design, and a small folding knife. Nessmuk carried a midsize fixed blade (~4 or 4 1/2") and a large two blade moose pattern folder. Both men used the knives extensively in their outdoor adventures and swore by them. Either fixed blade would be a good choice as they have both withstood the test of time.
Nessmuk on the left, Kephart on the right
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Suggest S Sitcomdad83 has good advice.

Those Mora knives are stunning vfm to say the least.

If you don’t know which way your camping interests will take you, a Mora is a solid companion for starters.

If you’re going to end up using a knife for clearing, de-branching and battoning you’ll need a stout full tang knife.

Depending on your hunting and cooking skills, you may need another with finer blade.

Have fun in the big outdoors 👍

Grab a coffee and 20mins - you'll possibly learn a few bits n pieces about camping knives from this vid - sure, there's very many vids out there, this one is plain talking. I have no interest in the knife featured, but the talk around it is highly instructive:

 
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I was always partial to the original Schrade Sharpfinger. You used to find them for $20.00 used. Now you hardly ever see them.

There must be a huge pile of them somewhere.
 
Really any type of knife if fine for camping. I find something with a 3 to 4” blade handy for food prep, but not too big for other tasks. An Opinel #8 will do pretty much everything you could ever need I think. I’m not sure where you live, but everywhere I have ever camped there have been enough dead branches laying around to use as firewood. A folding saw is far more useful than any type of knife for cutting them up, and weighs next to nothing.

Another good option would be a Swiss Army knife combined with a small fixed blade, like the Mora Companion.

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Edit:
Like an idiot I didn’t read the title - if you want a fixed blade specifically, go with a Mora or something similar. Nothing too big. If you are absolutely determined to chop at things, bring a machete with it too.
 
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Quality on a budget always makes me think of Morakniv. First rate blade, a good, albeit plastic handle, and a no-nonsense sheath. There are a lot of options, and you can get either carbon steel or stainless.
 
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