Fixed blade testing - Camp Chores

Rasco

Rasco

Joined
Jan 3, 2014
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I'm gonna head out on a little overnighter next week and between me and my brothers, we're gonna be bringing almost a dozen fixed blades and putting them to work.
Gonna be chopping smaller trees, stripping limbs, splitting logs and feathersticks feathersticks feathersticks!

Here's most of what will be coming out with us:
(unpictured: Mora Bushcrafter, a few others)
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Just the big dogs
(ScrapYard Dogfather, Kershaw Outcast, Kershaw Camp 10, CRKT Chance-In-Hell Machete, Cold Steel ridiculously long bowie machete)
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Just the smaller ones
(Bark River Bravo Necker II, Blind Horse Bushcrafter scandi, GSO 4.1, GSO 5.1)
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Pics, vids, impressions and reviews as soon as we're home.


Any requests? Anything you'd particularly like to see me do with any of these while I'm in the woods?
Specifically, the Cold Steel machete...? :D (I'm probably going to be hurling it at trees all weekend)

Any 2 you'd particularly like to see go head-to-head on wood tasks? GSO 4.1 Vs 5.1? Outcast Vs Camp 10?
 
I'd be interested in seeing the GSO 4.1 and 5.1 going head to head. I'm trying to decide between the two or what one to get first:) Have fun and looking forward to the reviews..
 
Thanks Supertac. Are you in the Sac area? I think we're gonna head up somewhere off Hwy 88. Bear River / Salt Springs, something like that.
 
I would like to hear about the BHK. I have two Battle Horse Knives and I like them very much. Since it is your only scandi it should be interesting.
 
Well, I'll start by saying I had a bit of bad luck.
Out here in CA, we're experiencing a serious lack of water. Should mean that everything is nice and dry right? As it happens, the night before I rolled up to the woods, Sunday night, it rained in Northern CA. This is exceptionally unlucky because in the last year, you can count the number of rainy days on one hand.
So maybe I should make camping plans every weekend and solve CA's drought problems...:rolleyes:

Anyway, the wood was still nice and wet from being rained on just 12 hours or so before we started trying to work with it.
I did what I could given the circumstances, but the feathersticks pretty much sucked. The wet pine shavings were like paper, and wouldn't really form good "curly q's".
It was also a nightmare to split and I got pretty frustrated after a while.

The big choppers all performed up to expectation. Not much to report as far as chopping goes. The Kershaw Outcast, Camp 10 and CRKT Chance-In-Hell machete all had a nice convex edge on them courtesy of the WSKO, and all of them took massive chunks out. Went pretty fast, I didn't have time to get pics, but you all know what a large knife chopping wood looks like.

Back at camp, the trees got stripped of limbs and sawed into logs. Again, all the big dogs performed fine de-limbing the trees. I'd say the Dogfather, with all it's weight, was probably one of the best at this task. The logs were sawed using the old "Sawvivor" from TrailBlazer. It has yet to fail me and just tears through wood and it weighs almost nothing, so I always bring it.

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Given the wet nature of the wood, I figured the Dogfather would be best for splitting, but I also tried the Camp 10. The Dogfather's thickness made it an easy choice, but I think the coating may have held it up a bit as it tried to power through those logs. In the end, it was really only effective on some of the medium sized logs. And the smaller ones, the GSO 4.1 and 5.1 were more than capable of splitting. But again, the wood was terrible and sticky and just a mess to work with.

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The Camp 10 did just about as well, but some logs were just too ridiculously knotty to get through.

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This one tweaked the Camp 10 pretty good, but it went back straight once I got it out.

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We ended up just saying "F*¢k it" on the splitting and burned the big logs whole.

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I didn't get any good pics of me splitting the smaller logs with the GSO 4.1 or the 5.1, but the 4.1 produced all the small wood I used for my EmberLit camp stove.
Between the 4.1 and the BHK Bushcrafter, I'd give the advantage to the 4.1. They both split pretty much equally, but the 4.1 seemed to do better making shavings from uneven wood, and the 3V kept it's edge much better than the O1 in my opinion.

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I see why the GSO line from Survive! Knives has such a loyal following. These knives perform.
I regret I didn't find a task for the Bark River Bravo Necker II, but next time for sure. I had more knives than I could handle on this trip :p

The GSO 4.1 has a permanent spot on my chest rig. It's such a great all-arounder.

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Next outing I'll be taking less blades and focusing more on testing 3 or 4 knives rather than a dozen or so.
Also, next outing I'll be putting the GSO 5.1 head to head against the "Ambush Alpha", so that should be interesting...
 
Favorite Blade said:
I would like to hear about the BHK. I have two Battle Horse Knives and I like them very much. Since it is your only scandi it should be interesting.
Click to expand...

The wood was not the best to work with, with any knife, but I found the O1 steel on the BHK Bushcrafter to lose it's edge faster than the 3V of the Survives
The thick blade split wood well, but I saw no advantage over the GSO 4.1 when it came to shavings.

I'd give the edge to the GSO 4.1
 
If conditions were a little better, I would have been more enthusiastic about getting more pics and documenting the process, but even the pine needles were wet.
How long does it take pine needles to dry out? A day?!?!
 
Looks like a nice overall trip besides the weather. That's a really nice spot you guys have next to the lake. Where was it up 88? I've been out to White Rock and backpacked into the upper lakes which are awesome. I'm still waiting to find a Survive 5.1, but everytime I see one on the sale forums it sells within minutes. Sounds like it's one of your favorite knives thus far. Unfortunately, I had to settle for a Ratmandu in Infi, until Survive catches up with demand:)
 
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