This weekend I managed to try out my new HEST in the field. So far I had only fooled around with it at home, so I wasn't able to properly use it. Until this weekend, this is what I thought about it:
I shot a few pics of it at home:
From the pics, you can see it fits very nicely in my hand, and the pry bar doesn't seem to get in the way. I actually even liked the bottle opener, that works very well as an "anchor point" for my thumb - doing so I can have more control over the blade.
I was really excited about the knife, so Saturday morning at 7:00 am I was out of the house with the MiniMe and we went to a city park that's about 600 m from my house. It's a huge place, and there I could use the knife all I wanted and wouldn't be bothered - as long as I didn't try to make a fire. Unfortunately though, I couldn't make many action shots, because it's hard to shoot a pic while chopping something. And my "exploration partner" is far from good with a digital camera.
"Daddy, what's this on the handle? It smells funny".
Here I received some remarks about proper blade safety.
And of course he had to try out the knife on his walking stick. And no, it's impossible for him to do anything without him biting his tongue like that
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I was really excited about the knife, so Saturday morning at 7:00 am I was out of the house with the MiniMe and we went to a city park that's about 600 m from my house. It's a huge place, and there I could use the knife all I wanted and wouldn't be bothered - as long as I didn't try to make a fire. Unfortunately though, I couldn't make many action shots, because it's hard to shoot a pic while chopping something. And my "exploration partner" is far from good with a digital camera.
"Daddy, what's this on the handle? It smells funny".
Here I received some remarks about proper blade safety.
And of course he had to try out the knife on his walking stick. And no, it's impossible for him to do anything without him biting his tongue like that
.Seriously though, I was able to use the knife not extensively, of course, but enough to give me a good idea of how it would handle in the bush. I made a walking stick for me, from a fallen branch and did some batoning also. For delicate work, like shaping the end of my son's "walking stick" (he didn't settle down until I made something for him "just like daddy's") it works flawlessly, specially using the bottle opener as jimping.
But for more aggressive use, like chopping, the pry bar does get in the way. For batoning, since my hand was only guiding the handle it's a non-issue, but for chopping it did bite my hand. It's not something that makes the knife impractical to use, but you have to always remember about how you position your hand. Maybe this is because the HEST is after all a survival blade, and not really a camp or bush knife, so I guess I can't fault it for that. I wanted it for my grab bag, a good small GP knife that has theses extra features (pry bar + hollow handle), so for that it's great.
In terms of cutting power it's flawless, it came razor sharp and after all the use it dulled a bit, but was easily brought back to razor status with a few passes on my Victorinox sharpening steel. But in terms of general performance in the bush I guess the ESEE-4 or of course the 6 would be much better choices.
But for more aggressive use, like chopping, the pry bar does get in the way. For batoning, since my hand was only guiding the handle it's a non-issue, but for chopping it did bite my hand. It's not something that makes the knife impractical to use, but you have to always remember about how you position your hand. Maybe this is because the HEST is after all a survival blade, and not really a camp or bush knife, so I guess I can't fault it for that. I wanted it for my grab bag, a good small GP knife that has theses extra features (pry bar + hollow handle), so for that it's great.
In terms of cutting power it's flawless, it came razor sharp and after all the use it dulled a bit, but was easily brought back to razor status with a few passes on my Victorinox sharpening steel. But in terms of general performance in the bush I guess the ESEE-4 or of course the 6 would be much better choices.
The weather was turning, and since I was with MiniMe, at about 10:00am I decided to head back to the parking lot and finish our expedition. We both had a great time and it was very nice to try out the HEST :thumbup:.
have you thought about using a tripod for your action shots?
. I have it on a large TEK-LOK inside of belt and works great I was able to resheath without looking the first day. I am considering convexing the edge aswell, maybe after I have convexed my Izula.
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