How much knife do we really need ?

It may well be that we don't need more than a SAK or Gossman PSK.

Otzi the iceman had a tiny little 1.5" stone knife and he seemed to do fine in the Alps before he was killed. But then again, I've noticed my favorite kitchen knife is a 9" Gyuto (chef's knife). And that is in the comfort of my house. I have little paring knives, I just don't use 'em much. Big knives can just do more. Out on the trail or in the camp, I like a little SAK and a 4-5" knife. I have a couple of bigger knives that are nice to carry on short trips where weight isn't a big consideration. I've gone on multiday walks with just a SAK. It can be done.

Need is mighty relative.

I think it's fun to see how little a knife we can get by with: "OK, what can I do with an Xacto blade?" But why not plan for a little comfort? A stout folder like a Buck 110 or a fixed Bushcrafter is a really nice tool to have...anywhere.
 
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Look at the older knives carried by woodsmen of yore (That may be the first time I've used the word 'yore' in a sentence.). Nessies, Keppies, Russell Green Rivers, and Marbles. Some older guys just carried smaller Jacks and slip-joints I suppose. But my grandfathers carried "belt knives" when they were out hunting or logging or canoeing. Preference? Maybe. But I suspect there was some practicality there too.
 
WILLIAM.M said:
I just enjoy bigger knives.........

I could get by with a SAK or a 3" Blade---but since they weigh so little I bring one with me anyway---but I trust my bigger knives more.

I just like the feeling of a 6" or longer blade with me when I'm out on the woods.
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I could not agree more :thumbup:
 
I think just about every task I've ever encountered in the bush could've been accomplished with a Mora or an SAK. 95% of the time I'm out I'm carrying a 4"ish fixed blade, folding saw, and an SAK. Thats not to say I don't enjoy a nice axe, or bigger blade, but I've never had a huge need for one, only ever carried em for fun. Heck, I've probably never really needed the length of a 4" blade, but it is nice to have for batonning, and it's a comfortable length for me.
 
I'm not opposed to large, heavy knives, I'm just not sure what real use they are, or what exactly people are doing with them that isn't either playing around or something better done with a different tool. I've carried large knives and felt good doing it. I just found I wasn't actually using them very much. Or at all. Their size, while handy for a few things, was detrimental to most of the tasks I need a knife for. Sure you can cary two (or six) knives with you, but for me it just didn't make sense to cary a large knife that I seldom used. Frankly, I got tired of lugging the damn thing around. The largest knife I've actually found to be useful is a Enzo Camper. Five inches of blade and a lightweight, almost delicate construction.

A small saw processes firewood infinitely better than a heavy knife, and weights less, and is safer to use. If you really need to chop, you're better off with an axe or a parang or a brush hook.

The desire for a beefy knife "just in case" doesn't make any sense to me logically, though I can see the emotional drive. In 35 years of using knives I can only recall breaking one blade, and that was on a delicate slip joint. I just don't see any quality knife being properly used breaking in the field.

That a person who's really "out in the bush" is somehow going to need a mega-knife doesn't make any sense to me, either. I understand the argument that because a person is remote and without access to a lot of tools they will have to make their knife do double-duty, but I'm confused about where that duty requires the sharpened leaf spring off a heavy truck. Considering that said person is remote from medical care, about the LAST thing they should be doing is exerting so much force on a cutting tool that they risk breaking a normally constructed knife.

There have been times (usually when de-limbing saplings) that I've wished for a larger knife, but the amount of time I'd use it doesn't justify carrying it. Aside from processing tinder or splitting very small pieces of wood for a cooking fire I don't use a knife for my firewood. There are better tools for that. People who believe you can't keep a fire going without splitting wood don't need a heavier knife, they need a better understanding of fire building.

I'm not criticizing anyone who chooses a large knife. I completely get the fun factor they offer. I just don't see the fun trumping the weight. And I don't see how a knife that is overbuilt for daily tasks is somehow going to become handy just because a person is a hundred miles from the nearest walmart.
 
CRKT Drifter in the pocket for 95% of what I need and a 4" FB in my pack just in case. Once I obtain a good sheath system for the FB it will see more use. I have a multi tool the never gets used and is jsut dead weight in the pack, but I like the reassurance I can use it for equipment repair.
 
Over the years I've found that a 4" blade pretty much covers most if not all of my needs.
 
sutured said:
The largest knife I've actually found to be useful is a Enzo Camper. Five inches of blade and a lightweight, almost delicate construction.

A small saw processes firewood infinitely better than a heavy knife, and weights less, and is safer to use. If you really need to chop, you're better off with an axe or a parang or a brush hook.
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I agree with much of what you said. But it seems to me you are giving a fairly broad range of answers to the "How much do we really need?" question. I heard everything from a delicate slippie to a brush hook ("some call it a sling blade"), and maybe a saw. A parang is not exactly a little knife.

My argument is that while one can get by--survive--with little more than a SAK, or maybe no knife at all, a 4" Bushcrafting blade like the Terrasaur or Polaris is very handy to have on a simple camping trip. Does one "really need" such a big knife? Maybe not. But in cold weather, maybe in damp conditions, a knife might make a big difference in how quickly one can get a fire going. A saw can too, so can an axe. But a knife is more versatile than a saw and easier to carry than an axe.

I once found myself sleeping out in the open, no tent, in bear country. Tracks were evident but old, coyotes were howling and screeching in the darkness: a great woodsy night. I'm generally not worried about bears, but alone and in the dark without shelter, my mind began to think about the possibilities. If you haven't smelled bear up close, I can tell you that you are likely to have a very primal response to being within smelling distance of one. I was comforted by the fact that I had a 6" knife with me. I know that is a fairly ridiculous thought, maybe 'emotion' is a better word (and a 12" Bowie would have been even better :p), nevertheless, I was glad I had that big knife with me. Ridiculous, but there it was.

To finish the story, I slept cold but well, and I can't remember using the knife to cut anything. I can't even recall opening a pack of gum with it. (I had a small stove to use to make tea; I didn't even make a fire.) So how much knife did I really need? Uhm....none. But I didn't regret carrying it.
 
I was once in the Congo and we made a shelter for a bivouac, but we struggled without a machete. A machete would have been very, very useful that night. In that case we "needed" 18" of something sharp.

Once again, we got by with what we did have (can't remember exactly what that was; it was back in '76). So I don't know what 'need' really entails. I just know it's better to have and not 'need', than it is to wish you'd brought a machete.
 
I think where you live and work influances your choice more than anything. I am in BFE and hunt and trap there as well. We have a lot of water and not very close to help if you need it so my choice has mostly been a stout sharp dependable knife approximately 4-6" long blade. I always have a pocket knife sobthat goes without saying like not having to say you are wearing clothes. Between the two my bases are covered well. I actually had to rely on my knife earlier this year when I tore my ACL in half and was too far into the woods to drag myself out. I had not told anyone where I was hunting or when i would be back. I used the fixed blade to cut a sapling for a leg splint to stabilized it so I could crawl on the ground till a got a cell signal then direct a buddy to where I was. I low crawled dragged 200 yards before I final got a useable signal without a stout dependable blade and ems knowlegde it could have ended in hypothermia and then death.

Here is the blade I carry now.

Untitled-6.jpg
 
You technically dont need a knife,you can flint knap to get a sharp edge,make a spear etc. but a knife makes life so much easier and ill be honest it just makes me happy on a primal level to carry a large,thick sharp as hell blade anytime im in the wild or anywhere with anything resembling a forest,thats why i got a 40oz 20 inch khukuri that replaces a medium sized axe in chopping and a prybar in durability.
 
I was trained by old men to clean deer with a small knife. After cutting up countless dozens I kinda got away from that.

Did I really want to be elbow deep in the chest cavity of a deer with a 2 inch blade? Would a longer blade allow me to reach in rather than go in? The answer is yes and I have gone to longer blades over the years. That isn't to say it can't be done with a smaller blade.

Smaller blades have there merits as well. But more often than not I wished I had a larger blade when I was working with a 2 inch blade.

If I had a machete I would likely wish I had a smaller blade. So maybe the task at hand is what drives it? I would lean toward the large side though. I can only imagine that if I was lost in the woods I would not say..."damn I wish I had a pen knife instead of this bowie".
 
I generally prefer combinations of tools to suite my need and have gone astray from a one knife for everything mindset. So in the grand scheme of things, I prefer a small knife that is paired with other wood processing tools like a take down saw and something to split my wood with (axe, short machete, mid-sized knife ect). When it comes to the common tasks that knives are handy for, cutting a piece of thread going astray from your nylon pants, opening up the stupid sauce pack that comes with your ramen noodles, doing some whittling here and there, making fuzzies. A small knife (<3") is not only functional, but best suited for that kind of thing.

When it comes to wood processing for a sustained campfire, the small knives just never seem enough. Even paired with a decent saw, a 3" blade just isn't going to split the wood that I'm likely to cut, whereas a 4" and 5" will do far better. I know, you can whittle a wedge. Even though you are capable of doing this, I don't know of anybody who actually goes out with the task in mind of making a campfire in a place where picking up sticks from the ground isn't an option, taking a <3" blade with them and then go on whittling wedges and splitting them. This is a case of an ounce saved means an hour's time to punch in.

Even more extreme would be a situation of winter camping. The time I went out with Rick last year he punched through the ice in a marshy area and soaked his boots and leg up to mid-shin or so. This happened around noon or so. We had to return to camp ASAP (about 40 min walk back), build a decent fire to allow him to dry off all his gear and dry out his boot liners. This is kind of an important thing to do because the temperature was going to drop to -20F that night. Fortunately we had an 18" take down buck saw and axe to help us along. It took a lot of wood and big wood (8" rounds quartered up) to get his gear all dried up. In winter, darkness falls at about 5:00 pm. That meant we had about 4 h to secure all our wood for Rick's sake as well as serve the rest of the night. Honestly, you can't dick around this situation without the right tools. Three guys with little knives would have been a disaster no matter how many skills you possess. Some situations demand you be prepared and if wood preparation is integral to being prepared, then I'm going to want the tools to do it.

If I'm backpacking in the summer and have an complete survival package on my back, then the little knife is perfect.
 
Ramil839 said:
You technically dont need a knife,you can flint knap to get a sharp edge,make a spear etc.
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Aside from those skilled in flint knapping, which is a grand and capable skills, not many people are actually able to do this. If you haven't tried it before it is a worthwhile thing to do to try your hand at knapping. Most people soon realize that this is not something that you can pick up by reading a book about it. Its a long and involved skill and for some even a worthy skill to attain. Besides this, even the most skilled flint knappers out there may have trouble finding that nice nodule to work up their make-shift knife. North American natives establish long and wide trade cultures so that they can deliver materials here and there. There are some places where flint or an equivalent rock material is easy to be had in stream beds, but many, many other places there is no similar alternative. So, this is a skill set that can help you in a very restricted set of locations and I would hazard to guess not even in the majority of ones.

Ramil839 said:
but a knife makes life so much easier
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Yep....:D
 
it seems the topic is more about weight than knife size...a 12" tram machete weighs less than a lot of 4" knives with stouter blades. I'm all for the 12" lightweight machete AND either a simple multi tool or a SAK. that 12" blade will do a hell of a lot and the SAK/multitool can handle the rest :D but that's just me.
 
Rotte.... thank you for writing yore historic sentence on my favorite forum. I enjoyed it :)

While I'd feel uneasy not having access to bigger blades on a long-term basis, I find that I can get away with using a knife with a blade around 2.5 inches long a lot of the time.

For hunting and butchering I prefer to have a straight blade at least 4 inches long. I have used knives around this size I've made myself, but lately I've had good service from inexpensive purchased blades such as my Frost's Clipper or Cold Steel Finn Bear.

One place I like to have a sharp, longer straight blade is when I'm spending time on boats. When I have had to cut a big rope or a tangled mass of cord in a hurry, a smaller blade - no matter how expensive or sharp - never seems to work as well as a long sharp knife with a decent handle.

Having said all that, when I'm out in the bush I like to carry my 10" Tramontina. It is light and versatile, and it can hack through things rapidly in comparison to my pocketknife.

Here's a wee story. Some years back I had been hiking in a coastal area. I was wearing my nice leather tramping boots and I had a home-made sheath knife with me. I've given that knife away now, but it had a blade about 4" long made from an old blade from a sawmill. Anyway... I walked down off the hillside through a neighbor's property and he asked me if I'd go with him to help him retrieve his set net. Normally I like to wear all-terrain sandals when boating... and I certainly didn't want to get my leather boots in the salt water. I didn't want to go bare-footed in case I had to end up walking or manhandling the boat as the rocks and shells in the area can be quite sharp. But I agreed to help. The shore we were on was sheltered, but the net - set maybe a mile away - was set just a few yards off a lee shore and the wind and waves were a bit rough.

I dunno why, but the guy operating the boat approached the net from upwind. Within moments he'd drifted over the net, and the outboard propeller picked it up and wound it tightly around the propellor shaft, completely stalling the motor. The boat owner jumped over the side to try to stop the boat getting washed onto the jagged rocks. I seem to recall he was wearing gumboots (wellington). Anyway, the boat (only about 15 feet long) bowled him over. He recovered and hung on to the boat. I asked him where his knife was so we could hack the net off the prop. He didn't have one (!!!!!!:confused:!!!!!!). So there was no choice but to use my knife. I jumped in to the tide and attacked the net with my hunting knife. The stretched and bundled monofilament nylon was very hard to cut though, but I got there eventually. I'm glad I didn't get tangled in the net myself, and I'm glad I didn't drop my knife into the murky water. We managed to drag the net into the boat and return to our sheltered bay - cold and wet of course. Shortly afterward I gave the guy a knife in a pvc pipe sheath to keep on his boat. And there wasn't a single sodding fish in the net.
 
coote said:
Rotte.... thank you for writing yore historic sentence on my favorite forum. I enjoyed it :)

While I'd feel uneasy not having access to bigger blades on a long-term basis, I find that I can get away with using a knife with a blade around 2.5 inches long a lot of the time.

For hunting and butchering I prefer to have a straight blade at least 4 inches long. I have used knives around this size I've made myself, but lately I've had good service from inexpensive purchased blades such as my Frost's Clipper or Cold Steel Finn Bear.

One place I like to have a sharp, longer straight blade is when I'm spending time on boats. When I have had to cut a big rope or a tangled mass of cord in a hurry, a smaller blade - no matter how expensive or sharp - never seems to work as well as a long sharp knife with a decent handle.

Having said all that, when I'm out in the bush I like to carry my 10" Tramontina. It is light and versatile, and it can hack through things rapidly in comparison to my pocketknife.

Here's a wee story. Some years back I had been hiking in a coastal area. I was wearing my nice leather tramping boots and I had a home-made sheath knife with me. I've given that knife away now, but it had a blade about 4" long made from an old blade from a sawmill. Anyway... I walked down off the hillside through a neighbor's property and he asked me if I'd go with him to help him retrieve his set net. Normally I like to wear all-terrain sandals when boating... and I certainly didn't want to get my leather boots in the salt water. I didn't want to go bare-footed in case I had to end up walking or manhandling the boat as the rocks and shells in the area can be quite sharp. But I agreed to help. The shore we were on was sheltered, but the net - set maybe a mile away - was set just a few yards off a lee shore and the wind and waves were a bit rough.

I dunno why, but the guy operating the boat approached the net from upwind. Within moments he'd drifted over the net, and the outboard propeller picked it up and wound it tightly around the propellor shaft, completely stalling the motor. The boat owner jumped over the side to try to stop the boat getting washed onto the jagged rocks. I seem to recall he was wearing gumboots (wellington). Anyway, the boat (only about 15 feet long) bowled him over. He recovered and hung on to the boat. I asked him where his knife was so we could hack the net off the prop. He didn't have one (!!!!!!:confused:!!!!!!). So there was no choice but to use my knife. I jumped in to the tide and attacked the net with my hunting knife. The stretched and bundled monofilament nylon was very hard to cut though, but I got there eventually. I'm glad I didn't get tangled in the net myself, and I'm glad I didn't drop my knife into the murky water. We managed to drag the net into the boat and return to our sheltered bay - cold and wet of course. Shortly afterward I gave the guy a knife in a pvc pipe sheath to keep on his boat. And there wasn't a single sodding fish in the net.
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Good story Coote, I've gut more than one gill net out of props in the past. Getting through that lead line can be a bitch can't it? RC-3 this summer got me and Joe out of a similar pickle this summer.
 
Kgd wrote: "Getting through that lead line can be a bitch can't it"

Yep. I consider myself to be quite an experienced knife user, but when it comes to cutting through tightly wound cord I don't always feel confident of quick success. No matter how sharp the knife, it often seems to bind in the cut. I don't like serrated blades much and I would not choose one for the knife I carry every day. But I can't help think that a good quality serrated blade might be best for an urgent rope problem.

Over the years my family has spent a lot of time on an island in a relatively remote area. We use a lot of cordage for mooring the boat, fishing, tying down loads, and occasionally hauling logs. I'm yet to find the knife that will easily cut through decent sythetic cordage. The picture below shows me working on a new mooring rope.

Sanrenmu1.jpg
 
coote said:
Kgd wrote: "Getting through that lead line can be a bitch can't it"

Yep. I consider myself to be quite an experienced knife user, but when it comes to cutting through tightly wound cord I don't always feel confident of quick success. No matter how sharp the knife, it often seems to bind in the cut. I don't like serrated blades much and I would not choose one for the knife I carry every day. But I can't help think that a good quality serrated blade might be best for an urgent rope problem.

Over the years my family has spent a lot of time on an island in a relatively remote area. We use a lot of cordage for mooring the boat, fishing, tying down loads, and occasionally hauling logs. I'm yet to find the knife that will easily cut through decent sythetic cordage. The picture below shows me working on a new mooring rope.

Sanrenmu1.jpg
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I know you said you didnt like serrated but I've heard a lot of stories involving seat belts or rope,serrated knifes are x10 better for cutting rope than a straight edge,one of the main reasons why all my edc blades are serrated.I think that this knife will be perfect for your needs.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_8IcO1ehwe...AAFG0/xVzQN3k8Q6c/s1600/Spyderco+Civilian.jpg
 
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