How tough is tough enough for a knife?

DaleW

DaleW

Joined
Dec 22, 2006
Messages
2,194
Y'know, there is a lot of talk about the toughness of a knife. In a survival situation, how big and tough does a knife need to be? I'm sure we all want the most service for the cost and weight, but what are you really going to do with a knife? When should the knife concept be dropped for more appropriate tools like saws, machetes, or axes? How much do we give up in toughness for the the utility of a knife for good cutting ability?

I see a few classes of knives:

*Smaller folders like SAK's. Let's say under 3" blades.
*Larger folders. Let's say 3.5" and up.
*Small fixed blades. Neck knives come to mind here.
*Medium sized fixed knives.
*Monster choppers. Let's say 7" and up.

Now I would say that in a perfect world, a small folder like an SAK and a fixed blade under 5" would do just about anything I would want to do with knives: cutting. Going beyond that size, it seems to me that it's time to switch to tools made more for chopping and splitting. IMHO of course.

So I'm out with in the woods with my knives and it hits the fan. What can I expect them to do?

*Making tinder
*Cutting small branches and saplings for fire and shelter-- let's say under 2" diameter-- cut and snap where needed.
*Cleaning small game
*Making repairs to clothing and foot gear.
*Making other tools from wood-- whittling.
*Batoning to split wood for tools, and fire-- I use 1/2 the length of the blade as a rule for the splitting utility of a knife. You can stretch it if you find the perfect wood-- dry old growth cedar with no knots (dream on).
*Basic self defense.

What do you expect from your knives? How far do you want push them vs. the possibility of breaking it and finding yourself standing in the cold rain with a handle in your hand and the broken blade stuck in a log? How much weight are you willing to allocate to cutting tools while hiking-- how big is big enough?
 
I'm in line with pit man. A good knife about 5" or so, at 3/16" is perfect. I don't ever see breaking my CRK Mtn II. It's 5.5" @ 3/16". Don't see the need for 1/4" thick knives, unless that's what floats your boat.
 
I don't think any one knife fits the profile. Some may argue, but you'll find most folks posting here have at a minimum two blade / combos with them in their field adventures. Each has their particular niche in the field, and the extent of the tasks they are intended to perform is usually the only major point of contention in most "what's the best" threads you read.

That being said, I'll take my Ranger RD7. :D
 
I was answering to his question about toughness. Never said this was the only knife I take when outdoors.:D
 
Given that I will typically have a folding saw and multitool, 4-5" of 3/16" steel should be plenty. A knife that thick, even if properly heat-treated SS instead of carbon steel, can pry some to speed work and should survive clumsiness caused by the stress of an emergency.

7" is sorta a "tweener." Get to 9" and I see a big increase in chopping ability -- out of proportion of 7 to 9. There is a big difference between my RD7 and RD9 (and the RD7 has an 8" blade when you count the choil section of the blade).
 
Im not one to use a knife as an axe so moras,saks and queens and marbles are plenty strong. A thick blade is tougher but to me a knife should slice and most quarter inch blades feel more like an axe.
 
A knife is tough enough when it stands up to whatever it has to do to get a guy home. If that means shaving tinder, cutting cord and slicing hide and meat then any quality, thin bladed knife is tough enough. Could be an SAK or a Mora. If it takes chopping, digging, prying or splitting then that SAK or Mora isn't going to feed the bulldog. Tough enough is relative to the situation.
 
woodsmoke said:
A knife is tough enough when it stands up to whatever it has to do to get a guy home. If that means shaving tinder, cutting cord and slicing hide and meat then any quality, thin bladed knife is tough enough. Could be an SAK or a Mora. If it takes chopping, digging, prying or splitting then that SAK or Mora isn't going to feed the bulldog. Tough enough is relative to the situation.
Click to expand...
Now if we could just buy that pocket gizmo that tells us -- while we're packin', to be sure -- what the situation is going to be? :D

I confess that a MORA is the most I need in 90% of the situations I have encountered outdoors 'cause my 2000 cuts just great. It's that 10% that makes me carry something stouter -- for the bulldog. :D
 
If the situation includes a bulldog. I think i`ll bring a shotgun.
But other than that.. Well.. I wouldn`t dig or pry with a knife. And i would carry an axe or a hatchet for chopping. Sure, you can baton with a knife, and it doesn`t have to be really thick for that actually. Aslong as you`re not batoning with a rock.
Each to their own, i`m going with thinner, shorter blades, rather than a really big brute. (For me, anything with a length greater than, say, 10 inches, is a brute.)

Reminds me of a Norwegian saying. "Short and thick are nice to lick." (Approximately translated anyway.)
 
I want toughness in proportion to the knife's size and intended purpose.

I expect most of us know how to treat a .070 thickness knife, partial tang, that's 4" long ..versus... a 7" knife, full tang, that is 3/16" or 1/4" thick 1095.

Not all knives are equal. There are probably a lot of 7" knives out there, but maybe only a handful that can stand the beating and bashing that I expect of a 7" knife, not abuse mind you, but heavy duty use, if and when necessary.

I expect more pounding-ability out of using a 24 oz. hammer than I do a 16 oz. hammer. But, I use an 8 oz. tack hammer quite differently than a 24 oz. framing hammer.
Kinda my same rationale with knives. The knife should be representative of it's size and purpose.
 
The original question was about a survival situation. Sure, if you knew that things were going to go badly you would pack an axe, maybe a shovel and a crowbar too. But survival situations sort of happen unannounced. If a knife was all you had and you had to pry, the knife is a pry bar. If you had to dig it is a shovel. I'll say it again. Tough enough means that at the end of it all you are safe and sound. Every situation is different. To generalize; it would hard to imagine a situation where an SRK, Becker 7, Rat 7 and the like would not hold up. 5-7 inches, 3/16 thick, good quality steel and heat treat, would be about tough enough in any situation.
 
You said all the things I would expect. My buck 192 would do most if not all of that, mabye the chopping 2" saplings is a bit far streched, but thats why I's had a saw or axe.
 
For SAKs and multi tools I judge toughness by their ability to perform their jobs such as the mechanism should not fall apart when using the screwdrivers as screwdrivers even on a tough screw. I have seen cheap SAK knockoffs that split apart doing what they were supposedly built to do. I have also seen Gerber multi tools go flying across the room when the pliers section was flipped out. That's why I choose real SAKs from Victorinox and my multi tools are Leathermans. Now for fixed blades 3-4in and under I expect them to be able to withstand reasonable force for say seperating bones during food prep but really I try to keep myself in check by limiting them to being pure cutters. Above 4inches and I get into what I would consider a reasonable length to baton on and that is what I want them to be able to withstand. 7in or better? I want it to at the very least to be able to support my weight as I will be the one doing the swinging and pulling and prying. I have had an "oppurtunity" to use a knife to pull myself out of a frozen pond. If that SOG Trident had failed there was a very good chance I would not be typing this. I recall one writer used to pound a blade into a tree sideways and step up on it for a quick strength test. While I would be fearfull of a sliced leg on a failed blade, I think that it was a reasonable test for a "survival" knife. Most knife tests you see published use a cheater bar to flex the knife in a vice. There is a good reason for this. It is very hard to get those kind of bends without that leverage and frankly I don't see it occuring when the knife is used in the field.
 
Bill Siegle said:
.... Above 4inches and I get into what I would consider a reasonable length to baton on and that is what I want them to be able to withstand. 7in or better? I want it to at the very least to be able to support my weight as I will be the one doing the swinging and pulling and prying. I have had an "oppurtunity" to use a knife to pull myself out of a frozen pond. If that SOG Trident had failed there was a very good chance I would not be typing this. I recall one writer used to pound a blade into a tree sideways and step up on it for a quick strength test. While I would be fearfull of a sliced leg on a failed blade, I think that it was a reasonable test for a "survival" knife. Most knife tests you see published use a cheater bar to flex the knife in a vice. There is a good reason for this. It is very hard to get those kind of bends without that leverage and frankly I don't see it occuring when the knife is used in the field.
Click to expand...

Great reply! This is the sort of thing that came to mind. I guess I could have asked, "what is the most extreme use you expect of a knife." Your answer covered what I was really thinking of--- something like sticking the blade in a crack in the rocks and pulling yourself up with it-- basically a prybar manuever and not one I would expect to find myself in, but the most extreme I could imagine.

Another writer thought cutting down a 2" sapling was asking a lot. I wouldn't try to cut all the way through, but rather cut enough to be able to start bending the tree over and snapping off the rest. That usually leaves a section of stringy wood to cut through. I could pull this off with a fairly small knife. If the knife is sharp, cutting, rather than chopping, some small sections out of a branch or sapling trunk will allow you to bend it too. A small lemon-wedge chunk out of opposing sides doesn't leave much to snap off. Vine maple is a little work as it is stringy and the bark will peel for a foot or more. Ringing the bark with a good cut and then a 45 degree slice towards the center will let you snap it off with some string bits to hack through. Alder is easier. If you can baton your blade, cutting out big enough wedges to down a small tree isn't too hard.

With a longer knife or machete, you could take down some respectable softwood trees-- 6"-8" diameter--- without a lot of effort. But then you have to buck them into smaller, more manageable chunks-- not much use in a survival situation unless it's the only choppable tree around. I would only take the effort and risk to cut down a big tree unless it was to get the branches for shelter building and smaller firewood. In my neck of the woods, if there's a big alder, there are little ones all around. The last thing you want to do is break your blade or drop a tree on yourself.
 
2dogs said:
Tougher than this.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=93078310109894243&q="KS+Productions"
Click to expand...

Dumb and dumber! Great knife, BAD techinque! I wonder how a splitting fro would work for skinning game? :)

I was going to try a Cold Steel True Flight throwing knife for this sort of batoning-- it has a thick spine and is made from 1055 carbon steel, which *should* take to this sort of abuse better, not to mention being dirt cheap. The Cold Steel knife could be a nice chopper and looks pretty easy to make scales for. It has two holes in just the right places. It's not light though.
 
Growing up one was not dressed unless they carried a pocketknife. Men, Ladies, boys or girls - simply were not dressed without a pocketknife in britches pocket, apron, jacket, purse...

How tough? Quality Steel properly heat treated.

I prefer (as I was raised) carbon steel 1095 or Chrome Vanadium. These take an edge, holds it, touches up easy and...cuts!

We did not have locking knives to speak of growing up, it was a long time before I saw a locking knives actually being used, much less carried.

Four Rules of Firearm Safety I was raised with.
Rules on how to properly use and care for a knife were also passed onto me.

Environment when matters get serious.

True for me.

Growing up a person carried a knife always, same knife did everything from opening a feed sack, cleaning game, whittling, making slingshots, cutting rope, string, opening boxes...you name it.

One never knows the where of when of next encounter - CRSam

Now recall we did not have plastic bags,plastic bottles for water/ soda easy-open pull tops on cans, microwave ovens, 911, cell phones...

Tornado comes thru, one is on their own. Case Barehead Trappers, Trappers and Trapper Jrs, Sodbusters , Sodbuster Jrs, Stockmans - with CV blades opening canned goods.
Spey blade is very good for this. Spey blades are very useful and most folks overlook this blade design.

Tinder and kindling made with these Old Pocketknive, with Carbon Steel/ CV blades.
One always seemed to have matches, a Zippo, on person, still these knives will throw a spark and get a fire going.
Canned goods, in Mason Jars were sometimes hard to open, find these the tornaqdo tossed "over there" and the top is rusted shut...use a pocketknife to open the lid.

Survival in a area no more than 15 minutes from the Big City...and folks survived and took care of themselves.

--

Canada.
Numerous one week to 3 week trips. I often carried a Case Trapper. Often times the Barehead /Slimline model (048) yellow handled with CV blades.
I have used /had for backup the Trapper, Trapper Jr, and Sodbuster (regular and Jr).

Did everything I needed. Guides often carried the same, just as they did a Old Hickory , small folding saw, or hand axe.

What did we need with can/bottle openers? We didn't! Now cleaning fish, getting peanut butter out , and such was what we really needed and did.
Channel Lock pliers have proven to be a huge tool for "survival" needs - great to attend to cooking utensils outdoors...

In the Big City. All heck breaks loose. Lose all power, Lockdown, Exiting a hotel with fire alarms going off...
I have used a pocketknife for a lot of "survival" needs.



Older returning student now, I cannot CCW on Campus - then again I was raised that a firearm is not the only tool - just one of many in a toolbox one should have.

My EDC is still a Barehead Trapper with CV blades 90% of the time with one of the others I mentioned above in rotation.

Matters get serious on campus...I know what a pocketknife will do.


--

Serious stuff can happen anytime - anywhere, and all one has is what they on person. Brain, Mindset and some training are the keys.

True.

Sales Rep was overcome, outnumbered and kidnapped. His concealed guns taken away, his knife found patted down and tossed into the truck of BGs car.
Idea was ride around with him in the trunk and later force him at gunpoint to open his business and his safes.

They missed a small quality penknife. He cut the wires to brake and turn signals and a Policeman pulled over that car.

Pretty serious situation in my book. It was not so much the brand, pattern of his knife as (1) he had a knife and more important (2) Brain , Mindset, and some training is what allowed him to survive.


Just my thoughts mind you.

Steve
 
pit man said:
How big is enough....3/16"....5"blade...high carbon steel....full tang !!!!
Click to expand...
Have to agree with Pit man here.
3/16 sounds about right
a 5 inch blade will reach most of the things, I would not expect to go smaller
full tang is a good idea too.
 
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