The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Not to distract anyone from all the squabbling, but this is what I've been using to clean game lately:
Just a comparatively plain old Buck Vanguard in S30V. I've been happy as a clam with it.
I have never seen a knife forum that has redefined what a knife is so completely. Nor have I ever seen such a divided group of individuals that worry so much about the performance of their knives. Then I laugh my butt off when I see something like this:
By cuddling with her cat, woman is found alive after more than three weeks lost in New Mexico forest
by Alex Ballingall on Monday, March 12, 2012 8:23am
As tales of survival go, this one is pretty impressive. A 41-year-old woman named Margaret Page went missing after she and her cat Miya veered off a hiking trail and got lost in the Gila National Forest in New Mexico. As for supplies, she had a bag of pretzels, some cat food and a sleeping bag.
That was more than three weeks ago.
With whipping winds and temperatures dipping below freezing, Page managed to stay alive by huddling with Miya every night in her blue sleeping bag. When rescuers finally found her, Page was emaciated and weak, but well-hydrated. Apparently, she was able to survive on water from a nearby creek.
The cat, meanwhile, remained relatively lively thanks to the spoils of its daily hunting. “Her cat was in better shape than she was,” Marc Levesque of the New Mexico State Police Search and Rescue told the Associated Press.
As her rescuers carried her away to a waiting ambulance, Page’s main concern was the well-being of her cat Miya. Without its body heat and camaraderie, she might never have left that New Mexico forest.
I would be willing to bet she never saw a zombie (much less killed one), chopped wood to make a shelter, split/batoned wood for a fire, tied her knife to a stick for a spear for hunting/fishing/protection, lit a fire with a glob shooting fire steel struck by her high carbon knife, used the special indent on the scales of a knife as a friction fire spindle pivot, punched holes into a car hood or any of the other things we anticipate we might need should we wander off trail.
And she survived in freezing weather for three frickin' weeks!!!
I would never post those comments in another area of this site. If I did, no doubt there would be a lot of hurt feelings. Some prize utility of a knife much, much more than any refinement. And besides, who really knows when their knife may be called to duty for the tasks mentioned above?
Although I am not a huge fan of Randall knives, I certainly love some of their designs. Time tested, refined, and their knives run the gamut of useful and effective hunting knives all the way to that gorgeous fighter you just bought. And never, ever have I heard of a Randall knife failing when being used, even used hard, as a knife.
As noted here, these are two distinctly different companies with two distinctly different audiences.
Robert
P.S.: I'll be watching for the review...
Of course--the whole point would be to try to make as close to an apples to apples comparison as possible within the parameters of the experiment. This is all just something I'd be interested in seeing though. Doesn't mean it'll ever happen.
I agree and KNOW that you're right about posting this in other forums. I've posted that you don't really need a knife for survival in the W&SS sub-forum and was jumped on for it. People love their knives so much they ignore the reality that there are thousands of people who survive just fine with a SAK classic in weather these weekend knife warriors wouldn't even go into their own backyard in. I'm going to keep posting though. People need a dose of reality whether they like it or not.
