Is this a useful knife design?

Insipid Moniker said:
I'm honestly puzzled why you think someone couldn't get by just fine with a SAK as their only knife. Dead serious, here, what would you need to do that you couldn't?
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Merely entering the woods with a Vic Farmer is like signing your own death warrant.

:D

Hey, I'm sure people go into the woods with that MTech Xtreme Bat-a-rang or whatever it is. Maybe they use that grind section near the handle for something.

But even if they don't, the knife is useful, it performs a function...people bought it becuase they liked it, they thought it was sexy, it makes them happy.
 
jc57 said:
Next you are going to try to tell us all we need is an Opinel and a Squirt! What are you, anti-spending-money-on-lots-of-excess-stuff or something? I mean, what if somehow, I was plucked up from my urban home in the southern US and dropped off in the Alaskan wilderness unexpectedly. How do you think I am going to survive with just a SAK?

But with that big honking knife from the OP, I'd be sitting in a recliner watching TV in about 30 minutes in the 2-story home I made, eating bear stew and living high.
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I am below the tree line so I don't use the Opinel and Squirt combo.

Hey, I like spending money on knives. I like spending money on big honking knives I will never have the opportunity to use!

My point is IF I only considered sheer "application" as the "use" of a knife, then, for me, and I bet many, if not most of us, a SAK would suffice.

But that is not the case, at all.

The fact that it is not the case is why we are here talking about it. We buy knives to cut stuff, and we buy knives because they give us a warm fuzzy.
 
Good point about the tree-line. I actually thought about that after I posted. Down here in the lower elevations, I don't have a need for an Opinel myself, though I do carry a Squirt P4 in my laptop bag.

I bow to your superior intellect, sir. Well played.
 
Yea but can it do this? :rolleyes: you have to be able to sharpen a pencil in the wilderness, how are you gonna fill out the sudoku squares?

screw-carved-into-lead-of-a-pencil.jpg


p
 
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jc57 said:
Good point about the tree-line. I actually thought about that after I posted. Down here in the lower elevations, I don't have a need for an Opinel myself, though I do carry a Squirt P4 in my laptop bag.

I bow to your superior intellect, sir. Well played.
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No superior intellect! I just trust and follow the advice of others here! Squirt/Opinel is overkill below the tree line, apparently from what I have read here.

The funny thing about Vic SAKs. I EDC one. And I hate it. It's the most boring, unsexy knife on the planet. It's like kissing your sister.

But the darn things ARE functional. Too functional to not carry.

Carrying that MTech would be way more fun though. Wu-shaaa!
 
marcinek said:
The funny thing about Vic SAKs. I EDC one. And I hate it. It's the most boring, unsexy knife on the planet. It's like kissing your sister.

But the darn things ARE functional. Too functional to not carry.
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Damn straight. I wish they made me look more like James Bond, or McGyver or such, but I still just look like the St. Bernard with a rum barrel around its neck.

I'd have no problem bailing into the woods of the PNW with nothing more than one of my SAK's. Nothing I can't get done that needs done with one.

That MTech tracker thing? I wouldn't waste the weight or the pack space.

If you want to know how useful the Tracker design is, take a stroll over to the TOPS knives website and go to the Tracker page. There is a link to a pdf "instruction manual" that shows the use for each surface of the knife. Is it useful? Sure looks like it, but I can get along without the chopping, scraping, drilling and sawing that it can perform.
 
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IMHO compound grinds area just a latest fad like ex: American "tactical" tanto's, "Rambo" hollow handle survival knives, etc :thumbdn:
As a rule, majority of these designs are poorly designed/made and are terrible for actual use. Obviously, there are few well made exceptions that actually perform very well, ex: single piece milled out hollow handle knife, etc.

In the OP example of tool that is trying to be "jack of all trades, but master of none"! It would be poor performer as either dedicated "fighter or survival" knife!

I can see how compound grind could be possibly useful on 7"+ medium to large fixed blade knife to be used solely in the woods, if the design is done right, possibly compound grind on CS Kukri!

BUT it is totally useless on 3"-4" folder to be used 99% of the time in the city!!!!!!:confused: It's too short to take advantage of either grind, you can't chop with it or slice!:thumbdn: If you need pry bar than sharpened screw driver would be better choice, than small folder!

PS SAK's are OK BUT not the best knives, because of non-locking blades which are not safe and handle is not very ergonomically comfortable to me, I prefer my Leatherman Wave with locking blades/saw and better handle. After couple of my SAK's had scales break apart or fall off, I no longer use them.

Both of them I think off as multi-tools rather than knives, if I need to cut something I reach for actual knives BM, ZT etc. When somebody asks me how many knives do I carry on me, I don't include multi-tools in that count! Very rarely, when I don't have on me my EDC would I use multi-tools knife blade for cutting.
 
Wolf7 said:
PS SAK's are OK BUT not the best knives, because of non-locking blades which are not safe ...
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Not safe how? I have yet to be cut by one where it is the knife's fault, and it seems the "locking blade" crowd is always worried and going on about about lock failure...now that seems like an unsafe thing that can be blamed on a knife.
 
Reswob said:
Nope. Not even close. You couldn't be more wrong. No pocket clip, no one-hand open/close. Don't get me wrong, a SAK is great for the other tools, but as a knife? Laughable.
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Wolf7 said:
PS SAK's are OK BUT not the best knives, because of non-locking blades which are not safe and handle is not very ergonomically comfortable to me, I prefer my Leatherman Wave with locking blades/saw and better handle. After couple of my SAK's had scales break apart or fall off, I no longer use them.

if I need to cut something I reach for actual knives BM, ZT etc.
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For sure, I've certainly never been able to cut anything with a Swiss Army Knife. I mean, I sharpen them and sharpen them but every time the blade comes into contact with whatever I'm trying to cut it's as if the two things completely repel each other. I always have to set everything down, put the SAK away, and go fetch my Ka-Bar before any cutting commences. It's especially a problem when I'm in the woods and the Ka-Bar is at home; that's when I have to resort to finding a sharp piece of rock to open my Mountain House package.
 
Wolf7 said:
PS SAK's are OK BUT not the best knives, because of non-locking blades which are not safe and handle is not very ergonomically comfortable to me, I prefer my Leatherman Wave with locking blades/saw and better handle. After couple of my SAK's had scales break apart or fall off, I no longer use them.
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I don't agree either. If you are using one properly and for the intended use a SAK is perfectly safe. Not sure what you are doing but I've been using them for most of my life and never had one fall apart or cut me (when I wasn't doing something dumb of course).
 
I have no use for a SAK. My 'SAK' is between my ears. ;)

To the OP, that is not a useful knife design as far as I'm concerned.
 
Swiss Army Knife.

The official knife for the Swiss Army. It's good enough for them, it's good enough for you. I mean me.
 
I would say yes.. It can be useful. However, IMO Not very practical unless one is trying to scare someone off. I would say it looks mean.. But then Blades are relative to what one wants it for, a user, a looker, a collector, I will never downplay any blade be cause the shoes that fit me will never fit the next guy.
 
Help!

Trapped in treeline!

Data used up!

Only one bar for WiFi!

Dogs not contributing to rudimentary shelter!

SAK no help at all felling trees!



 
The Tracker design has proven to be useful by people with the desire to put up with it.
That said, the long choil and the finger grooves make it pretty obvious the designers of this particular one hated life and this design.
 
marcinek said:
Its hardly "becoming" common, it has been common and well known for quite a while, has it not? Heck, The Hunted came out in 2003.
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I am talking about the pattern knife in the op's post exactly, not Tracker style knives. I have begun to see the knife from the op's post depicted more in media. I am aware the Tracker knives were a big trend for quite a while. While the Mtech knife shares similarities with the Tracker, the tracker was not the knife I was talking about.

Aside from Counter Strike Global Offensive the knife was featured in Battlefield 4. It also appeared in other games I can't think of off the top of my head.
 
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