Knives as digging tools?

[SharpBits]

If you have shovel use it, if you don't, well, your hands can only do so much.

 

[Horsewright]

No. I think there's a shovel on the new Leatherman.

 

[damib]

The US Army did issue a "trowel bayonet" in the late 19th Century.

Yeah, and it must be pretty cool if Forgotten Weapons has done a video on it.

 

[The True North]

To answer the title of the thread: No.

 

[garciao]

Hello,
I've first heard about this concept of knife as "all in one" tool that can be used for digging back in the day when I found out the Ka-Bar Heavy Duty Warthog which was advertised this way (at least in my country). Today, I found out abou the Tops Tracker Digger which was apparently even designed with such use in mind. What do you think of such designu? Do you have some experience with using such knives as digging tools? Please don't crucify me. I know that knives are not primarily digging tools, but I think that this is quite interesting concept for some heavy duty knife.

It's probably not it's intended use, but I usually dig a bit and cut grass with a Recon 1 Tanto blade.


It's much better than a gardening shovel, no matter how small the shovel is.
The tanto is great for cutting roots. The hollow grind in that blade is great for digging and cutting through grass and all sorts of garden stuff.

After much use it loses it's edge. But it's way better garden tool than what people traditionally use.

 

[jbmonkey]

glock knife is a crappy knife for knife tasks....but pretty good at cutting roots and digging with......and still kinda a knife, sort of

 

[eveled]

Oh-oh. Oh-oh . . .! (imagine that I am frantically waiving my hand from the back row in Homeroom).

The US Army did issue a "trowel bayonet" in the late 19th Century.

They also had a picket pin that was a horseshoe hammer and there was a shovel attachment for it too.

Not what the OP wanrs but pretty cool nonetheless

 

[VorpelSword]

No. I think there's a shovel on the new Leatherman.

Not really . . .it is more of a backhoe.
It is all electric with solar recharging making it cordless. The soon to be released 2.0 version is designed with upgradable open architecture and it is modular.

 

[Horsewright]

Not really . . .it is more of a backhoe.
It is all electric with solar recharging making it cordless. The soon to be released 2.0 version is designed with upgradable open architecture and it is modular.

Oh I hadn’t seen that one on IG, just the manual one.

 

[The Grendels]

HoriHori knives are pretty useful.

I use fixed blades on occasion for digging as well.

I bought my girlfriend a Hori Hori knife for just this reason: so she wouldn't use any of my nice fixed blades in the garden.

I'll probably end up consigning my Cold Steel SRK to garden duty too, since I don't see it having much other purpose at this point.

 

[shinyedges]

glock knife is a crappy knife for knife tasks....but pretty good at cutting roots and digging with......and still kinda a knife, sort of

It's a good weapon/utility sharpened prybar, I knifed a 350lb hog with mine and reached the kool-aid pipe. It's a bayonet first and knife second.

 

[Drop bear]

I wonder how that thing on the back of the venture handles digging.

 

[J Lensmire]

LT Wright makes an interesting looking Foraging Tool that started life as a Hori Hori knife.

 

[VorpelSword]

Oh I hadn’t seen that one on IG, just the manual one.

I It a limited run. commemorating the Panama Canal . The series was serialized using consecutive rime numbers.

 

[PBnTi]

The best knife to use as a shovel is your friend’s knife.

 

[DocJD]

The best knife to use as a shovel is your friend’s knife.

Please consider yourself pre-defriended !

 

[SharpBits]

Preemptive Defriendification!

 

[damib]

LT Wright makes an interesting looking Foraging Tool that started life as a Hori Hori knife.

Now, that's something that I would have use for and looks little bit more "knifey" than traditional Hori Hori.

 

[VorpelSword]

Lets all go back to the Custer fiasco. Custer's troopers that were out in the open were all killed. The contingent that was not directly engaged om the open (Benteen's command?) had just enough time to seek cover in some trees and dug fighting holes with whatever came to hand. I have read (no link) that this included kitchen utensils and their personal knives.

Any talk of ":the right tool for the job" is crap with a warfighter en extremis. When you have got to get lower than your shirt buttons, whatever will get you there is what you use. I think our son's CRK GB got left in the bottom of his scraped out position. It didn't come home with him but a fuz-mumbled story about it did. I bought him another one just like it before his next deployment.

Elsewhere on these forums there has beed indignant justification for the practice of buttoning a knife in a survival situation ND the importance of a knife being able to tolerate that abuse. In my view, hole digging is just an extension of that attitude towards a blade as an expedient survival tool.

 

[willmtn1]

If you need a hole dug, anything at hand will work.

For hand digging tools - Predator Tools makes the model 85. It is the supreme hand digger. They make a large amount of compact diggers. All cool stuff!