saw back blades

you get the best of both worlds ; a full plain edge plus a serrated edge :thumbup: , plus whatever you stick it into , the serattions make it easier to withdraw . ( like if your a hunter and kill an animal with it etc )
 
I personally never found any advantage to have a saw at the back of my knife. Tried it, and it didn't work for me.
Actually, if I absolutely have to have a saw on a knife, I prefer bringing a large SAK with a saw.

/ Karl
 
In my experience a sawback is quite useless (besides looking a little more tactical). It will chew up batons readily and make the knife very impractical for dressing game (it will catch on skin, bones etc.)
 
Yeah, I don't mind a small serrated section on the back of the blade for fiberous material or cord, but I too don't think the saw-serrations are really worth it. Just carry a SAK or multitool with a serrated blade and that will cover 90% of your sawing tasks.

ROCK6
 
I have sometimes found a saw-back blade marginally useful for cutting small branches, things like that. The knife I have in mind is the US Air Force survival knife--the one that looks like a Ka-Bar, but has about a 5.5-inch blade. I love these things.

The application for which I've found the most use is in cutting small branches--something that you can also theoretically do by either bending the branch and rocking the non-serrated part of a small knife blade through, or batoning. The one thing that a small saw blade can do that batoning, etc., can't is work when you've only got one hand available, don't have the room to swing a baton, or are trying to cut something that is just not shaped right to make batoning easy (say, something broad and flat). So, say you're going to cut a branch from way up a tree, say for use as a bow, or as some key component for a shelter. You climb a couple of yards up into the tree. You're hanging on with one hand, holding the knife with another--and you discover that you lack a third hand to hold a baton. That's where the little 3-inch sawback section on a USAF knife can come into its own. It's not great as a saw blade, by any standard--but it'll get you through your 2-inch-thick branch in a few minutes. (It also won't split the wood at the cut as much as other methods might.)

I've heard those who are into snare building say that the thick sawback on that knife is also good for cutting 90-degree notches for making trap parts. Never tried this, but it seems to make sense.

I will, of course, concede that it's better to have a real saw! Including the saw blade from a Swiss Army knife or multi-tool. But I'd stop just short of calling the saw on the back of the USAF knife useless.
 
On most of the "Survival Knives" that have sawback is a joke, especially those Asian wonder-Rambo-wannabe knives. Afield. I carry a Vic Camper which has a saw blade, and that handles wood cutting tasks. I also have a wire saw and pocket chainsaw at my disposal, so no worrys there. Investing in a Vic with a saw or a pocket chainsaw is a better idea than crap-o saw blade looking devices. For ordinary cutting (rope, etc...) my EDC is partially serrated and does the trick.
 
I have heard/read somewhere that the main reason for the saw backs on outdoors knives; is to cut notches for traps, not necessarily sawing wood.

Maybe sawing through ice? :confused:
 
Bottom Line: If you need a saw and a knife, carry one of each.

As they are made by the vast majority of manufacturers, sawback knife blades are a poor compromise. The sawtooth geometry is not usually an effective one for actually cutting wood, being little semi-pyramid-shaped teeth. They don't have enough gullet (gap between each tooth) to clear chips/sawdust/juicy wood pulp effectively from the cut. As noted by someone else, sawbacks will also chew up a baton. With a sawback knife blade you have to watch out for *both* sides of the blade so you don't get cut or scratched.

To avoid binding in the cut, especially in green wood, the kerf of a sawcut must be wider than the thickness of the sawblade. This is why sawteeth have "set". That extra space created between the side of the cut and the sawblade is what keeps the blade from binding.

See the diagram of sawtooth set at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saw#Saw_terminology.

Most sawback knives, particularly sawback machetes and other knives with saber ground blades, don't cut a wide enough slot in the wood to keep the body of the blade from binding.

The worst-case sawbacks are those cut out of swedged-spine knife blades. The effective (and often total achievable) cutting depth is the depth of the filing used to make the sawteeth.

Recommendations: For a saw, I recommend carrying a Japanese folding pruning saw with an 8"-10" replacable stainless blade for its light weight, convenient & safe carry (compared to rigid saw) due to its folding nature & often standard feature large thong hole in handle, and its sufficient size to section up as large a branch as you'll need for fire or shelter. That's about 5" diameter maximum. Larger than that you don't usually need and it gets heavy and awkward to drag through the brush.

I recommend the Tashiro, Corona, and Silky brands, though other good brands likely exist.

As for which knife to carry, we've all got our opinions, now don't we? ;) :D
 
I wouldn't mind having a nice wood saw on the back of a larger blade at least to try it out, as I'm not a huge fan of batonning, all I use it for is tinter/kindling and most of the time I can do that with hand-force.

Unfortunately, most if not all knives like this are the el-cheapo rambo knives.
 
I allways have a little folding gerber saw, and that thing is great, it just flys through wood. But thouse japanese saw would doo the same. Pretty much any one of thouse folding saws work.
 
Hey GUys...

Sawbacks on knives,,such as machetes and such are fairly useless.
Not many of them in my opinion work worth a darn, and usually stop cutting at the bottom of the teeth.

Any serrations, or sharp edges on the spine side of a knife limits the use of that knife drastically and increase the possibility of injury dramatically..

The only thing they are really good for is notching branches, for whatever use you would have to notch a branch..

One of my favorite knives that include a Very good and useful saw is the Robbie Roberson designed Revolver by SOG. The saw cuts wood like a chainsaw and have a very good quality knife on the other side..

Another one of my favorites is the SAK saw...

ttyle

Eric
O/ST
 
does the saw on all those tracker survival knives actually cuat anything?
The teeth are huge on those things
 
I thought the saw back on most of the military type survival knives were for use by air crews for cutting the aluminium skin on aircraft and not wood, which is one reason most don't cut wood worth a dam. The best saw I ever came across on a knife are on the vitorinox folders like the farmers and some of the others. They arn't very big but they cut wood. The farmer is my favorite swiss army knife and gets more use than any of my moras. I think if I could only take one knife I would take the Farmer and a GB Wildlife hatchet or the Wetterlings mini.
 
FULMTALJKT said:
I thought the saw back on most of the military type survival knives were for use by air crews for cutting the aluminium skin on aircraft
Click to expand...






Thats what I thought too, but I think the saw on my 25? year old glock knife works great on wood too. (I haven't tried it on aluminum)
 
I am Pretty sure that Cutting Aluminum airplane skin is what the USAF survival knife was designed for as well as many of the other Viet Nam era survival knives.

I had one of the usaf versions as a youth and used it to cut for many things including wood metal and pvc. its not a great saw by any means but its not bad for shelter or tool making in a pinch.

The old Kershaw Survival knife had a really agressive saw back that worked well as did the Buck Master. But these too were kind of short for anything but a few quick cuts.

I wouldn't Recoment any saw back to anyone. I carry either a SAK, Or a scrade Buzz saw trapper in my psk and on longer excursions i pack a folding gerber saw and a spare blade.
 
The TOPS verson does a somewhat good job sawing notches.The Predator WSK's saw is really good at sawing.I'd suspect the Beck and Linger versons would saw just as well or better.Thees saws are larger versons of the SAK saws.
 
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