Sawbacks on knives

j williams

j williams

Joined
Nov 14, 2005
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Who here carries a knife with a sawback? I am intrigued having never owned one. I know that they do not perform like a folding saw will. Just wondering everyones thoughts bout em, and if any of you carry one in the rotation.
 
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I do. I carried a Randall model 18 yesterday hiking. They perform no were near a folding saw though
 
I had a Camillus USMC with sawback and CE. Had two of them, tried to saw down a small branch with my user. Did not perform well at all. In retrospect, it was a good knife, looked more cool than anything else at the time. Could have done without the sawback. I've had junkers before that, with the sawback. Carry a folding saw in your bag.
 
I pack either a silky or a gerber saw already. Just wondering if the sawback would perform if thats all you had, or if there were any other uses for them.
 
I am making one now. I picked up some power Hacksaw blade to make a few Knives. I cut one and shaped it and left the saw side on it. I tried it first on a chunk of wood and it worked pretty well. I will post a picture of it when I get it done. It is going off to Siguy for a new and great convex edge. Still have to put scales on it.
 
Seems to me that it would add resistance to penetration, and tear the heck out of a baton if you needed to split wood.
 
Sawbacks on knives suck. Carry a sak.
 
udtjim said:
I am making one now. I picked up some power Hacksaw blade to make a few Knives. I cut one and shaped it and left the saw side on it. I tried it first on a chunk of wood and it worked pretty well. I will post a picture of it when I get it done. It is going off to Siguy for a new and great convex edge. Still have to put scales on it.
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When I get back on Sunday I will find the one I made about 8 years ago from a sawblade, I also left the teeth on the back. I blued it and put an electrical tape wrapped handle on it. Pure class ;) but it cut, and still has no rust on it.

John
 
The saw backs on a lot of the old survival knives were not made to cut wood, they were made to cut through the exterior of a plane to egress. That is why they "suck".

I have to say the saw back on the gerber machete, which is actually made to cut wood, works pretty well. I have not tried to baton with it, wouldn't be good for either the saw or the baton I would guess.
 
I have an Ontario Spec Plus machete with saw back. The machete works good but the saw only grinds up the wood.
 
I used the saw back on my Randall model 18 to scale fish. It worked but not that great.
 
on things with thinner blade, like a machete, they would probably saw pretty well but u am not a fan of them on smaller knives.
 
HornyToad said:
I have an Ontario Spec Plus machete with saw back. The machete works good but the saw only grinds up the wood.
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I have one of those too. I did get some use out of the saw back for squaring up some trap notchings.
 
Growing up I was in love with the "Rambo" type knives but I have to admit that the saw thing is useless. I never had one that was worth anything. One or two would make a nice cut then just clog up and be useless.
 
I agree with Fiddleback too.

Remember what happened to the Red Scorpion 6 WSK Noss "tested"?

Those dents will concentrate the force from batoning in a point, as opposed to all the spine. In engineering it's called stress concentration and is generally accepted as a bad idea (same reason why the tail and the blade don't have a square angle on a hidden tang knife, but a round chamfer). My comment goes for the sawbacks at the tip like WSKs.

So I would go with a SAK (that has a saw, unlike my old climber).
 
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