Serrations on your survival knife?

Hawk45

Hawk45

Joined
Jan 28, 2005
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2,154
Do you like to have serrations on your survival knife or plain edge? I've always preferred PE, but maybe I'm missing the boat.
 
Plain for almost all uses. However my river knife is serrated specificly to cut rope in case of entanglements. Other than that one use, I don't care for them.
 
Personally speaking no. I'll clarify that by saying that is because I skew what I do to my advantage and I also cheat by taking something to sharpen with. Additionally, mebe even just in the confidence that I'm actually unlikely to dull my blade to any significant degree unless I'm really trying to, and it's be quite a while since I did that now.

If I was being really terse, such as a here's ya scenario, no sharpening stuff, no machete, no anything else, pick ya one tool tool for everything and get yourself out of that, it may well have a serrated section.

Why, because I don't believe most of what people write. I think in a survival situation salvage and rough work is likely to be a far higher priority than all that neo-bushcraft twig whittling twaddle. Considerations about finesse and how well a Mora can carve a fuzz stick has naff all to do with anything. The plain and simple truth of it is that a serrated edge can take massively more punishment than a plain edge and still keep cutting. Accordingly, a serrated section on a knife to be used hard like that could be a very smart move. Having read and played about with sharpening solutions like “yeah, just find a convenient flat rock, 'cos there's bound to be some”, or encrusting grit into a stick to rub your knife against” and all that jazz, I say that frankly most people are just FOS. Brutal circumstances often call for simple, immediate, and sometimes brutal solutions, not whimsical ideals.

That said, doing the stuff I am into I am not in the habit of carrying a dedicated survival knife. I carry a plain edge.
 
I carry a serrated knife on my climbing saddle at work, specifically for cutting rope in an emergency situations.; other than that, I'm a plain edge guy. Serrations are difficult to field sharpen and funtion poorly in most bushcraft tasks like shaping wood, carving, whittling, etc. Unfortunately, the utility of most serrated knives is diminished by placing serrations at the base of the blade, not the tip. If they are placed near the tip, it leaves the best part of the knife, used for carving and similar tasks, plain edged, and the most useful part for cutting rope ( the tip) serrated.
 
I don't like serrations on any of my knives. Mainly because a sharp plain edge will do just about if not everything the serrated knife will do.
 
Codger_64 said:
Plain for almost all uses. However my river knife is serrated specificly to cut rope in case of entanglements. Other than that one use, I don't care for them.
Click to expand...

+1

My first "good" knife was a Benchmade Mini-AFCK purchased 20+ years ago. I picked the partially serrated version. I've bought countless knives since then but never another serrated blade until I picked up a fully-serrated Spyderco Pacific Salt. It goes on my PFD when paddling and is in my pocket when boating.

Stay sharp,
desmobob
 
Personally, when done right, I like combo edges on folders and sometimes on fixed blades.. A small section of serrations can go a long way on fiberous material, they will often stay effective even it somewhat dulled, and it can provide a bit more utility depending on the intended use of the blade.

But it seems I'm in the minority these days.

BOSS
 
I've got a fully serrated Spyderco Police which I think is a lovely example of a serrated knife. I've got a couple of others too, a Delica and a Hawkbill shaped thing. Although I enjoy them it is not principally any notion I own that they cut better than any plain edges I have that makes me like them. In a lot of respects they are all much more limited than plain edges I have. They fill a niche for me but that isn't it.

As far as cutting goes the “remaining effective” is bang on target. I hooked up a video to here a few years back of a serrated Spyderco being scoured across an iron bar. It was an extreme abuse. If you had done the same thing to a plain edge and then striped it across the palm of your hand it would have left a line no less narrow than if you had drawn a line with a maker pen. The serrated Spyderco would still happily cut through rope. A plain edge having undergone that would probably climb as high as cutting cheese.

In a similar vein consider the design of some steak knives and why they are designed the way they are. No decently refined plain edge would put up with much slicing on a bit of ceramic plate before getting uselessly dull. It's tantamount to deliberately holding a knife a 90 degrees to a sharpening stone and wiping the edge off. Yet the cutting power of the steak knife persists. They get the dizzy housewife treatment, rattle round in cutlery draws, I suspect on average they never get sharpened, but they continue to be able to cut. Sure it's not an elegant form of cutting, but stick one of those against a plain edged sports knife, even with superior materials and HT, that has been subjected to the same thing, on a let's make one bit of rope two bits test, and my money is on it to win. Pity the fool...

Given that hopefully we can at least get that horse to water, I do wonder at why I often encounter such a flat out resistance to the idea of having them on a survival knife. Two things strike me as immediate salient in accounting for the difference between me and those people:

First I think there's is the definition of the survival knife as “the knife you have with you”. I kinda see where that is coming from but is also circular to the point of meaningless. Go that route and as far as I'm concerned you might as well say “there is no such thing as a survival knife, there are just knives”. If you do subscribe to that “unicorn” view of the survival knife I can completely understand the resistance to serrations. You just use a plain edge knife, whether that be an Opinel or a Rockstead no matter, and you keep that plain edge sharp. Cool. I like a neat and immaculate plain edge with a high degree of cutting power too. I spend a lot of time making them that way. I never think of myself as walking around with a survival knife though. I have knives that go out with me and are optimized for the stuff that I do, but none of that is being in a survival situation. A survival situation has to exceed aspects of what I intended to be doing. If I go out to play lets make a stretcher to drag my mate and I take a bunch of tools and maintenance supplies that isn't a survival situation. A survival survival situation is more like “break glass to get to fire extinguisher”. Who needs to break glass to get to “survival ax” if they've already got an ax.

The second aspect I think is just a difference of opinion about what might be entailed. Just as a quick and dirty example I'll offer up something that I've mentioned here before but in a different context. I was in a car crash and in the immediate after event I needed cordage quickly. I made that by ripping wiring from the car I crashed in. What I did not need was advise to reach into my pack that I should have packed knowing I was going to crash, and wander off looking for vegetation to make some barefoot-effort-stick-macrame-of-weeds solution. Sure I've twisted nettles into string for fun, but that was play. This was a “if there's an emergency tool behind glass to break and press into service now is the time” time. And that's where the survival knife concept lives. It lives right next to the fire extinguisher. A serrated section on that brute could really pay dividends.

The above actually accounts for why I thought that part serrated BG survival knife, and others like it, would actually be rather good survival knives. Would I want to wander round with one, no. But as I said before elsewhere here, next to the big first aid kit, smoke hood, and fire extinguisher in a “action now - break glass” situation, great. That's a survival knife to me. Serrations good.
 
Spyderco AquaSalt serrated.
Pacific Salt serrated.
Tasman Salt serrated.
Spyderhawk serrated.
Matriarch.
Hawkbill Ladybug serrated.

These aren't used for what most people generally consider survival knives. One of the top four is always with me during any water activities - for survival. I also like the last one especially for cutting fishing line. I don't carry the Matriarch as much anymore, but it could be survival-oriented in certain situations as well.

These are all very lightweight and useful for certain things. I always also have a plain edge knife with me for other uses. I usually don't respond to the "one knife" threads because I have more than one knife for any outdoor type activity.
 
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I have a SOG folder (name?) that is fully serrated that I bought on fleabay a number of years ago. Also have the Spyderco Endura fully serrated. Other than that, I have no interest in owning fully serrated knives. I have a number of the partially serrated knives until I came to the conclusion that I didn't like them at all. But they were the rage.

I have little need for fully serrated blades. There are a couple Vic SAKs that have fine serrations that might be useful. My philosphy is to buy fully serrated or plain edge and the serrated blades are strictly a special purpose knife for me and seldom carried. Codger's use of a fully serrated knife while canoeing makes a lot of sense. I would tend to have two knives with me on the river.
 
I ground down the serrations on my pacific salt folder near the handle and left them near the tip (about 50/50). So I have the rippers near the tip and a flat section near the rear...works best for me. I feel it can handle most cutting situations with ease (not prying, chopping, batoning, smashing or orc fighting ...just cutting) :) And they were very easy to remove with a DMT diamond sharpener.
 
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22-rimfire said:
... Codger's use of a fully serrated knife while canoeing makes a lot of sense. I would tend to have two knives with me on the river.
Click to expand...

I neglected to mention it, but I do have a plain edge knife with me constantly. A secured short sheath knife on my belt and/or a premium stockman deep in my pocket. Both are less useful and harder to retrieve in an immediate emergency situation involving rope/cordage where one has seconds to react and severe offending entanglement to oneself or another person in distress in the water, or even a canoe or kayak being held or pinned in a current. Plus river knives generally have a blunted tip so that one does not inadvertently sever an artery or give someone a deep puncture when trying, often blindly, to release a distressed person from a rope or cord. They are purpose-designed knives and almost always fully or partially serrated. I would nt want one as my only knife, given a choice.

From my experience, no whitewater rescue trainer suggests that one purchase and carry a rescue throw-bag without also purchasing and carrying a way to cut that rope in the event that it unintentionally becomes a hazard.
 
I think that a "GET OUT NOW" knife needs to have serrations. Personally, I prefer a knife without them, but all my rescue specific knives have them. My dream fixed blade knife [for use in the woods] is the CRK Pacific - I just love that knife - but it has serrations and cannot be ordered without them. So, I may just end up with a partially serrated survival knife. One plus side to serrations in a survival situation is that their efficacy is prolonged compared to a plain edge when proper sharpening equipment isn't available.
 
I take a serrated knife for survival in the city and plain edge for jungle.

If i must have have both i will opt for a machete with a multitool (comes with saw/serrated edge) or a folding saw.
 
On most knives I carry, no, but on a dedicated survival knife, sure. I have a few combo edge folders, and despite the popular opinion, none of them has every failed to perform well. I don't even think serrations are that hard to sharpen: just use the corner of a bench stone or a diamond rod and you'll be fine. That said, I think they screw up the knife's look in most cases, and my plain edge knives have never failed me, either. Basically, I think they are a good option if you absolutely need to have a portion of edge that stays sharp for a long time, at the expense of looks and the capacity to do fine carving tasks. Is that a compromise I generally make with my edc? No. For a survival knife? Sure.
 
Since my folder would be my survival knife 9 of 10 times I would like serrations.

[video=youtube;3q1qa1NAVNY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3q1qa1NAVNY[/video]
 
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