Serrations on your survival knife?

[HwangJino]

Never.

no knife of mine will ever be serrated, simply no benefit over a properly sharpened plain edge.

for a non sharpener, maybe it can be useful.

 

[iBlade]

Does it count if its serrated on one side and plain on the other? I am thinking Randall 18.

 

[stabman]

I hate combo edges.
Yet, my brother gets good use out of his partially serrated short Ka-Bar.
The serrations are awesome for getting shavings in no time flat, or "hogging" away material when shaping wood.
They may be butt-ugly, but combo edges DO serve a purpose beyond selling knives and cutting rope.

 

[facablade]

I don´t like serrations in my blades, if I need them I use my SAK´s saw ;-)

 

[Woods Walker]

We had a large thread on this very topic not to long ago. I don't really care for them but can live with a partial serrations.

 

[Mistwalker]

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.

Since this implies choosing an actually dedicated survival knife, designated from the outset for a survival role, yes I do. Ideally I'd want more than one knife on me so I could have both plain and serrated edges available to use. But if for whatever reason I was only allowed to pick one for a "survival" role, especially in an urbanized environment with all of the synthetic from which to scavenge useful bits, I would definitely want a 50/50 edge.

 

[Hawkeye5]

I am going to have to go with Mannlicher on this one. If your knife is sharp it will cut what ever you should need to cut in a survival mode. Seat belts have latches and I have cut through a 4" poly rope that we tied up large boats with a Buck 112.

I don't have any use for serrated blades when afield. They work well on bread though.

 

[jdk1]

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..

I agree and think partially serrated is a great option. The way things are going, we may find ourselves needing a "survival" knife in a very different scenario then what we imagine. While people do still get lost in the woods (and will continue for as long as we still have woods), there is a better chance of being caught in some disaster. How many folks get lost vs. how many were caught in Katrina/Sandy/add disaster of choice here. Being able to cut heavy fibrous material, as well as having a stout, tough blade will be handy. That's why I also want a blade which could handle some prying (topic for another thread right). I have a HEST available most times for this reason. Sadly, it wasn't available serrated when purchased. An ESEE 5 rides under my truck seat because you never know.

I'll add, ESEE designed their serrations to be sharpened as a plain edge. I have a partially serrated ESEE 6 and would feel blessed to have it in a time of need. I enjoyed reading everyone's opinions. take care.

 

[jdk1]

I am going to have to go with Mannlicher on this one. If your knife is sharp it will cut what ever you should need to cut in a survival mode. Seat belts have latches and I have cut through a 4" poly rope that we tied up large boats with a Buck 112.

Ask any first responder how well that seatbelt latch works after an accident I'll add that some child carseats are hard to unlatch in good times and impossible under duress. It's a little off-topic, but that's the main reason I want a good cutting blade while in the car. A good serrated blade will go right through this stuff even if abused, as BTII said.

 

[Bukowski]

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.

This guy has it right. All the bushcraft nonsense is laughable. When I'm outdoors, I carry a backpacking tent...its portable, easy to set up, and waterproof....infinitely more useful than any silly stick hut I could manufacture with a single knife. If I'm not in the outdoors, but still in a survival situation...then making a stick hut is still useless because I would be able to salvage material or simply sleep in an already existing structure. Serrations are useful in a knife that you want to be an all-around tool. Period.

Oh, and whats with all this wood batoning? I backpack regularly and I have NEVER had to baton wood for a fire...I don't think I have ever prepared wood at all besides breaking it over my knee. You just pick dead wood up off the ground....and you're done. I wonder if half of these guys have ever been out in the woods before.

 

[Skrapmetal]

Oh, and whats with all this wood batoning? I backpack regularly and I have NEVER had to baton wood for a fire...I don't think I have ever prepared wood at all besides breaking it over my knee. You just pick dead wood up off the ground....and you're done. I wonder if half of these guys have ever been out in the woods before.

Batoning is good for getting to drier wood in the middle when you're in wet conditions. Have you ever been to the woods in the winter and/or in a very wet season? Soaking wet wood straight off the ground doesn't burn all that well.

I rarely baton wood, I am usually able to find plenty of dry wood to burn... but I have found it a valuable technique a few times.

 

[Bukowski]

Batoning is good for getting to drier wood in the middle when you're in wet conditions. Have you ever been to the woods in the winter and/or in a very wet season? Soaking wet wood straight off the ground doesn't burn all that well.

I rarely baton wood, I am usually able to find plenty of dry wood to burn... but I have found it a valuable technique a few times.

Ok, I can see the value in that. I do winter backpack as well, but I was able to find dry wood. In rainy weather I can usually scavenge from standing dead trees. I have never packed in a rainforest though....

 

[Skrapmetal]

Admittedly, sometimes it's just about playing with your knife. A lot of bushcraft stuff can be.

 

[spinynorman]

A small, strong non-serrated fixed blade, and a light serrated folder (Pacific, Saver, or Tasman Salt) are an ideal combination for under 6 oz. I'd prefer to have that pair than a big ugly camp knife in almost any realistic survival scenario, urban or woodland.

 

[psychophipps]

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.

And this happens to be the reason why I dislike most combo-edge knives as well. I can't help but wonder which custom maker/manufacturer will wise up first and put the serrations where they're needed most while leaving us a good section of plain edge for carving/etc.

 

[spinynorman]

+1 to serrations toward the tip. Are you listening, Sal? Where is my orange Rescue in VG-10 with the first 30mm of the blade non-serrated? Such a knife might relegate all my other folders to the cabinet or Ebay.

 

[psychophipps]

+1 to serrations toward the tip. Are you listening, Sal? Where is my orange Rescue in VG-10 with the first 30mm of the blade non-serrated? Such a knife might relegate all my other folders to the cabinet or Ebay.

Or even better, how about a fixed blade version?

 

[Jens Schuetz]

+1 for just the tip

 

[Myal]

This guy has it right. All the bushcraft nonsense is laughable. When I'm outdoors, I carry a backpacking tent...its portable, easy to set up, and waterproof....infinitely more useful than any silly stick hut I could manufacture with a single knife. If I'm not in the outdoors, but still in a survival situation...then making a stick hut is still useless because I would be able to salvage material or simply sleep in an already existing structure. Serrations are useful in a knife that you want to be an all-around tool. Period.

Oh, and whats with all this wood batoning? I backpack regularly and I have NEVER had to baton wood for a fire...I don't think I have ever prepared wood at all besides breaking it over my knee. You just pick dead wood up off the ground....and you're done. I wonder if half of these guys have ever been out in the woods before.

I havent ever had to go buy a backpacking tent to carry with me in case I need it , Ive always made do with making a shelter when its needed when Im out alone .

I havent been able to justify the expense and weight costs .

I am not knocking your method , it simply differs to mine .

Batoning .. if I need small wood and I dont want to get out in the wet to get it , ill baton / split something close by .. Im lazy , and I hate trying to dry and burn wet wood in the rain .

If its fine weather , ill go walk about and pick up whats needed tho .

Different methods , same end goal achieved , who is to judge who is right in how they achieved it ?

 

[ian_33]

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.

And this happens to be the reason why I dislike most combo-edge knives as well. I can't help but wonder which custom maker/manufacturer will wise up first and put the serrations where they're needed most while leaving us a good section of plain edge for carving/etc.

Victorinox? eg. One handed Trekker, soldier etc