- Joined
- Oct 26, 2001
- Messages
- 1,438
Hello All,
I went in to one of my favorite B&M knife stores today and they had a great price on the short Kabar, so I wound up picking one up, and wanted to share my initial impressions. Dimensions as measured (as opposed to stated by the manufacturer) are, handle length 4.0 inches,blade length 5.25 inches, actual cutting edge 4.75 inches. Blade width, 1.0 inch. Blade thickness, 3/6". Handle diameter 1.0 inch at widest pt. (Sorry if I'm getting a little cliff stampy. Been writing a lot of technical reports full 'o' data tables lately). Now on to the good stuff. The knife is hair popping sharp right out of the box and appears to be a perfectly scaled down version of the original. The cutting edge easily went through free hanging pager, cut and shaved a block of bass wood, and peeled and sliced an apple. It actually excelled at the peeling portion, much to my surprise. The double handguard is a very nice feature when choking up on the handle/blade juncture for performing tasks such as the aforementioned apple peeling. I have not tried to baton it yet, but I think that it would do well at this task, on moderately sized branches. Definately does well at slicing meat. I handled both the traditional leather washer version and the rubber version and have to say that I purchased the leather. It has a little more heft, and actually feels "grippier" than the rubber, though one would think it should be the other way around. The knife is definately handle heavy, and the flat,rounded, metal pommel would make a great field hammer in a pinch, yet it is still light enough not to be cumbersome on a belt or web gear. Lastly, the knife would make a good, light fighting knife in a pinch. Overall I would say that this is a great offering for use as a light woods or combat knife, though if I were doing any serious chopping I would definately want a larger companion knife. The one major drawback is that the leather sheath is not the highest quality, in my opinion and the only way to avoid that is to purchase the rubber handled version of the knife, which comes with a ridgid kydex sheath. One caveat though is that the store I frequent does not have a high turnover rate on this model (I'm in a Marine town so they go for the full size one) so this particular sheath may have been in the case for quite a long time and dried out a bit. A few treatments with common leather boot oil has done wonders for it. One final thought is that the knife is made of traditional carbon steel, to which I have recently become a convert. Therefore, it will take and hold a decent edge and can be easily resharpend, though it may dull a little quick than many of the newer stainless or powder steels.
Lagarto
I went in to one of my favorite B&M knife stores today and they had a great price on the short Kabar, so I wound up picking one up, and wanted to share my initial impressions. Dimensions as measured (as opposed to stated by the manufacturer) are, handle length 4.0 inches,blade length 5.25 inches, actual cutting edge 4.75 inches. Blade width, 1.0 inch. Blade thickness, 3/6". Handle diameter 1.0 inch at widest pt. (Sorry if I'm getting a little cliff stampy. Been writing a lot of technical reports full 'o' data tables lately). Now on to the good stuff. The knife is hair popping sharp right out of the box and appears to be a perfectly scaled down version of the original. The cutting edge easily went through free hanging pager, cut and shaved a block of bass wood, and peeled and sliced an apple. It actually excelled at the peeling portion, much to my surprise. The double handguard is a very nice feature when choking up on the handle/blade juncture for performing tasks such as the aforementioned apple peeling. I have not tried to baton it yet, but I think that it would do well at this task, on moderately sized branches. Definately does well at slicing meat. I handled both the traditional leather washer version and the rubber version and have to say that I purchased the leather. It has a little more heft, and actually feels "grippier" than the rubber, though one would think it should be the other way around. The knife is definately handle heavy, and the flat,rounded, metal pommel would make a great field hammer in a pinch, yet it is still light enough not to be cumbersome on a belt or web gear. Lastly, the knife would make a good, light fighting knife in a pinch. Overall I would say that this is a great offering for use as a light woods or combat knife, though if I were doing any serious chopping I would definately want a larger companion knife. The one major drawback is that the leather sheath is not the highest quality, in my opinion and the only way to avoid that is to purchase the rubber handled version of the knife, which comes with a ridgid kydex sheath. One caveat though is that the store I frequent does not have a high turnover rate on this model (I'm in a Marine town so they go for the full size one) so this particular sheath may have been in the case for quite a long time and dried out a bit. A few treatments with common leather boot oil has done wonders for it. One final thought is that the knife is made of traditional carbon steel, to which I have recently become a convert. Therefore, it will take and hold a decent edge and can be easily resharpend, though it may dull a little quick than many of the newer stainless or powder steels.
Lagarto
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