SOG Revolver Survival Knife?

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frank k

Joined
May 8, 2001
Messages
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Hot off the press:

"The SOG black TINI SEAL Revolver was recently chosen to be a part of the Personal Environmental Protective Survival Equipment (PEPSE) system for Special Operations Forces deployed in cold weather conditions"

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=349847


What are your thoughts on the Revolver as a survival knife?


Anyone here have one?



Thanks.



- Frank
 
I've got the Hunter revolver model and have used it extensively in the field. It does a great job as designed. I would highly recommend it as an addition to your survival gear. I've not been in a survival situation with it so I can't comment, but feel it's capable.
Scott
 
frank k said:
What are your thoughts on the Revolver as a survival knife?
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Would you feel comfortable batoning the blade or other hard work which could cause the lock to break? If the mechanism does fail grossly will this drive the saw upward into the grip? How much load will the blade take before this happens? How much impact?

-Cliff
 
The Last Confederate said:
Considering that the other end of the blade is a saw, why the crap would anyone baton this knife to begin with...
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Because a saw makes a horrible splitter.

-Cliff
 
I am not sure about the force needed to defeat the lock, but since the Revolver dose have a saw, I wouldn’t have much need to baton or chop with it. Personally I have never needed to split wood in the field (and doubt that I ever will), so I am the wrong person to ask about batoning (although I have used the technique to cut a game pole once, but this would have been easier with the Revolver’s saw).


Keep in mind that the Revolvers are lightweight knives with thin stainless blades, even if they didn’t revolve, I don’t think that they are suitable for heavy batoning. Although the Hunter Revolver that Sgt. Mike reviewed held up fine to light batoning / wood splitting.




- Frank
 
frank k said:
...the Revolvers are lightweight knives with thin stainless blades, even if they didn’t revolve, I don’t think that they are suitable for heavy batoning.
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You can baton really heavy on extremely thin blades as there is little stress sideways, you are basically loading it along its width, an axis where it is very substantial.

People do it all the time on thin puukkos, the only real concern there with damage is rolling the acute edge (usually ~10-12 degrees) if you try to chisel through a hard knot.

The only reservation would be on the differentially hardened blades which leave the spines fully annealed, you can bend them down with heavy batoning, as only a small width is actually hardened.

Besides batoning as a chopping replacement, which is usually for felling, it is also useful to split wood to obtain tinder from either the resin heartwood, or just the drier inside or for shaping.

For example take a length of wood and split it to make a flat bow, or to make spoons, forks, or even a decent snow shovel/scoop, or just planks for construction. It also is useful for making fish spears, throwing club, etc. .

For all of these you can simply carve / whittle the extra wood away, it is just more useful if you can split it.

-Cliff
 
The Last Confederate, :D that is funny how you said that, I could not have said it better.......... :D


Cliff, does "fail" mean the same thing as "fail grossly" ? :eek: ;) The latter sure sounds a lot worse than the first. ;) But no, I have never had a lock fail on a Revolver, not saying it can't be "made" to fail. Like a lot of other knives/saws in the world, this is a specialized tool, made specifically for sawing wood up to about 5 inch and still having the ability to cut well with the blade. It was designed as an option to the fixed blade, having the ability to change from one blade to another in a couple seconds, while still having a good cutting or sawing ability.

I have batoned with it many times, others have also. But the blade is not really long enough for any major log batoning, unless in a survival situation. Then of course I think it would hold up just as well as most 5 inch bladed knives would. This knife just weighs in at around 6 ounces, and the work it can do with the blade and saw combination is really amazing.

I carry an ax or bigger bladed knife if I expect to do any big wood splitting. But I have used the Revolver for almost anything you could imagine around a camp/outdoors situation just to see if it would hold up and it did wonderful. I think in a real life survival situation, it would absolutly save your life just as well or better than any 5 inch blade on the market. I say maybe better because you have the option of a saw to make shelters, make traps, get firewood etc.


Cliff, this is my opinion, not every knife/tool is made to do the same exact jobs, some will chop better, some will slice better, some will........you know what I mean. We can break any knife, it's very easy to do under the right situations. What's really hard to do is to use a knife for as many different task as possible in an "outdoor setting" without breaking it.

So far, the SOG Revolver has been used and tested in just about every "outdoor setting" you could imagine, from U.S. Navy survival training, to back packers, hunters and campers, and it has been an amazing knife, that's about all I could ask of it.

Robbie Roberson ;)
 
Robbie Roberson said:
Cliff, does "fail" mean the same thing as "fail grossly" ?
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Gross failure just means total, like catastrophic. It isn't clear from pictures and descriptions of the knife if the lock were to break completely from loading to the blade what would happen.

The ideal break would have the blade collapse from a pivot failure and the saw stay in the handle. The worse would be that the rotation mechanism stays intact and the saw smashes full force into the grip.

I assume you loaded it enough to see what happens in such conditions and made sure it isn't the latter, so how much force does it take in direct loads?

I have batoned with it many times, others have also. But the blade is not really long enough for any major log batoning...
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Outside of really easy to split woods like apps, pine and most soft firs, you really don't want to be batoning a 6"+ piece of wood anyway, you start to really want a axe then, and it becomes more efficent to do as as the wood has enough weight to be inertial split, baton is more for splitting smaller woods, plus shaping as noted. Though the large blades can be used to split thicker woods, it starts to require a lot of effort as the wood basically has to be chiseled in half.

It also doesn't take much size of wood to demand heavy batoning, a small ~3" piece of spruce with a bad set of ring knots will require heavy shoulder driven impacts to cut through and is difficult to split with an axe because you have to hit a small target (and it is way easier to baton than axe it, try it in really bad weather), and the axe can crack out from the knots, and it is useless to try to inertial split it as the round has no weight.


What's really hard to do is to use a knife for as many different task as possible in an "outdoor setting" without breaking it.
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The challenge is being as efficient as possible. It is pretty easy to assemble a shelter with a poor knife (for the task) or even no knife, if you have lots of time, no real stresses, but be in the exact same situation where it is getting dark, its starting to rain, and it gets different.

That is where it helps to know things like how hard can you baton on a knife because you know how far you can push it to maximize efficiency. You can go light enough to do anything with any knife, you can whittle down a 12" birch with a fillet knife if you have the time, some times you may just want the most optimal path.

-Cliff
 
Cliff, gross failure has never happened. I don't know how many pounds of pressure it would take to make the lock pin fail, but I would guess it would be a lot. Yes I have loaded it (many times) with everything I can muster (is that a word ?) :D , I weigh 290 pounds and 6ft. 4inch. It's a big pin that locks the blade, by passing through 2 stainless liners on each side, supported by fiber glass reinforced zytel handles on each side.

The good thing about this knife is it has a hidden stop located in the rear of the handle. This allows the user to put a lot of downward force to cut with the blade while the saw is locked by pin and stop in rear of handle.

Amusing story......... I purposely removed the pin once and shaped a hardwood stick to insert into the pin hole through the liners just to lock the blade. I used the knife all day for many chores, then removed the stick and rotated to the saw and did the same, it sawed many limbs and trees and worked perfect. The point of this was to see how much it took to hold the blade within the handles in a firm position to do many different chores, it worked great, and this was just a stick. So I am certain a steel pin would do much better, and it does.


I agree with your advice on splitting wood and batoning, good advice.

Robbie Roberson ;)
 
Robbie, how about letting Cliff distructo-test one? I know there are a lot that don't agree with Cliff's methods, but I for one think they show us what they can really do and not what the marketing speel says. Granted that most of the tests Cliff performs on knifes are so out of the design brief that you would be insane to use it as such, but, Its still better to know and not need it than the other way round though.
 
It sounds like you'd have to be Hulk Hogan to develop the force necessary to make it fail without tools or be using it in a manner entirely beyond reason. The concept of having a knife and saw in one tool is valid and it seems like you've hit upon a novel solution. What else is out there that does this? You either have a two bladed folder or some blade swapping system. The revolver seems stronger than either. The only other alternative is a sawback.

The real question is... can it saw a downed aircraft in half. Sorry I just couldn't resist. Mac
 
Good God, what is it with batoning every fricken knife through wood. :rolleyes: The Revolver is not intended for that. As I said it would make an excellent addition to your survival gear. Save the batoning for larger fixed blades not folders.
Scott
 
pict said:
The concept of having a knife and saw in one tool is valid and it seems like you've hit upon a novel solution. What else is out there that does this? You either have a two bladed folder or some blade swapping system. The revolver seems stronger than either. The only other alternative is a sawback.
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That’s a good point Mac.


For me at least, the Revolver dose fill a gap between a wood saw equipped SAK and a folding pruning saw/machete combination. Saw back survival knives generally don’t function very well as wood saws: at least I have never tried one that worked well on wood.




- Frank
 
While I have batonned fixed blades and folders out of curiousity, I have been reading a lot of Nessmuk and Richard Proenekke lately, and have come to the conclusion that if you planning "woods" time, take a d**m hatchet.

The cheapest hatchet from wally world is gonna cut wood better than just about any knife.

Use a tool the way it was meant to be used.
 
The Last Confederate said:
The cheapest hatchet from wally world is gonna cut wood better than just about any knife.
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You need to use some decent knives. Lots of knives cut lots of woods better than even the high end hatchets like the GB models. Hatchets and axes generally only start to pull away when the wood gets really large, and the knife edge starts making contact along too much of its length lowering the pressure. The wood also has to be really stiff to take the impact of a hatchet, on springy woods like alders a blade works much better :

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/CliffStamp/Spyderco/Byrd/meadowlark_baton.jpg

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y269/CliffStamp/Spyderco/Byrd/meadowlark_alders.jpg

That pseudo-bill hook cut those alders much better than a hatchet, they were slightly more than two inches at maximum, and the edge on the Meadowlark was much thinner than an axe which would have had trouble with the very springy woods. Soft firs are similar, blades work much better on limbing for similar reasons on young trees and small ones and can sweep off limbs much faster for use in bedding, shelter construction, signal fires, etc. .

As for the thick wood cutting. you can counteract the loss blades start to see in penetration by varying the angle and working on different sides of the wood, but when you go much beyond six inches or so, a hatchet really starts to stand out, unless the wood is soft pine or similar. of course this is fairly large wood for survivial / camping use.

Moving a 10-12" tree isn't trivial. It isn't what I would attempt in any kind survivial situation as the chance for injury is too high, and while camping I would not do it either simply because it is way overkill for the wood you need. You are not building a log cabin. Axes can be of benefit in really cold or wet weather though if everything is soaked through and you need fairly thick wood to get a dry inside, or need to cut through heavy ice, or build a really heavy or long lasting fire.

Razorback - Knives said:
Save the batoning for larger fixed blades not folders.
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It doesn't take a large fixed blade, as noted lots of people do it with slim puukkos. You can't overload a fixed blade in that plane as it has too much stock along the axis, just consider the width like you would thickness in lateral prying. The only real concern are heavily notched stick tangs, or annealed spined blades.

Lots of folders can also be used for batoning, Ritter recently noted his Benchmade grip was designed for it for example. It isn't massively bigger than the Revolver. In fact it has a thinner blade, it lighter and shorter.

Robbie Roberson said:
I have loaded it (many times) with everything I can muster ... I weigh 290 pounds and 6ft. 4inch.
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Loaded it how, with your actual weight on the blade?


-Cliff
 
Cliff Stamp said:
You need to use some decent knives.Cliff
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WOW...I must have missed when you stopped by my house and examined my knives in person.

And I'll stand behind what I said, ANY axe or hatchet that has been properly sharpened is going to chop, cut or whatever other word you want to use, wood better than ANY knife.

Would you leave a pickup truck sitting in the garage while you transport a sofa on a motorcycle? :rolleyes:
 
Cliff, gross failure has never happened. I don't know how many pounds of pressure it would take to make the lock pin fail, but I would guess it would be a lot.
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In doing the Research and Development on the knife SOG had to break a few to test the design, tight? I would think that any reputable company would know the extreme limits their design can be used for before they marketed it to the military, especially Special Forces units (though I would venture to say their is no one harder on gear than a 19 year old infantryman).

I would be taken back if SOG did not the the limits of its own products, what if it was far lower than may be encountered in an emergency? Isn't an actual emergency in the field a very bad time to find out the product suffers from a ppor design?

How were the knives tested by the military before being approved for issue?

As for not splitting wood with a folder, if a folder is all you have and you need the wood split ASAP, and smaller wood is saturated, you beter hope your folder is up to the task. (to start a fire before hypothermia sets in, these are being issued for cold weather use, right?)

The cheapest hatchet from wally world is gonna cut wood better than just about any knife.
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Only the best hatchets (GB) will outchop good 9" class knives. See many reviews done on the forums for example.
 
The Last Confederate said:
WOW...I must have missed when you stopped by my house and examined my knives in person.
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I don't need to, it is obvious they are really low end if they can't match a cheap hatchet on the woods I noted. The wood would have to get very large for a cheap hatchet to pull ahead of a decent long knife readily. Lots of knives are intended to cut wood, khukuris, parangs, goloks, etc. .

knifetester said:
I would think that any reputable company would know the extreme limits their design ...
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I don't know the details of the construction but I would break them to verify that the blade would break if overloaded and not drive the saw into the hand. Spyderco does this for example to not just see where the knives break but also how which is just as important. Plus I would want to know what you can and could not do in regards to vertical prying (rocking the knife in woods) as well as batoning.

Only the best hatchets (GB) will outchop good 9" class knives.
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Yeah take a bowie from Ray Kirk and see how many cheap hatchets out chop it, hell even try to radically outchop it with a GB hatchet, even small Valiant Goloks, orl Ontario machetes will take cheap hatchets on a wide range of wood types and sizes.

The cheap hatchets you get can not even match the performance of a decent 7" knife on a wide scope of work, the GB hatchet will take it readily on thick woods, but the knife will be better on lighter and springier woods and get about ~75% of the performance of the hatchet on thick woods until the wood gets so large that the knife starts to fail to get enough penetration to open a notch and you have to multiple notch a cut.

-Cliff
 
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