Toughest fixed blade you know of

DocJD said:
:eek::poop: You have no concept of the horrors I have "dreamed" of... but only so much is survivable at all and even less is worth surviving long term . :(

:rolleyes: Even the world's best knife is still only a knife . So best save some $$$$ for other stuff you might need for your nightmare worst case survival scenarios . o_O
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Although weight and space considerations should also be taken into account, it’s always prudent to have backup knives for your “societal collapse loadout.” Any knife can break, without exception, and when they do it’s usually the worst ducking time. To cite some revolutionary math, “One is none, two is one, three is even better.”
 
This here’s the Gurkha Combat model from The Khukuri House.

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Had her for about four years now maybe, since late high school. According to the site she’s patterned after the World War kukris used by the Gurkhas, warriors from Nepal. She’s a stripped down conservative version so to speak, doing away with the accompanying karda (small knife) and chakmak (small honing steel). First 5160 khuk I’ve owned.

She may be a little rough around the edges, but she hasn’t let me down since.
 
Man with no name said:
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Its a cool video, it certainly gets our attention, but it is so far off the beaten path that I am left asking myself what it means. If we replace the knife with a Buck 119, would it do better or worse? Strange as it may sound I have not tried to lift a vehicle shell with a backhoe with any of my knives. The message needs some relevant perspective.

n2s
 
I don't know, but one knife I haven't tested might be my pick for tough, and useful. I got it 40+ years ago, made from some hill tribe smith in Thailand (Yao, Hmien?). 10" convex blade that distally tapers out from nearly 1/4" thick at the handle to a more reasonable thickness. I'm sure it was made without benefit of power tools and the finish was beautiful. It's the pointy one on the left. The one on the right was a gift from an old Thai blacksmith friend and I would trust it with my life.

The people who made these beat them up and used them every day in the jungles and fields of Laos and Thailand to survive and eke out a living. Nothing fancy, just leaf springs beaten out in a charcoal forge.

I need to buff these a bit after years of storage. No real rust, just a bit of patina. The pointy knife cost me the princely sum of $5. The incurved farmer knife was free.

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I don’t know how tough they are in absolute terms, but my Anzas sure feel tough. Since they are ground from files, they are unfashionably thick. The Dune Field, on the left, is a good 3/16” thick. There is a larger counterpart made from a quarter-inch thick file. I suppose that’s part of it. Their feel in hand probably adds to that impression. Although I have not put any of these to the test, they feel unbreakable.
My first Anza, bought 40 years ago, has seen a lot of use, cutting and stripping wires, cutting fuel hose, scraping gaskets, prying stuck parts, popping frozen car doors, cutting the lids off cans, slicing some rank and oily hard salami. I don’t recall ever beating on it, but I never went easy on it. I would not hesitate to put any of the others to similar use.

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