Vic boning knives for survival?

N

neitron

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Oct 1, 2004
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133
As well as the standard straight blade boners from Dick/Wenger/Russel/Henckel.

Anyone used them for survival type use? I figure if they are shaving sharp, sturdy enough to gut-skin-debone a pig, and within the mora price range?
Only problem is they come without sheaths so a person would have to make or buy one.
 
I would suggest using Dexter Russell carbon steel knives for this purpose. I like the sheep skinner, model 06371:

L012G-5.jpg


http://www.katom.com/135-06371.html
 
Never owned a Dexter, but Russells Green River knives are good choices too. Inexpensive, carbon steel and proven designs.

Check out the inexpensive 6" scandi fish filet knives. They come with a sheath, are sharp as razors and easy to maintain.
 
Of the big three food service brands (Dexter Russell, Forschner/Vic, and Dick), I like the Dick boning knives the best. Their Microban line with the big blue handles come in several different lengths and usually three different thicknesses. I like the medium, 4" the best. I have always liked Forschner for paring and chef knives, Dick for boning and serrated knives, and the Dexter Russell specialty big knives (the fish splitter, the pizza cutter).

The commercial food service brands are to kitchen cutlery what Mora is to wilderness knives. Price/performance that is hard to match with the "big" names.

JLS

I would stay away from the bottom end. Tromatina makes a good machete but its worth a couple of more books to get a food service knife from the big three than getting the Tromatina NSF line (the cheapest line at my local restaraunt supply place)
 
We use several of the Chicago Cutlery commercial knives in the kitchen and in breaking down game. I think they are discontinued now, but they were good knives cheap.

we use the Forschner Victorinox Fibrox Chef’s Knife a lot now in doing salmon and lake trout, which seems silly to use a chefs knife but someone got this thing right and it cost like 19 bucks at Kohls. It gets sharp and stays sharp. easy to use.
 
We used a variety of boning knives at a fish processing factory I worked at. I managed to get a few worn ones and one or two better samples (I was the purchasing officer at one stage). Great knives for holding an edge.

We had one supervisor there who evidently used a boning knife for pig-sticking. I think he had the blade jammed into a plastic tube, and he carried the whole thing in a zip-up fanny pack which he kept at the front of his body.

A lot of the folks who boned the fish had bits of plastic conduit (pipe) to store their knives in. It was maybe 1.25 or 1.5 inches in diameter. There would be a 'U' cut out of one side of the top of the pipe and the handle would fit snugly in this U...and the knife was then, generally, held fairly securely in the tube.

You could certainly do worse than to have one or two of these for living in the bush.

However, the blades are relatively narrow and thin, and probably somewhat hard and brittle...so they could possibly snap if bent too far. They aren't crowbars like a big old khukuri or bowie made from a car spring. But in all my years of wandering around in the bush I can't recall ever having to use my knife as a crowbar.
 
I could get by pretty well with a wide sort of flexable boning knife. You can't chop wood with it but for everything else, it would do well.
 
julianl_simon said:
Of the big three food service brands (Dexter Russell, Forschner/Vic, and Dick), I like the Dick boning knives the best. Their Microban line with the big blue handles come in several different lengths and usually three different thicknesses. I like the medium, 4" the best. I have always liked Forschner for paring and chef knives, Dick for boning and serrated knives, and the Dexter Russell specialty big knives (the fish splitter, the pizza cutter).

The commercial food service brands are to kitchen cutlery what Mora is to wilderness knives. Price/performance that is hard to match with the "big" names.

JLS

I would stay away from the bottom end. Tromatina makes a good machete but its worth a couple of more books to get a food service knife from the big three than getting the Tromatina NSF line (the cheapest line at my local restaraunt supply place)
Click to expand...


Is there a difference to you in the steel for the three you mentioned? The vic, f.dick and dexter?
 
I have several of the Old Hickory knives which are almost all under $10 each and I quite like them, especially the boner. They all work well, sharpen real nice and easy, seem to hold an edge on par with expensive stainless (noticably better that Forschner or Vic, which I've given up on because of lack of edge holding), and the rusting and inferior handles has not proved a problem dispite my wife leaving them wet.

http://www.knivesplus.com/OLD-HICKORY-KNIVES.HTML

I have the $6 5-in boner, which I would not want to be without because since the simple carbon steel make it fast and easy to resharpen, I have no hestitations about scraping bone with it, nor do I fear what my wife will do with it. The shape is great for boning. The handles suck, the steel is rusting between them and they're loose and may not last long (although I've had the knives for years already), and they look kind of ugly, but they work fine and for $6, who cares about the defects.

I like to use the larger knives for carving (e.g. turkey) because of the tendency to cut against bone, a ceramic plate, or a steel pan, or when I need to cut half frozen meat, or when my wife has some other "knife destroying" task.

Come to think of it, I need to buy more.
 
Eager, perhaps you want to rephrase your post. No one wants to know what your wife is doing with your 5" boner.

The knife I use most in the kitchen is a boning knife, and I think that it would excel outdoors if it only came with a sheath. The first hunting knives were nothing more than kitchen knives drug out of the house and into the field.
 
What are you going to bone while surviving? I would be more worried about shelter and fire, making traps, etc -- a good stout multi-purpose knife that can be easily and safely carried is the thing to have. If I managed to catch something big enough to need a boning knife and I was hungry, I'm sure my Fallkniven would get the meat to the fire :)
 
Seriously though, I see this one from old hickory having some possible uses as an outdoor knife.

76_butcherknifeOldHickory.jpg
 
"Is there a difference to you in the steel for the three you mentioned? The vic, f.dick and dexter?"

Gustav



I am far from a steel expert. I am a knife user. Moras, the old Gerber armorhide handle knives, the GI Mess kit knife, the Camillus Boy Scout pocket knife, the Cold Steel Bushman, an Ontario machete, an old hatchet, and food service knives worked for me until I had (and even after) enough money to buy Benchmade, Becker, Busse, Bark River, etc.

I doubt there is much difference in the steels of the food service knives. The steel in the thinner stamped knives (like the little serrated one the person at the Subway counter would use to cut the bread) can look "cheap", especially the Dexter Russell. Forschner and F. Dick "look" a little better overall to me. But I own many Dexter Russell knives and can't complain. Again, the big differences in the food services knives have been blade shape and handle style. For each type of knife, I have always liked one of the three better than the other two.

But they work. Your average hard working butcher cuts more in a day than most people will in a year. Your commerical fisherman uses them. The restaraunt kitchen is full of them. They get them resharpened often. But that's what gets used every day by people who make their living with knives.

Growing up using food service knives and then seeing (back before the coming of the Japanese slicers like Global - nice knives) people spend hundreds on a large chef's knife from Sabatier or Henckels or Wusthoff or one of the other brands, was just unbelievable to me.

As for the utility of a boning knife in the outdoors, a boning knife or a "Green River" style slicer and a hatchet or machete (depending on the environment) is an inexpensive and light combination. Big choppers are nice, but they come at a price. I love by Teton Bowie from the old Cutlery Shoppe and I love my Steelheart II. But my Steelheart or a 16" machete and a Mora 780 in Florida? Easy choice.

JLS
 
Many big kitchen butcher knives will chop a lot better that one would think. I have one OH Butcher knife that I use outdoors a lot with no modification except to make a Sheath for it. Its chopped a lot of branches.
 
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