Styles of Knives
The classic "survival knife" generally appears in most people's heads as a derivative of the USMC K-Bar, a long stout blade with a bowie-clip point, straight guard, and round handle. Some cheaper models use a short screw tang on a hollow handle for storing additional survival kit items, some high end ones incorporate advanced steels, full tangs, and various shapes besides the main cutting edge for a wide assortment of uses.
A survival knife is what gets the job done when you need it. They can, truthfully, come in all sizes and shapes. I have a small survival kit in an Altoids can, with a plastic bag for water, a lighter, a book of matches, some very thin nylon high-strength cordage, and a small blade I designed for finger-thumb use (no handle, as such). With this kit, I can cut things, tie things, and light things on fire. With that, I can do much to improve my situation and make other things as needed. I carry a "neck knife" when camping, which really isn't much more than a glorified steak knife, similar in size, and carried in a sheath which I wear around the neck and tuck under my shirt. It is conveniet, sharp, and comfortable to use. I also carry a Finnish Leuku, which resembles a small machete, and I find it incredibly useful across a wide spectrum of chores, including just about everything a small handaxe would do.
American Frontiersmen often carried 2 blades... a medium knife, perhaps 6-8 inches long, and a belt axe, whose actual dimensions are surprisingly small, though it is a very effective tool. The knife was used for cutting, the axe for chopping, and any job too big for those was often not attempted at all without specialized tooling. Modern "camp knives" are often marketed with the ability to chop, and the ABS test reinforces this notion, but the use of multiple, more focused tools, may actually get the job done better.
Throughout history, we see different cultures bring up the trademark knife that they identify with. In Finland, it's the Pukko. In America, the Bowie. Japan has the Tanto, Scotland the Sgian Dubh, Italy the Stilleto, and so on and so forth. Since the rest of the world was way past "surviving" by the time Iron and Steel came into play, I like to look at the early American experience, where knives accompanied Frontiersmen, Traders, and Voyageurs into the wilderness, and were called upon to serve in an environment unattached to manufactured goods. A Rendevous might happen annually, and if your gear failed, it could be months before you had a chance to resupply, and you still had to ply your trade, whether it be trapping, trading, or homesteading, with what you had left. The tools of that time epitomize to me, the height of human reliance on a blade.
The classic "survival knife" generally appears in most people's heads as a derivative of the USMC K-Bar, a long stout blade with a bowie-clip point, straight guard, and round handle. Some cheaper models use a short screw tang on a hollow handle for storing additional survival kit items, some high end ones incorporate advanced steels, full tangs, and various shapes besides the main cutting edge for a wide assortment of uses.
A survival knife is what gets the job done when you need it. They can, truthfully, come in all sizes and shapes. I have a small survival kit in an Altoids can, with a plastic bag for water, a lighter, a book of matches, some very thin nylon high-strength cordage, and a small blade I designed for finger-thumb use (no handle, as such). With this kit, I can cut things, tie things, and light things on fire. With that, I can do much to improve my situation and make other things as needed. I carry a "neck knife" when camping, which really isn't much more than a glorified steak knife, similar in size, and carried in a sheath which I wear around the neck and tuck under my shirt. It is conveniet, sharp, and comfortable to use. I also carry a Finnish Leuku, which resembles a small machete, and I find it incredibly useful across a wide spectrum of chores, including just about everything a small handaxe would do.
American Frontiersmen often carried 2 blades... a medium knife, perhaps 6-8 inches long, and a belt axe, whose actual dimensions are surprisingly small, though it is a very effective tool. The knife was used for cutting, the axe for chopping, and any job too big for those was often not attempted at all without specialized tooling. Modern "camp knives" are often marketed with the ability to chop, and the ABS test reinforces this notion, but the use of multiple, more focused tools, may actually get the job done better.
Throughout history, we see different cultures bring up the trademark knife that they identify with. In Finland, it's the Pukko. In America, the Bowie. Japan has the Tanto, Scotland the Sgian Dubh, Italy the Stilleto, and so on and so forth. Since the rest of the world was way past "surviving" by the time Iron and Steel came into play, I like to look at the early American experience, where knives accompanied Frontiersmen, Traders, and Voyageurs into the wilderness, and were called upon to serve in an environment unattached to manufactured goods. A Rendevous might happen annually, and if your gear failed, it could be months before you had a chance to resupply, and you still had to ply your trade, whether it be trapping, trading, or homesteading, with what you had left. The tools of that time epitomize to me, the height of human reliance on a blade.
