Bushcraft Basics Ep11: Bushcraft Knives

Description

In this video we have a look at Bushcraft Knives, a basic look at Grinds and Designs along side a very good knife for beginners and experienced outdoor enthusiasts.

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Video Transcription

either guys it's Mike from mcq bushcraft here and welcome to episode 11 of bushcraft basics in last week's episode we had a brief look at UK knife lore really just to give people a bit of an understanding of the laws and how they can carry these tools in the field if they wish to use them but in this week's episode we're going to be having a look at a variety of basic bushcraft knives and talking about a few others as well that are out there for sale that are really perfect for people who are starting bushcraft and are looking to purchase their their first bushcraft knife to use in the field but before we have a look at any specific products I'm just going to show you a couple of the knives that I own and really just familiarize ourselves with the anatomy of a bushcraft knife so that you can really understand what you're looking at and see the subtle differences in between designs so these are two knives here that I use when I'm practicing bushcraft skills just here we have a Jack Lord classic and here we have a forest bushcraft four-inch knife and we'll start with this one here so if you look at this knife here we can start to get a very good example of what Anatomy makes up a knife and start to see how it's constructed we can see that this portion here is the blade which is fairly obvious this is the actual blade of the knife and this is four inches long which is about standard for a bushcraft Camp knife we can see that the actual metal that makes up the blade of the knife continues on through the handle just here and this part is called the tang and you can visibly see the Tang on this knife and this is often referred to as a full tang so this knife is one large piece of steel that's been turned into a knife shape and then two handles have been bolted either side which is often referred to as the scales you can have other designs as well this more here for example you can't see the actual Tang on this one the Tang is actually set and cast into this plastic handle and that's called a push tang or a rat tail Tang but this exposed kure-san though knife here you can see that's what the Tang would look like in that Mora and they're often set into a wooden or plastic handle the back of the blade here is often referred to as the spine there's a three mil blade in terms of its thickness which is probably my favorite width of actual blade for using in the field it's nice and thin but at the same time it's very strong and it allows you to get quite a nice bevel on it this is a 25 degree Scandinavian grind on it which is what this type of knife grind is called a very common grind that you see in bushcraft and predominantly it's designed for carving wood and this one excels at that we've got what I would call just there a drop point in the blade so on some knives you have a very straight spine and then it drops off very slightly into a drop point that does make the point a lot stronger in even on some blades you can have a tapered spine or a tapered blade for example or edge that narrows off as it gets towards the point and that might be quite good for something like a filling knife or a skinning knife something that requires to go in and then make a very fine cut for example put on these knives here they're about three mil all the way to the edge where you just start to get to the bevel simply because it makes them a lot stronger for heavier jobs but this one I asked quite a pronounced drop point and a quite a curve in the blade which I really like and that's to really give this point here this is often referred to as the belly by the way of the blade this curve here and different lives have different bellies on them but if we look at this one here only has a very slight drop point so the curvature or maneuverability of that point would have to be angled far more like this to get some curvature when carving but on this one here it can be held quite comfortably like this you can get a lot of rotation when carving and that's predominantly what this part of the blade will give you it will give you a lot of rotation and curvature when working with wood where there is that part there will try to bed in more so when you're feathering this portion here your primary part of the blade will be very useful

getting quite long strokes and cuts down a piece of wood and gauging that thickness as you go down a piece of wood to get a nice curl on a feather so blade bevel primary bevel belly we've got a point there we have a drop point the spine we have a finger guard just there we have the scales sometimes a handle we have the tang just there other features as well or Massassi sometimes you have jimping just there to allow your finger to be placed on top so that you can steady the blade for example and gain more control occasionally you have a pummel so you can smack things with it and actually crack rocks or crack other items with a hardened pummel on the end even glass sometimes survival knives or emergency knives have a point just there for cracking glass if you're in a car accident and you need to break a window sometimes you have a child and choles traditionally was so that you could sharpen all of the blade on the stone if you'll notice on this maurer here sharpening all of the blade will mean the plastic will come into contact with the sharpening stone and that's not specifically a problem because it's a cheap plastic knife but if you've got a nice wooden one sometimes it's nice to have that gap so you're not carving into the wood with a sharpening stone and scratching it so a chore can be useful for that but in more modern senses that the choil

can often be used like this as well so your finger and this is quite a shallow tool so you've got to be careful but your finger will go in there like that and it allows you to create less distance between your hand and the actual blade so when you're pushing down you can get a lot more force coming straight down your arm onto the blade instead of that distance which might allow some leverage in the wrist and fatigue over time so you do see other features like that as well if we have a look at this Jack Lord classic this one's well used been using this for some time testing it out and it's a very good blade but it's more on the side of the wood wall design if you look at it it's got quite a stank blade it's about 4 mil thick it's got about a 28 to 30 degree bevel on it and you can see the differences in the actual design this one's much straighter less curvature got a bit of a straighter spine here but it still drops off into quite a drop point and we have much more curved belly just there so you don't get as much rotation with this one as you do with that and you do generally have to angle the knife a bit more to be using that portion of the curve than you do with this knife here it can be um can be easily used a bit better so this one's specifically designed for carving well there's this is a more of an all-round bushcraft knife that you could use in the field and batten with and interestingly enough we talked about tapered blades and how they taper off thinner but on this one here we've actually got a tapered tang to reduce the weight in the handle and balance the knife out a bit more so a little difference there but really only a subtle one you see in variations of knife design so hopefully that gave you just a little bit of an understanding of the sort of design features you can see on lives it's not the complete eh-2-zed on the anatomy of knives but you don't need to be an expert to practice bushcraft and they how to use them and this is a basic course and it'll come with time when you're using knives trying different grinds and seeing how different Steel's can perform but that's an interesting thing and for me one of the most important features on the knife is the handle you're quickly noticed when a handle is not comfortable and it doesn't matter how good the blade is if the handle isn't comfortable the knife is effectively useless in my opinion and needs a new handle if you're in the field and you're working with knives for a long time the handle comfort is so essential I like quite a large handle on my knife so I like them to sit in the palm quite comfortably and most of the time when I'm working I'll be using the chest lever just like this carving like that using my back muscles and my arms doing a chicken impression in the woods carving away with a piece of wood and that's predominantly how I use a knife most of the time so that curvature on the back of the handle there is quite important to me if I'm using a knife like this let's Jack Lal here which is a more standardized bushcraft knife in some

spec's in terms of its design you can see it fits in the palm quite completely really going all the way to the end it doesn't curve round in any respect it can still be used very comfortably like that but what you'll find is that portion there overhangs and it tends to dig in to the actual chest into the ribs and when working for prolonged periods of time that can actually cause some bruising there so this knife isn't designed completely with carving in mind although it does have a wood grind and a general camp blade in terms of length but it's more of an all-round knife for using in the field things like battening feathering for doing a bit of carving for doing a bit of whittling whether is this one here is designed for that as well but predominantly it's got it's designed by someone who's a carver that the chapel designed this mark my friend these is an excellent carver and he wanted something in the field that was a general camp knife that could do carving as well and this is his creation here so you can see how different designs are a really bias to different things there's no no matter how many times I hear it I just don't believe that there's one knife that will do all jobs it's just not possible there are knives out there that do a range of jobs very well but they'll always fall short in something and a lot of survival knives for example a bit like the se6 this knife is geared up for many many different things it's a full flat with a micro baffle so this one here Scandinavian grind you can see that they're a good grind for wood I'll give it that but this one here is a full flat with a micro bevel so that is a good all-around grind so it'll be pretty good on would be good on skinning as well good on heavy processing it will hold an edge for a long time it's got a much fatter bevel than the Scandi grind the Scandi grind will be more like that the grind on the se will be like that and then it will taper off to a full flat so I'll still be able to get some depth but it has a strong edge at the same time so this is sort of an all all more rangs wilderness survival knife in some respects a bit of a jack-of-all-trades but coming back to the knife grind why do a lot of these craft knives have a Scandinavian grind well most of the time when you're out working in the woods you'll be carving with a wood whether it be green whether it be seasoned you'll be working with wood and that's predominantly where the Scandinavian grind comes into its own it's an excellent grind for working with wood very responsive can get very controlled deep cuts that quite shallow angles and really do some fantastic work with working with wood and them it's a great grind for that this knife here is a carbon steel knife and it's made of oh one tool steel the same as the JAC law and very similar as well to the a see and the more is that I have with me in the Kyra sander or carbon steel knives and you may ask why do a lot of people carry carbon steel knives they're very forgiving in the field most carbon steel knives they have good edge retention if heat treated properly they shouldn't chip but most of the time they're just quite easy to sharpen it has a pretty gauge retention and that's it they require some looking after but having a carbon steel or an o1 tool steel with a scandi grind is quite a good combination in some respects for a standardized knife simply because it's quite a big bevel and it requires you to take quite a lot of metal off to sharpen it not to maintain it but to actually sharpen it so if you had a really really hard steel quite one of the sort of more modern technologies it might be quite hard to sharpen a scandi grime because you have to take a lot of material off and often you see some of the more clever of steels or modern technologies used with grinds like this where not so much metal has to be taken off so carbon steels and Scandi grind often go together quite well in the field as knives that are very easy to maintain really but a Scandi grind predominantly is very good for wood what it isn't very good for is slicing very thinly like this because it's like a wedge it's like a wedge design so it's not particularly good at slicing it would tend to push things apart which is why it's quite good at battling because it splits and wedges quite well although I generally don't use a knife for battling a lot of people do and the scam D crime can be very good for that especially one that's 4 mil thick that's quite a big wedge you know you put that in a piece of wood and you whack it it's going to split the wood and split it quite easily there is a full flat we're probably going a lot deeper and a lot more slice here before it starts to pry the wood apart in some respects Scandi grind ZAR not very good at skinning and when I say not very good that they're not the right tool for the job and my skin a lot of animals I tend not to use a Scandi grind sometimes if I've just got a scandi on me I'll use it obviously but I'm cautious I make sure the blade doesn't come into contact with bone because in reality a Scandinavian grind is actually a very fragile grind it's very delicate and although it's really good for wood it's not really designed for things like bone and for coming into contact with bone and if you're filling a fish and you're ramming it through bone you will flatten certain areas of the edge you will roll it you will see the rolls when you hold the blade up to the light and turn it like this you'll see light catching on the actual edge of the blade and you can feel it as well if you gradually run your finger down you can feel the rolls in the blade if there are any in fact there's a little one just there where I was doing a rabbet the other day and I accidentally just clipped all of the bones by accident was the only knife I had on me so a bit of a shame but something like this would be better a full flat with a micro bevel much better for dealing with game with or even a convex grind as well but you know they're designed for different purposes by different people with different things in mind and then that's generally the way knives go they're their tools for a job and they're generally bias to a specific job but obviously they'll do other things but let's have a look at some other grinds so he talks about a scandinavian grind and I'll draw the grind for you we're looking at the grinds face on as I draw them it looks a little bit like this it comes down the flat of the blade spine at the top and then it goes in to a bevel like that into the actual blade needs a grind off either side until an edge

formed just here there's no secondary bevel a secondary bevel can be added and it's a good thing to do in the field it makes it easier to sharpen if you're dressing game and you've got a Scandi grind and you know you don't want it to roll you can eliminate rolling very easily and still retain quite a lot of mobility with working with wood and still have quite good performance there by just putting a secondary bevel on but a lot of people don't choose to do that and they like the the performance of that zero grind and it is very responsive and working with wood so that's usually what a Scandinavian grind looks like and obviously this bevel can change depending on the thickness of this portion here or you know the actual bevel itself how large they make the bevel and manufacturers can can obviously have control of that and you can have control of that later down the line if you want a knife designed for you so if you wanted to have a Scandinavian grind with a micro bevel on it it could be something like this then have a smaller bevel just there like that and that would obviously eliminate rolling and make it much stronger and obviously the responsiveness on carving might not be there but you have other grinds as well like a full flat full flat usually goes down like this this is like the a/c and you have a mic a micro bevel or a secondary bevel at the end like that and that's a very sly see grind but a strong one and you see that on a lot of survival knives you have a full flat and it goes into a secondary bevel there and that can penetrate quite deep but still have quite a strong edge you can have other ones as well that are often not not quite as pronounced so they might have a flat of the knife just there with a smaller bevel just at the end and you generally get a portion of flatness just there the variations do change and there are a lot of different names for these crimes but we won't go into them in this video because it all gets a bit much but but one of the most common ones and one that's quite useful for skinning or filling is a hollow grind and as far as manufacturing goes it's of one of the most common leaves because it's quite cheap to produce a hollow grind is put on a weel and you get like a curvature on the actual bevel and then a micro bevel at the end you very rarely see these kind of knives like a scandi which is zero ground so just two grinds to make an edge there usually have secondary bevels on the Ross they'd be very very weak in some respects unless they're specifically aimed at certain jobs but a lot of the ones in the bushcraft and survival realm will be secondary beveled just for strength because they know what people will be using these knives wore effectively so there are a lot of different grinds and they're really suited for different jobs we also have a convex grind as well which you'll often find on your axe but that's enough talk we've gone over some of the basics hopefully you've got a bit of an understanding there but let's have a look at some specific knives so this is the knife I would recommend for people beginning bushcraft a mora companion heavy gcmg this probably came as no surprise more as often recommended for people who are beginning bushcraft but there's a reason why this knife is inexpensive it comes in at about 15 pounds and around about 16 dollars in the US if you're looking on sites like ebay and mora have or use of very very good steel they use a very good stainless steel he's a very good carbon steel and their heat treat is really excellent they have a very very good heat treat and for such a little amount of money you're getting an excellent blade and this kind of blade quality is is you know it's the equivalent to the same of what I've got on this handmade knife here the blade quality the quality of the steel the heat treat the grind you're getting the same thing but on a less expensive knife it's simply bushed because this is handmade and it comes with you know some one hand making it and finishing it putting scales on gluing it all together you know the process of making the leather sheath that's what puts the cost on these handmade knives the steel is the same as this here the quality is just the same and this is such an excellent life I would recommend this over the Klepper the Mora clipper has a Tang that finishes about there remember we talked about tangs earlier so this is what the Tang will look like something like this in this handle but the more a clipper is about that long very very short tang in fact I'm being a bit harsh there it's probably about that long the one in this one the more heavy-duty comes with a significantly longer tank so it ends about there in life so it's about that long much longer tang in this one they do even state on the website that it's designed for things like battening it's much more heavy-duty for tougher jobs because the Clippers is got such a shorter Tang on it I've never seen many fail minds saying that I've not seen many fail and we've talked about 4 tangs you don't need a full tang unless you're doing really heavy jobs like battening I don't really even need a full tang I use my ax to process almost everything while I'm out in the field and ideally I could be having this knife just here and get on absolutely fine with it but um it's just free meeting knife makers over time doing bushcraft for a long time you meet people knives get built you start using them and that's the way it really is but in terms of the specifications of this blade you're looking at about three point two millimeters in thickness of the actual blade the length of the blade is about four point nine inches and the total length of the entire knife is eight point eight one inches and you've got a twenty seven degree bevel there it's around about a 10 9 v equivalent in terms of the steel and it's hardened to 59 to 60 on the Rockwell scale so pretty hard pretty tough blade with a decent tang length in it into a comfortable handle that you could use pretty much all day long maura do make other knives as well that if you don't have the budget for around 15 pounds or 16 or 17 dollars this one here was 5 pounds and this here is a more a 5:1 one another carbon steel blade it's about 2 mil in thickness just over I believe and you can see it has an unfinished spine they're two slightly cheaper in production but again a very useful knife it reminds me very much of the hultafors knives that I used to use a lot at work the hultafors carbon steel craftsmen again an excellent knife you can buy that on Amazon for around about three pounds so might be worth having a look at their range as well there's not a lot in them really in terms of difference and they both make an excellent set of knives it does come in a stainless option as well and stainless is is excellent if you buy the coastline

I wouldn't recommend stainless if you don't live by the coastline I'd recommend to go with carbon steel just because it's a good all-rounder it's very easy to work with good edge retention but the stainless steel more uses is excellent as well and it's got very good heat treat on it and just as good a edge retention in some respects as the carbon steel but I generally recommend a carbon steel to a beginner because it gets them used to looking after the blade and then later down the line you might move on to a more advanced stainless technology on a different style grind if you find yourself going down a certain path for example like dressing game or fishing or you don't find you're working with wood so much so it's good to start off with something like this because it teaches you all the core skills that go along side looking after a knife maintaining it sharpening it bringing it back to life if you've abused it because you're new to using it and maybe using it in the wrong way for example and it's inexpensive as well so you can make those changes to it like grinding down the spine without really caring because if something goes wrong with it you can easily just buy another one if you break it I think one of the main issues with people wanting to pick knives like this when they're getting into bushcraft is because they see people like me and other people out there practicing bushcraft skills and they've got something that looks really fancy just like that but the thing to understand is that the metal and the treatment behind the metal and the actual blade there really isn't a lot of difference in it if any at all companies like mora have been making knives for a long time and their heat treat is very good and that the black the quality of the steel is very good as well the cost comes in and making the knife that's that's where the cost comes from you know me saying I want a piece of you as a handle and I want a leather sheath that's hand stitched and I want the metal to be hand rubbed or forged is where the cost comes in and I think when you've been doing bushcraft skills we've been practicing outdoor living skills for a long time it's nice to have something sentimental like that to work with out in the field that you've had an input in designing to give it some personalization but the reality is you don't need things like that we talked about full tang full tang is great if you're doing a lot of battling and heavy processing with a knife or prying or standing on it or using it as a ladder to climb up trees which all those things are just it might in my opinion they're not things I do with knives anyway but if you're actually using a knife for its purpose and you're carving some wood and you're making some notches you don't need full tang a push tang or a rat tail Tang is perfectly adequate it's perfectly adequate for you it depends what you're using the knife for that's what it comes down to it's what you're using that knife for I mean if you carry an axe and you start getting into outdoor living skills and bushcraft skills your finest time rolls on the ax will become 80 to 90% of what you use all the time and the knife will do very very little and you will realize that you don't need you know this this knife has all the bells and whistles on it you just need a little knife little 3-inch knife to do some carving and whittling with and the axe can kind of do it all so this is why it's really important just to start out with something basic and find your feet and let the the the avenues grow as you explore different skills and you'll start to really understand you know what knives will do what for you and you'll have a bit of an input later on down the line and what kind of knife you want and be able to influence that decision if you do have one hand made for you but don't worry about the coolness factor that it's plastic and it has a plastic sheath it just means you'll be laughing when you go canoeing and you fall in the river and your knife gets wet and the guy next to you has his posh leather one with wood on it and it gets totally ruined and the leather soaked and you see him at the side of the river trying to wrap his knife in tissue and trying to dry off and he can't put it back in the sheath till he gets home that's the reality of it so I hope this videos helped out just a video really to give you a bit of an introduction two knives some of these episodes in the series will be more complete than others but that's because we will come back to knives later on in this series as we start to use them and as we move further on into the series and start to explore different things like processing game and all sorts of different tasks that you practice out in the field you'll see how different knives play a role out in the field and why they're useful so I hope this videos helped out I'll put links in the description to products like this if you are interested in checking them out and thank you for watching and I will see you next week in episode 12 where we'll be practicing knife skills and you're looking at knife safety and actually using a knife properly out in the field thanks for watching and I'll see you real soon