Your camp knife will be your constant companion when you’re in the field, especially if you are into bushcraft and build a lot of stuff while you’re out there, rather than bringing it with you.  A good camp knife can excavate foundations for poles, carve the poles themselves, strip bark for winding cordage, strike a fire, prepare fuel for the fire, clean harvests, prep food,...

Among other things, Great Eastern Cutlery knives are known for their traditional patterns, like Stockman knives, and for the fact that GEC makes them with 1095 steel blades.  This is an affordable alloy and a tough one, one that will hold an edge reasonably well while still being fairly easy to resharpen. Especially considering the low price of 1095, there are a lot of positive...

A bushcraft knife tends to be a generalist by design, which makes it highly utilitarian for a wide range of tasks.  That said, here are 8 things you can use a bushcraft knife for.  Starting a Fire  A good bushcraft knife can help you practice firecraft in more than one way. The most straightforward way is to use the spine to shave sparks off of a ferrocerium rod, but some...

White River Knife and Tool is a small, family-owned company based in Michigan. They produce a wide variety of knives primarily for hunting and fishing, though they also make knives for camp chores, survival, EDC, and other disciplines and applications.  As you might expect, quality and customer satisfaction are at the heart of this small company’s identity. Here are 5 things...

There’s more than one way to skin a cat, and similarly, there’s more than one way to sharpen a knife. That being said, keeping a knife sharp is a matter of responsible knife ownership as well as safety, since a sharp knife cuts more easily. Of course, there is more than one type of knife sharpener; here are 5 of the most common along with some things you should know about...

The ESEE Laser Strike may not be the brand’s most popular entry, but as a bushcraft knife, it is certainly highly versatile and is made with a bunch of features that certainly give it an edge over the competition, even popular models like the ESEE 3, 4 and Izula.  Here are 6 aspects of this knife, some of which it shares in common with other ESEE Knives and others that are unique to...

A bushcraft knife might sport full tang construction, be made from a high-end steel alloy that resists corrosion, and generally hang with the worst abuse and conditions you can throw at it, but there are still some things you will want to avoid doing with it if you can.  Here are some of them. Throw It  Throwing knives are made with softer steels and more accommodating tempers than...

Many Boker Knives are excellent, and the company sits squarely on a strong foundation, and is historically known for producing some of the finest knives and bladed tools in the world.  This post will focus the spotlight on one specific Boker knife, the Arbolito Hunter with stag scales, which is like a smaller, toned-down version of the Esculta, but which is nonetheless an excellent...

There are a lot of things to love about the Bradford Guardian 3, one of the company’s best-selling patterns. Among these are the facts that, like other Bradford Knives, they are hand-finished, made in America, and made with top-quality materials.  But, beyond that, we’ve enumerated some of the best features of these popular knives here.  The size and weight are...

You know the Tom Brown Tracker by TOPS Knives? We all do; it is one of the most recognizable knife patterns of all time, and very distinct. Even the silhouette is as recognizable as that of a Nessmuk-style Skinner or Buck 119 Special.  It is a versatile knife, but it is also a bloody behemoth, and there are times when you might want to be served by that level of versatility without the...

There are few knives in history with profiles as immediately recognizable as the USMC Fighting Knife from KA-BAR Knives. Perhaps the Buck 110 Folding Hunter can rival it, but the pickings are certainly slim. Either way, the USMC Fighting Knife is an infamous knife. That’s partially due to its history, and partially due to the features it possesses that make it practical for the...

When it comes to the steel used in hunting knives, there are three main considerations you should take into account to determine if you’ll be getting something that’s designed to perform the way you need it to, or not.  Fortunately, hunting knives share these steel attributes in common with knives intended for other applications, like survival and bushcraft knives. It just so...

In an era in which competitors like Case and Rough Ryder rely heavily on stainless steel alloys, half to appeal to a buying populace that doesn’t care to learn how to care for steel, or is too lazy to do so, Great Eastern Cutlery still does things the old fashioned way.  Their traditional pocket knives are predominantly made from 1095 steel, which is a high-carbon alloy...

Everyone knows that the standard, original ESEE 4 is made with a 1095 steel blade and treated with a powder coat, just like the overwhelming majority of ESEE Knives. It is a good steel, and a very tough steel. One that is unlikely to break, too, though that doesn’t matter too much because as a result of ESEE’s legendary warranty, even if you do break it they will replace it. But...

Horace Kephart was an influential American outdoorsman and writer who was perhaps best known for the fact that he spent three years of his life in near complete isolation in the Great Smoky Mountains, as well as for his book, Camping and Woodcraft, which is still a gospel for outdoorsmen around the world to the present day. After a mental breakdown following struggles with alcohol...

ESEE Knives come with great sheaths, by and large. Most of them come with molded thermoplastic sheaths that offer an excellent friction fit, excellent retention, and which can be rigged in a variety of different ways. Even those that don’t, come with high quality leather knife sheaths. On top of that fact that most come with clip plates that let the sheath easily be rigged for tip-down...

Battle Horse Knives are handmade in the United States from premium steels and other components. The brand is respected as one of the premier options in the industry.  That being said, there are some terms that the company uses wantonly in its product descriptions. To know what you’re getting, you should understand them. Here are some of the more common ones:  O1 steel:...

Leather knife sheaths may not offer the flexibility of Kydex and other thermoplastic knife sheaths, and they will require more maintenance, but they’re still popular classic alternatives nonetheless. It is also the case that there are two things you should know about them that you don’t really need to worry about or even consider when it comes to modern synthetic knife...

Among those who carry a knife everyday, whether for general utility or in the line of official duty, there are two main options: fixed blades or folders.  Which is for you will depend on your intended use case and application. This short post may help with that.  Why a Fixed Blade? Fixed blades knives do not have a pivot point and require a sheath for carry, but there are many...

Stroup Knives might be best known for models like the Bravo V and Mini 2, but when it comes to other tools, don’t count them out. The company produces some top-notch tomahawks, too.  Before you count out tomahawks as a tacticool gimmick, give them a chance, specifically the Tomahawk S by Stroup Knives. Here’s what you should know about it. Bombproof Design  This is...

REMETTE Knives are not among the industry’s best known, especially alongside more commonly encountered brands like CKRT, Spyderco, and ZT (to name just three of dozens). And yet, REMETTE Knives deliver quality in relatively unconventional ways. Here are 6 things you’ll appreciate about them if you get more familiar with them.  Unique Blade Profiles  Not that this...

Jesper Voxnaes, the designer behind such popular blades as the CRKT Pilar and the Viper Knives Vox Fortis Flipper, is known for his insightful and practical designs.  At one point, he had a vision to create a small knife with a utilitarian blade that, despite its diminutive stature, still offered a full handle grip.  It’s exactly what he pulled off in the Fox...

Your fishing knives are critical for preparing and cutting bait, fileting and pan dressing harvests, and for general utility, such as opening packages, trimming line, and other basic chores like that.  Fishing knives also, perhaps more than any other category of knives, are subjected to some of the worst conditions out there, as far as steel is concerned, and this is especially...

You may have heard of flint and steel, or simply flint fire starters, as well as the potential benefits they offer to bushcrafters or survivalists, but the truth is what’s often referred to as “flint” is anything but. Here’s what you need to know. No, It’s Not Flint and Steel Those black rods that are sold to preppers, bushcrafters and other outdoorsmen and...

What method an EDC knife uses for deployment is one of the key features you should evaluate before you buy, as it will impact the usability of the knife as well as the learning curve you need to surmount to become proficient with the tool.  Here are some of the more common deployment methods used in most folders carried as EDC knives. Nail Nicks Nail nicks are old school, and...

A2 steel is a dinosaur among knife steels, but thanks to a unique combination of properties, it is still in common use as a quality tool steel that still makes a good knife.  It is also fairly commonly used in LT Wright knives, alongside other tool steels like 1075 and AEB-L.  This short post will take a closer look at this tool steel, used in many LT Wright Knife models like...

Congratulations; you’ve just gotten a new set of kitchen knives. You can finally retire the old set, the ones with the chipped edges, stained blades, and chopped up handle scales. But what are you going to do to ensure that this new set of knives doesn’t look like the old one in a year? Well, you can start with this list. Make sure you never do these 6 things with your...

Suppose you have a popular knife like a Becker BK14 or an ESEE 3 or Izula. These knives come with knife handle scales from the factory that are pretty solid; but they could definitely be better.  And on that note, upgrading the handle scales for your knives is one of the simplest and most accessible things you can do to improve its overall utility and your overall satisfaction...

Two important attributes you will want to consider in any hunting knives are the blade profile and sheath material. This post will break down some of those details.  Hunting Knives and Blade Profile Four of the more common knife blade profiles in hunting knives are as follows: Drop point: A drop point blade has a spine that curves down to meet the point. This is a very...

Sometimes simplicity is the best policy of design. In many modern knife brands, like Becker and ESEE, this is evident. They aim to produce knives that are simple, even forgettable in aesthetic, but which are intended to perform unfailingly.  This maxim also typifies Joker Knives, known for models like the Bushcraft Survival Knife, which sport simple aesthetics but uncompromising...

Like the traditional pocket knives of yore, Great Eastern Cutlery knives, also known as GEC, are made with a high-carbon steel alloy, 1095. This is the same steel that is commonly used in ESEE Knives, for those of you familiar.  It is also similar to the high-carbon alloys that have been used to make traditional pocket knives in the past, which is fitting, because many Great Eastern...

The V-42 Stiletto was a fighting knife issued to the First Special Service Force, also known as the FSSF, which was a joint American-Canadian unit known as the Devil’s Brigade, which saw action in Italy in the Second World War. The original fighting knife was made with a hollow-ground 1095 steel blade, a stacked leather handle, and a crusher pommel.  The design was simple but has...

ESEE Knives like the ESEE 4 and Izula are only a few of the great tools that are available to enterprising modern outdoorsmen, but they are still some of the best in the market, hands down; and here are some of the reasons for that.  Simplicity Married to Versatility  The backbone of ESEE’s catalog is composed of models like the Candiru, Izula, and ESEE 3, 4, 5 and 6...

Handmade knives are expensive. Sometimes they are leagues more expensive than mass produced knives, and on top of that, there are some very good mass produced knives out there that are surprisingly affordable.  Knowing this, and knowing that knives are tools that are intended to be used, and used hard at that, why would you ever want to put good money into handmade knives knowing the...

Much like the terms “survival knife”, “tactical knife”, and “bushcraft knife”, there are no hard bounds around the term “camp knife”.  Strictly speaking, if you are using a knife in camp, it’s a camp knife. Even so, there are still a few things by which you can know a quality design when you see (or handle) it.  Here are...