I was looking for an inexpensive, American-made, full-tang hunting knife. I found the Omni Hunter 12 Point. It meets all of the criteria... inexpensive (about $30), American-made, and it has a full tang (as evidenced by the tang showing through the lanyard hole). The Omni Hunter series knives are available in a smaller size (10 Pt.) and in camouflage handles, as well as folding version of both. Mine is model number 392BK - plain black handle. It performs just as well as knives costing two or three times as much. Check it out...
Handle Details: The Omni Hunter has a nice, comfortable handle. It's made of black Kraton, so it's slightly rubbery without catching on everything. It's 5-1/2" long and 11/16" thick. This is meaty handle, and it's contoured to fit your hand. It does this really nicely due to the deep choil, and there's another choil just ahead of the handle to let you get closer to the blade for close-up work. The spine of the handle has jimping along the first 3/4" and there are plenty of grooves on both sides of the handle to keep it secure, yet comfortable. The lanyard hole is an oval shape, and it will accomodate gutted 550 cord. You can clearly see the full tang construction in the lanyard hole. This really is a nice, comfortable handle.
Blade Details: It's made of Buck's nice 420HC stainless, and is 4-1/4" long with a 3-3/4" cutting edge. The blade is 5/16" thick and is hollow ground. this is a dedicated skinning blade - it's a whopping 1-11/16" wide! the grind starts mid-way, which is great for slicing. The blade came out of the box sharp enough to slice paper, but it quickly became razor sharp with just a ceramic rod and a leather belt. The right side of the blade is absent of markings; the left side has BUCK stamped over USA on the flat side of the blade, while the tang says the model number: 392 with the sideways "T". The spine also has jimping for an inch, which when combined with the jimping on the handle gives you some nice thumb placement.
An added feature to the blade is the choil. With it, you can choke up closer to the blade for more precise work. While this isn't exactly a caping knife (it's too wide for that) I'm sure I could get the face off of a deer with no difficulty.
The Sheath: The Omni Hunter comes with a China-made sheath. It's black Cordura and has the Buck logo embroidered in silver thread. Like most sheaths, this one is right-handed. It's 10-1/4" long and carries the knife so that only about an inch of the handle is exposed. The sheath closes via snap, and it retains the knife very well. The belt loop is a strip of black nylon sewn to the back, and it's capable of riding on a belt up to 2-1/8" wide. I feel that the belt loop is the sheath's weak link - it's only 3/4" wide and while it's double-stitched, it just feels weak. Giving the middle of the belt loop a small tug, I can see the stitching on the top moving around. It's still not that bad, and it's well within reason for the price tag of the knife.
This knife lends itself very nicely to the hunting / outdoors genre, and I can honestly say that I wouldn't feel under-knifed if this were my main "survival" knife. For an American-made, quality $30 knife, you can't beat it.
You can check out the Omni Hunter 12 Pt. on Buck's website here... http://www.buckknives.com/index.cfm?event=product.detail&productID=2887
Here's the Omni Hunter in black...
Handle Details: The Omni Hunter has a nice, comfortable handle. It's made of black Kraton, so it's slightly rubbery without catching on everything. It's 5-1/2" long and 11/16" thick. This is meaty handle, and it's contoured to fit your hand. It does this really nicely due to the deep choil, and there's another choil just ahead of the handle to let you get closer to the blade for close-up work. The spine of the handle has jimping along the first 3/4" and there are plenty of grooves on both sides of the handle to keep it secure, yet comfortable. The lanyard hole is an oval shape, and it will accomodate gutted 550 cord. You can clearly see the full tang construction in the lanyard hole. This really is a nice, comfortable handle.
Blade Details: It's made of Buck's nice 420HC stainless, and is 4-1/4" long with a 3-3/4" cutting edge. The blade is 5/16" thick and is hollow ground. this is a dedicated skinning blade - it's a whopping 1-11/16" wide! the grind starts mid-way, which is great for slicing. The blade came out of the box sharp enough to slice paper, but it quickly became razor sharp with just a ceramic rod and a leather belt. The right side of the blade is absent of markings; the left side has BUCK stamped over USA on the flat side of the blade, while the tang says the model number: 392 with the sideways "T". The spine also has jimping for an inch, which when combined with the jimping on the handle gives you some nice thumb placement.
An added feature to the blade is the choil. With it, you can choke up closer to the blade for more precise work. While this isn't exactly a caping knife (it's too wide for that) I'm sure I could get the face off of a deer with no difficulty.
The Sheath: The Omni Hunter comes with a China-made sheath. It's black Cordura and has the Buck logo embroidered in silver thread. Like most sheaths, this one is right-handed. It's 10-1/4" long and carries the knife so that only about an inch of the handle is exposed. The sheath closes via snap, and it retains the knife very well. The belt loop is a strip of black nylon sewn to the back, and it's capable of riding on a belt up to 2-1/8" wide. I feel that the belt loop is the sheath's weak link - it's only 3/4" wide and while it's double-stitched, it just feels weak. Giving the middle of the belt loop a small tug, I can see the stitching on the top moving around. It's still not that bad, and it's well within reason for the price tag of the knife.
This knife lends itself very nicely to the hunting / outdoors genre, and I can honestly say that I wouldn't feel under-knifed if this were my main "survival" knife. For an American-made, quality $30 knife, you can't beat it.
You can check out the Omni Hunter 12 Pt. on Buck's website here... http://www.buckknives.com/index.cfm?event=product.detail&productID=2887
Here's the Omni Hunter in black...