Johnson Adventure Blades (Kabar) Potbelly ADDED PICS & ADDITIONAL COMMENTS

cramsey3006

cramsey3006

Joined
Aug 2, 2010
Messages
2,129
I got my Potbelly in the mail today. Bought it slightly used off of G-Man on the for sale forums.

It's a BEAST of a knife. 1/4" thick and stout as hell.

FABULOUS, IMO. As soon as I got it out of the package, I attacked a seasoned, treated 1x6 that I had in the garage. The wood is several years old, dry, and hard. I've NEVER had a 7" bladed knife (or an 8") that bites as deep and chops as well as the Potbelly does. It chops better than the cheap 18" kukri (chinese cold steel wannabe) I used to use have.

It wasn't shaving sharp to begin with, but chopping through the board didn't dull it a bit. It cut regular printer paper as well as it did before I started.

The handle allows a multitude of different grip options and felt good to my hands during the chopping. No hot spots or blisters, but I haven't used it for an extended amount of time yet.

The sheath is cool, but it is big. No discreet carry with it, that's for sure. The Piggyback knife fits right in a slot of it's own in the sheath, with a button snap to secure it. The stuff pocket will easily hold a good amount of stuff, as much or more than most pocket kits will hold, I think. If kept within reason, I think you could put a small folder, a multi-tool, fire steel, small light, tinder, and other stuff all in the pouch.

Lots of different attachment options with the MOLLE loops on the back of the sheath.

I think it will be an excellent outdoor knife system. I definitely wouldn't feel under-equipped with it.

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I sharpened the Potbelly yesterday using my Work Sharp. It took a couple of minutes to set the edge with the 20 degree guide and the 220 belt, remove the guide, change to the 6000 belt, and (without the guide) strop the edge hair popping sharp.

The ease of sharpening shouldn't have surprised me, as that's one of the benefits of 1095 steel, but the knife is 1/4" thick and not really made for delicate work. After I was done the blade would easily slice tiny curls off of printer paper held by the corner, with draw cuts AND push cuts.

The more I handle the knife, the more impressed I get. I'm not too sure about the texturing on the handle yet, it affords a great grip, but I think in extended chopping it might wear on the hand if you're not using gloves. It'll depend on whether you have "soft" or "hard" hands. I like it for now, if I change my mind, it's nothing that a few swipes across the belt sander won't fix.
 
Thanks for the review, I love the look of this knife and am considering picking one up in the future.
 
Good review. I bought one, loved the look and feel of it, but quickly understood that this knife was purpose built for hunters, hence the sig. The thing is indeed a beast.
 
I wouldn't say that it was purpose built for hunters. I consider the PB an all around outdoor blade for heavy use. It wouldn't be my choice at all for game processing, although it would quarter up any animal rather quickly.

The Baconmaker would be the knife for hunters. HAHA. After all, it's a boar hunting knife. I picked up one them too. I imagine that knife will get me in trouble sometime. I've been wondering about taking boars with knives....:D

I don't know if I've got the balls for it though. :o It would be my luck that the boar I get to fight with would be 400lbs of pissed off Terminator hog. :eek:

I think the BM would make a pretty good combat knife too. Hell, it's designed for killing things and it's a wicked looking blade. I don't know how it would do for general utility work with the recurved blade, but I imagine that it'd suffice.
 
I spent some time outside with the knife today, putting it to work...

I took me just over a minute to get through this.

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And one last time....

For the first two cuts I held the knife at the rear of the handle and snap cut. It's very powerful used that way.

For this cut, I held the knife in a traditional grip with my hand centered on the handle. Still a powerful chopper this way, but I could tell a small bit of difference between the two techniques.

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The handle texturing is pretty aggressive, especially so if you have "soft" hands. My hands aren't super rough or tough, I'd call them "work conditioned". I hardly ever wear gloves for any manual work and never have blisters or sore spots. Only one hot spot that I could tell, and for the life of me, I can't figure out why it rubbed me there. I'm sure that it was from the loose grip while snap cutting, because if you have a firm grip on the handle, it's not going to move at all. No other sore, rubbed, or raw spots to report.

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I also cut down a small dead cedar that was around 2" thick. After I dropped it, I cut it a couple of 18" lengths from and used the Potbelly to split them into kindling. I did't need to use a baton, I stood them on end and chopped into the end to get it started. Then with a my hands on the handle and on the protruding end of the blade back, I just used brute force to split the wood without too much of a problem.

Then I used the knife to make a SORRY fuzz stick (sorry I'm nowhere near as skilled as Mistwalker lol).

While the knife was not shaving sharp by the time I went though the bigger tree 3 times, it was still very sharp and more than capable of excellent cutting. I easily cut up a bike tube for ranger bands, and the blade would still slice printer paper easily.

Touching up the blade was VERY easy. I got the Work Sharp out and with a very worn 6000 grit belt dressed with just a tiny bit of green compound from HF, a total of 5 passes on each side had the blade back to hair popping, newspaper cutting sharp.

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Obviously, I had the Piggyback knife out too. I made sure that it was popping hair before I left. I used it to scrape a magnesium block and shave some fatwood (the Potbelly did very well at that). The magnesium block took the shaving edge off, but it was still workable with the remaining edge.

By the time I was done it would not cut the bicycle tube cleanly nor would it slice paper. The sharp spine of the blade worked very well to scrape the ferro rod on the block. Given the low to mid grade of stainless steel it is, I wasn't expecting an impressive performance from it. I wouldn't depend on it for any kind of extended cutting.

I will say that it touched up pretty easily on the Work Sharp (most knives do), but no where near as well as the 1096 Cro-Van in the Potbelly.
 
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