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- Jul 13, 2011
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Mors Kochanski answering the question, What is a Survival Knife?
On the first survival knife he designed:
comfortable handle, blade no bigger than four fingers, continuous curvature, nothing unusual or weird about any shape. The tip of the knife ends up somewhere between the center and the back of the handle. The blade is so thin that its quite flexible.
He later redesigned his ideal survival knife, having this to say:
The knife, in my opinion, should be unbreakable. Therefore, it should have a full tang, and the handle should be made of something that will be unbreakable, and the blade should be of a thickness that you feel would take a lot of abuse ... I would say its a serious disaster if your knife breaks while youre using it You should be able to try hard to abuse it, and it should serve to do all the things you need to do in survival a knife that is very heavy to the feel and a continuous curvature, definitely almost all the way, and no real hint of a guard.
The interesting thing is that the very heavy, unbreakable knife he is talking about is the humble Skookum Bush Tool that he designed with Rod Garcia, which has a 4.25 blade and is 1/8 thick. Echoing Mors' points, Ive noticed that Cody Lundin prefers the Mora Classic (also 4.25 blade, 2/25" thick!), and Ray Mears prefers his custom knife with a 4.33 blade (4/25 thick).
[youtube]Lll-4jDAVzA[/youtube]
On the first survival knife he designed:
comfortable handle, blade no bigger than four fingers, continuous curvature, nothing unusual or weird about any shape. The tip of the knife ends up somewhere between the center and the back of the handle. The blade is so thin that its quite flexible.
He later redesigned his ideal survival knife, having this to say:
The knife, in my opinion, should be unbreakable. Therefore, it should have a full tang, and the handle should be made of something that will be unbreakable, and the blade should be of a thickness that you feel would take a lot of abuse ... I would say its a serious disaster if your knife breaks while youre using it You should be able to try hard to abuse it, and it should serve to do all the things you need to do in survival a knife that is very heavy to the feel and a continuous curvature, definitely almost all the way, and no real hint of a guard.
The interesting thing is that the very heavy, unbreakable knife he is talking about is the humble Skookum Bush Tool that he designed with Rod Garcia, which has a 4.25 blade and is 1/8 thick. Echoing Mors' points, Ive noticed that Cody Lundin prefers the Mora Classic (also 4.25 blade, 2/25" thick!), and Ray Mears prefers his custom knife with a 4.33 blade (4/25 thick).
[youtube]Lll-4jDAVzA[/youtube]
