Survival Lilly knife

Jhansenak47

Jhansenak47

Joined
Nov 27, 2005
Messages
1,315
I just saw Survival Lilly's new knife and must say that I am not impressed.
Steel: AUS8
Blade Length: 13,5 cm / 5.12 inches
Blade Thickness: 4,8 mm
Handle Length: 11,5 cm / 4.33 inches
Weight (including sheath): 389 gramms / 13.72 ounces
Rockwell Hardness: 57 Rc +/-1

The Taiwanese workmanship looks pretty good. My lack of enthusiasm comes from her design emphasis and the design itself, which seems to fall along the sharpened prybar genre. Apparently destructive knife testing is important to her.
The tip is a crucial feature of the knife and breaking it would be a real bummer, especially when you find yourself in a real survival situation.
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The handle is made from Micarta, a material which is robust and tough. It has been shaped into a very comfortable handle, to ensure the user can work for hours and hours without getting blisters. In a survival situation blisters can get infected without proper medical treatment.....
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At the end of the knife there is a small emergency hammer which can be used to crush nuts and seeds or to smash off limpets off a rock.
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The quotes are from her product description, which I am not linking because I don't think she is a dealer.

I don't know about you, but I found this knife to be a bit much. Given her past history of making destructive testing videos of knives in "survival situations" this knife description was a rehash of silliness. Maybe it is just me, but I don't see the point in something like this. Indestructible does not correlate well to functional when it comes to knives, unless you plan on approaching survival like a bull in a china shop. What are your thoughts on this "survival knife".
 
:DProving once again that the genes of real Vikings have been completely lost. I have a wonderful AUS8 hunting knife .It's excellent in every way. BUT , it's an early one made with real AUS8 not the later Chinese copy .
She mentions a knife that fits her needs but is too expensive !! So she'll take a substitute ! :rolleyes: Well miss the best is never cheap. Watch the video for laughs , don't take it seriously
 
I think it looks decent. I’m not a huge fan of AUS8 but it’s an ok stainless.

The design definitely leans more towards batoning and chopping more than finesse.

It will be interesting to see what retail this is marketed.
 
Not just amusing..... I find it is also quite ironic. The knife appears to be a full tang "homage" of a Fallkniven
S1 with micarta scales and a lesser/cheaper/inferior steel. IIRC the OP bagged the S1 quite extensively......... Which leads me to the point of my post. Fallkniven - If you're listening please start making the blade blanks available again.
 
I had to laugh when I saw a comment on another thread about knives getting thinner, nope! Still not happening. But such is the way of the marketing world, as long as the marketing all says you need a sharp prybar, then that is what those who are learning will learn to use, therefore they will teach the next gen that sharpened prypars are good, but sharpened bricks are better.
 
Not my thing, but it seems silly to go after this particular knife when most of the Fallkniven catalogue, the Cold Steel SRK, Becker BK-10, BK-7, BK-9 and many, many others use very similar or the same stock and have seen a whole lot of use in many and varied situations for a whole lot of years.

Apart from the stock thickness, the design seems pretty solid overall. Not trying to reinvent the wheel, but has a few nice features not found on some competitors knives (I would rather have the micarta scales than those on the S1 or SRK, for example).
 
This looked a lot like an OKC blackbird until you get to the tip and then blade thickness. I guess it's cool she designed a knife and it works for her. Seems really heavy for a 5" knife.
 
never heard of her, but after watching, I'm not impressed. AUS8 is ok, but nothing special. There are better choices for a knife you may well bet your life on.
 
Mannlicher said:
never heard of her, but after watching, I'm not impressed. AUS8 is ok, but nothing special. There are better choices for a knife you may well bet your life on.
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She is a bushcrafting YouTube star. I think she got YouTube famous because she is a decent looking girl with a Lili Von Shtupp accent doing bushcraft, so the guys have a crush on her and the girls like having a female hero. She is not particularly amazing at bushcraft. I think your assessment of the knife as "ok" and "nothing special" is pretty much how I feel about the knife too.
 
It could be better, it could be worse. At least it isn't one of those hopeful monster things (think Tracket, HEST …), and looks like it evolved from some existing design elements that work, not just a giant leap from the fevered imagination of some child. [ Insipid Moniker named a few classics]


That said, she betrays herself with some of the same marketing bollox that came bundled with the giants whose shoulders the knife stands upon when they spewed it. Of particular note is the exposed pommel to bang in nails. It would amuse me greatly to watch her do that. Those of you that might remember the old SOG Government knife will recall that it had an especially big pommel for driving in tent pegs. The pommel didn't really give much away in surface area to the average claw hammer. Still, you only had to miss once and drive you hand down hard onto the end of a twig stuck in the ground to be very shy of ever doing that again. The result being that you subsequently stuck so tentatively you might as well have just put the flat of the blade atop the peg and hit that with a stick. Now consider the surface area of the striking bit of her pommel, a nail head, and how you'd be holding it, Actually consider all the angles. If she actually did this stuff she'd know this. She'd know she'd be better off calling that feature a peanut pummeler. Cut and paste marketing pony ensued she missed it. Then again, perhaps I'm harsh. May be carrying in all that set dressing and Hiawatha's big-top canvas gazebo in a 400L bergan drains her and makes her forget.

If she dumped all the her “survival” framing and just called it what it is, “adventure games in the woods”, I'd be able to generate a certain amount of respect and good will. The knife could take its rightful place alongside many other pretty decent sports / recreation / adventure knives from Asia. I'd say that for my own taste I'd probably pick something from Steel Will out of all those, and there it would end.

As it stands with all of her survival crap and her declaration that she has broken the tips off loads of knives I can't help but laugh a bit. I find it rather like a lecturn-fuhrer of a woman pontificating on “which survival long gun” whilst repeatedly picking hot brass out of her bra. The survival mindset of “I don't care. Does it work, is it clean, do I have enough ammunition is all I care about” aint for you honey. Stick to plinking and playing and you'll be fine. Same with her knives.
 
I recently watched her video on the S1. Part way through when she starts talking about the commonly known problem with VG10 being brittle and prone to chipping.... Also her complaint about scrubbing the kraton handle on a rock scruffed the rubber. What does she think will happen with micarta when scraped on rocks. Silly YouTuber "Woods messing with Lilly" would be more appropriate and respectable.
 
thebrain said:
Also her complaint about scrubbing the kraton handle on a rock scruffed the rubber. What does she think will happen with micarta when scraped on rocks.
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Having scrubbed both on rocks, I can tell you the micarta will look great after months of rock-scrubbing and the kraton will be all scuffed up after one day. Heck, a too-tight kydex sheath will tear up a kraton handle.

Micarta is a very tough, durable material. You can make log splitting wedges out of it. Kraton is rubber.
 
Depending on the quality of the rubber and the quality of the micarta the results can be quite different. Besides that many people make splitting wedges out of wood, and tires seem to handle contact with rocks ok;). My comment was mostly about her lak of forethought in action. If you need to use your only tool in an emergency maybe try not to render it uncomfortable and or useless, unless you know how long you will be "stranded".
 
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Insipid Moniker said:
Not my thing, but it seems silly to go after this particular knife when most of the Fallkniven catalogue, the Cold Steel SRK, Becker BK-10, BK-7, BK-9 and many, many others use very similar or the same stock and have seen a whole lot of use in many and varied situations for a whole lot of years.

Apart from the stock thickness, the design seems pretty solid overall. Not trying to reinvent the wheel, but has a few nice features not found on some competitors knives (I would rather have the micarta scales than those on the S1 or SRK, for example).
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That was my opinion too. I have four fixed blades ... a decades-old rubber-handled hollow-ground Buck Vanguard, a similarly-sized Camillus Bushcrafter with stock Micarta, a custom-sheathed Becker BK2 with the pricey BK Micarta upgrade, and a Gerber LMF 2 (a do-it-all-bargain at 50%-off years ago) permanently stashed down in the cubby between the driver's seat-base and the door.

Ms Lilly's knife is just fine. Especially if you actually listened to her cautious (but perfect) "If you could have only one knife" situation/scenario ...

I hope she sells thousands ... gotta love that entrepreneurial spirit ... cynics can go pound stand. :)
 
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