"The One" Fixed Blade

[Hawk45]

Fallkniven F1 or A1 depending on your batoning needs. The F1 is pretty amazing for a 4" blade.

 

[d762nato]

How about a Fallkniven Tor similar to the cold steel trail master. I have a user that works great I may part with. You sure don't see many around and they are suppose to be quite strong in the lateral bending dept.

 

[pinnah]

I'm having a hard time deciding on a fixed blade. Currently I have a few different fixed blades, all decent quality, but I want to sell them all and buy one, do it all, bigger knife. I spend a lot of time in the woods, camping, hunting,hiking, etc. I've pretty much narrowed it down to an Esee 4, 5 or 6, a CRK Pacific, or a Randall #14. I won't be abusing it, but I will use it hard, a little chopping, cutting rope, camp use, survival if needed, bushcraft kinda stuff, as well as a backup to my pistol for protection. The very top of my budget is $500, but I'd like to stay well under that. I hear Esee has a great warranty, I love the look and feel of the Pacific, and Randall's, are well, just cool!

Out of what I've listed, what do you say?

I'll look at other ideas, but I've already looked at a lot of knives and I like these the best.

I am NOT open to one off/custom knives, I want one from a well known company.

How you camp and hike may be different than how I camp and hike, so we may end up with different choices.

For hunting, I generally carry an old Buck 110 out of habit and sentimentality.

For hiking and backpacking, I carry an Opinel #10 and a small Leatherman PS4 Squirt (although I could see carrying a Juice). I don't do "wood processing" while backpacking, as I rely on stove and tarp. In practice and in the short run, the Opinel #10 can do pretty much everything that a 4" fixed blade can do - including batoning - with the sole exception of prying downward (not something I ever do, really). I find a folder much easier to deal with on the trail, as it fits easily in my fanny pack which is nearly always on me at the 12 o'clock position.

IMO, there is a difference between so-called survival thinking and bushcraft. The former leans towards bigger knives (6" and up) and the latter towards 4" knives (give or take). Both are interesting skills to practice and learn but IMO have limited applicability for where I hike. Some considerations along this vein...

I don't understand the appeal of cross grain chopping. If I need to section wood, I'm going to carry a small saw. I sometimes carry a small wood stove (Emberlit) and when I do, will either carry an Opinel saw (usually) or a larger Silky Saw (less common). I do understand the appeal of delimbing small finger sized branches and smaller but an Opinel or Mora Companion easily handle this. Yes, a 7" blade makes shorter work of this but at a cost of general utility and more weight.

For batoning, I have 3 approaches...

For running my Emberlit, I carry the Opinel saw and a 4" or 5" fixed blade. The knives are either the Mora Companion or a modified Schrade H-15 (second from the left).

For car camping, I carry a small axe (or big hatchet) and the Schrade. The Schrade is an ideal all around camp knife due to the thinner blade stock and convex sabre grind.

For the rare time I make a camp fire while backpacking (really rare), I carry a Silky Saw and a 7" knife for batoning thicker wood. This is lighter than carrying a hatchet.

If you held a gun to my head to pick one knife to do it all, I would pick my H-15 (second from left).

Wood knives by Pinnah, on Flickr