Fair enough, none of the designs are exactly what I'd be looking for either.


For me, I'll take the guys at their word as they both seem to be pretty straight forward guys and I don't have a compelling reason to believe otherwise (I don't know what Bear has said about his involvement, though I recall hearing somewhere that he was more involved in the newer Compact Fixed Blade design than some of the others). That said, I would also assume they weren't 100% behind every design decision though; I'd guess it would be fair to say that some choices would be driven by the company, others by the men themselves. Assuming a true collaboration, of course.


I definitely agree with you here, I don't see the point of a false top edge either. There were a couple knives I was considering purchasing that did have that "feature" and I did count it as a negative to the design when evaluating my options (e.g., Grohmann #4, Fallkniven S1).

I just love all this talk about "celebrity" survival knives - way too much emphasis on what is really a very simple, commonplace tool that has been available for thousands of years.

A basic, simple SAK has worked just fine for me in routine outdoors work as well as the occasional dicey situation for decades. For my money, anything over 4" is excessive, and there are many blades available for $40 that are perfectly adequate. Recall that Aron Ralston performed major surgery with a cheap, knockoff multi-tool.

If one wishes to lug around a heavy "Rambo" type cutting tool, that is fine, but chances are, there are better uses for the money and weight involved.

And yet, it seems that everyone who relies upon a knife has come up with their own set of ideal characteristics that a knife should have, from George W. Sears to Doug Ritter and I doubt these are the first or last gentlemen who will be advocating, and yes even selling, their ideal blade designs.

I would guess this pattern goes back well before Nessmuk and will continue as long as men use knives in the outdoors and have a public platform.

I think this discussion became what it did because of the questions on many people minds. Like whether this latest breed of televised outdoorsman (i.e., Grylls & Stroud) are actually promoting their own ideals or are just putting their name on product, and if they are promoting tools which would be a liability as opposed to a benefit in the field compared to what is already available on the market.


I don't think any of the knives discussed so far would fall into this category; they all pretty much fall into the 4"-5" range.

Jim Bowie comes to mind.

And here's something to think about as well. Knives have been around for roughly 2 and 1/2 million years:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knife

and although the construction methods and materials have changed, the basic design has remained relatively unchanged. There's a reason for that.

Indeed thousands of years old, if not more. One of man's first tools. And as such, there have been MANY variations of it developed for different purposes, which is what makes them interesting, and worth discussing.





Well said. I've enjoyed this discussion, and feel like it's been worthwhile.