Here are some off-the-cuff general ideas on “Big Knife” evaluations:<br><br>1. Presume nothing. For example, I would have knee-jerked a CS LTC Kukri as not suitable for meal preparations if I had not seen my son casually and efficiently use his for that as if that’s what he used it for all the time…<br><br>2. Establish “types” of uses or categories and within them establish specific tasks. Be creative/innovative when evaluating specific tasks – for example, a Machax may split modest sized billets of wood just fine when it is used like a hatchet, whereas an SRK may need to be whacked on the spine with a second billet of wood… my idea is, predefine the desired result, not the method used to attain the result. I could care less how well the SRK does as a hatchet – all I care about is how well does it split wood, what method worked with that particular knife, and how well did it hold up… OTOH, just because a Machax looks like it ought to be employed with a mighty swing… maybe it splits best when held cross-grain and whacked on the spine…<br><br>3. Either report a range of “street prices” for a given blade or categorize the blades into pre-defined ranges like “Up to $50 US”, “$51US - $100US”, etc.<br><br>4. Don’t bother too much with technical descriptions – those are easy enough to dig up elsewhere and may even be prejudicial to the testing (everyone knows that 440 is not as good as A34, right? Right? And besides, drop points are superior to spear points because…) All I care about is how it performs. The rest is only of academic interest…<br><br>5. Evaluate a number of stipulated carry options – factory and otherwise. How good or bad are the factory sheaths/aftermarket sheaths (this is inflammatory if left subjective, so let’s come up with some objective TESTS rather than inspections/conclusions) Lord knows we all have opinions on THAT topic… “Just the facts, Ma’am…”<br><br>6. “Sharp” is a whole category of its own. If new, out-of-the-box sharpness is of more than passing interest. Does the powdercoat interfere with getting/keeping an edge? Does the edge tend to chip or fold or wear or… This is an area where a bit of technical reporting is in order - most of us probably would cringe at trying to resharpen a Moran edge – and the factory grind should be used to pre-determine what method of sharpening will be used for a particular knife, because I do not relish having to completely re-shape a grind in the field with whatever I have on me (having done that, I’m sure of this…) Just as a suggestion, stick with something like duo-folds for the abrasive type sharpening efforts – stock a XC-C and F-XF combo and report what works best… we should be able to take it from there…<br><br>Think of all the different categories of tasks that a survival knife may be expected to be called on to perform and post. A few more will probably manifest themselves after posting…<br><br>Long term testing is a separate topic because… it takes a long time.<br><br>Consider using some additional test persons from here – Chris shouldn’t get to have ALL the fun by himself… (no, I am NOT asking to be a guinea p, er, tester – already have too many opinions to be real objective) I can think of some folks here that I bet would do a great job helping out with real world tests…<br><br>Gotta run up to near Willie’s neck of the woods for the weekend, so adios for now – hope I come back to read a lot of (better than mine) suggestions…<br><br>Regards,<br><br>Tom<br>