Choosing a strong and reliable survival knife is very important. You don’t just go out shopping and purchasing something that your eyes fancy right away. You need to learn what makes a survival knife effective and learn about all its features and other uses so it will never fail you every time you are in survival mode.
Defining the Survival Knife
The survival knife is the most important tool you could get your hands on during a wilderness adventure, even more important than a pocket knife or machete. While you can readily improvise a knife using stone or bone materials, it’s nothing compared to the strength, usefulness and versatility of the forged steel blade. The survival knife has that power to force things. The problem is that not every knife is designed to perform well in typical survival situations. Before getting one, you need to identify valuable survival knife features first before scooping up the first knife that you fancy. Understand the properties that make a great survival knife so you’ll end up with something that is best suited for your survival needs and demands.
What to Avoid When Choosing a Survival Knife
Narrow tang – this may be fine for kitchen work, but you can expect that a knife with a narrow tang construction wouldn’t survive the rigors of any survival activity like chopping wood or pounding its blade down to split small logs.
Folding knives – this also includes multi-tools. A folding knife is not ideal in survival mode simply because it is not strong enough to perform outdoor cutting and slicing activities.
Huge knives – you’ve got Hollywood to blame for this. Sporting huge monstrosities like Rambo knives is not practical in the sense that a large knife will be unable to do some intricate work during survival situations. You need your survival knife to help you in setting up camp, trapping and hunting, and not in slaying large beasts in just one mighty thrust.
What You Want In a Survival Knife Instead
Full tang – this is what defines the real strength of the survival knife. The handle (which is also the tang itself and is a direct part of the blade) is wrapped with some material for comfort.
Fixed blade – there may be new folding knives designs in the market these days created for survival situations, but the fixed blade remains to be the ideal knife that oozes with strength and reliability. You can perform various functions with efficiency.