The pilot's knife

by Ravi Fry

Contributing author

Two things every person traveling in (or over) the wilderness needs to have with them are a way to start a fire, and a quality knife. There may be (and probably are) other things they need to have with them, but those two are non negotiable.

For as seemingly simple as they are, knives are a complicated subject. There are a baffling array of styles, sizes, and steels to choose from. The world being what it is, there are as many crap knives available as quality products, and among the quality knives there are so many different designs and styles that you can have an excellent knife that's terribly unsuited to your chore.

The Spyderco Paramilitary 2 locking-folding knife: makes quick work of weathered bone as the Skywagon looks on.

To further complicate things there is a plethora of bad information surrounding knives, especially the dreaded "survival knife", a term I refuse to use outside of referring (disparagingly) to that category of knives specifically marketed to people who know little about either knives or survival. Show me a saw back, hollow handle with enclosed fishing kit, built in compass, or the words "made in China" and I'll show you a waste of money.

If you own any of these as your pilot knife, I'm sorry, you fail.

I much prefer the term "utility knife", as in a knife you utilize to get your chores done. If you happen to be in a survival situation then so be it— chores are chores. Some knives are specialized for skinning, some for camping, some for filleting fish. Many of the popular belt knife styles are really butchery tools— hunting knives designed to clean game. They are not necessarily good utility knives. A good utility knife is one that will do a wide variety of jobs but which specializes in cutting wood, since that's the most abundant and useful natural resource to manipulate. Not too large or too small; thick enough to be strong but not so thick as to be overly heavy, with a good grip and balance and a proper sheath.

These popular traditional styles are really designed for the skinning and butchering of game. They'll work for other chores, but there are better designs for bush crafting, which is the art of manipulating natural materials more than cutting flesh.

The fundamental requirements for a pilot's utility knife are:

That's pretty much it. Obviously more than one knife will fill these requirements, and different people will choose different knives for the same job. A fastidious user is going to try a few knives before they settle on one or two (or three) that get carried all the time, and a knowledgable person will choose different knives for different conditions. In the summer I can get by quite fine with my smallest and lightest puukko knife, but it's a little small for heavy chores. In the late fall I carry a heavier knife than I carry in the summer because the cooler weather makes me more dependent on fire and an emergency shelter. In winter I also carry an axe because winter conditions are severe enough that the weight of an axe is more than offset by its utility.

There is no perfect knife, and any knife you have with you is better than the ones you don't, but some designs work better than others. If you want to cut right to the chase just buy a Fallkniven F1 in VG10 or an EnZo Trapper with a scandi grind in anything but D2 and call it good. You still need to know how to use and sharpen your knife, but the search for the right knife will be over.

In this article we're going to discuss knives suited to the pilot who travels in the wilderness and wants to live comfortably and efficiently. It's also possible that, due to crash or other less dramatic misfortune, they will be reliant on a few tools to do a wide variety of chores. And really, that's where a knife excels. A knife has been called the single most important tool for wilderness living or survival, but aside from butchering game, other tools are almost always superior to a knife for a given chore (an axe is vastly superior to a knife for almost all bush living chores and should be carried in every backcountry aircraft.)

The reason a knife is seen as so important is because even though it's not the best tool for the job, it'll do in an pinch, and it's light and small enough to always be with you. That's a good thing to keep in mind when selecting a knife. Large knives can be fun, but they are inconvenient to carry and not nearly as useful as a small axe. If it's not compact and light enough to always be with you without you noticing, it'll eventually get left behind. Remember, nobody left camp in the morning with the expectation of getting stuck out in the bush without sufficient clothing or shelter-it happens when you least expect it.

This is probably the most useful knife design for many pilots day to day, but it'll leave you short in the unlikely event that you have to land your plane more than 1/4 mile from a diner.

So what can a knife do for you? Well, lots of things for a skilled user, but one of the most important things a knife will do is help you start a fire. With a knife you can take coarse kindling or even large fuel and make it into tinder and fine kindling that will ignite from the small flame of a match. There are conditions where a person without a knife or axe simply will not be able to get a fire lit no matter how many matches they have.

Other chores a knife makes possible are the harvesting of branches and small trees to make an emergency shelter or insulating bed, cutting walking sticks or splints for an injury, making pot holders or grills for cooking fish or game, modifying clothing or packs to suit a unforeseen circumstance, chopping a hole through ice to access water or for fishing, cutting through aircraft skin to access equipment from a crumpled aircraft, carving tools such as wedges or diggers or scrapers out of wood, or just giving you something comforting to hold in your hand while you contemplate all the money you saved by not buying a satellite phone. Simply put, a knife is the most versatile tool you can carry with you that will facilitate your hands accomplishing what your mind envisions. Of course if you're ham-fisted or unimaginative then a knife won't do you a whole lot of good. Bluntly put, a knife won't do jack-shit for an unskilled person, so either develop some skills or carry a flask of rum instead of a knife— your end will be the same but your last hour will be far happier with the rum.

A knife can be just as important in fire starting as a match. All of these sheath knives work well at carving wood. In my experience the two far right knives are too heavy to carry regularly. The center knife is made of thinner stock and is the limit of what I'll tote around. The three knives on the left get the majority of the work done. An axe is superior to a knife for almost every bush living and fire lighting chore, but they're too cumbersome to carry around when you don't expect to need one.

Most of these chores require cutting wood, and the ability to efficiently cut wood is the single most important consideration in choosing a knife for backcountry travel. A knife that will efficiently cut wood will cut everything else as well, but the reverse is not true. The second most important consideration is choosing a knife that you will actually carry with you. There's just no point in owning a knife that's too large or heavy to carry with you all the time without feeling inconvenienced. That size and weight is going to be different for different people, but everyone has their limit.

Fixed vs Folder

A knife that folds in half is really just half a knife. Folding knives are great, fantastic even, but no folder will ever equal the cutting power and utility of a fixed blade knife, and the simple reason is you cannot baton a folding knife. Knives lack any ability to chop because they lack mass. (A knife that has enough mass to chop is just as heavy and about 1/10th as useful as a small axe, so I'll ignore them.) A knife's ability to slice into hard substances like wood is limited by the strength of your hands and the thickness of the knife blade. But good cuts can be made in wood by striking the back of a fixed blade knife with a stick. This is commonly referred to a batoning, and done carefully it's a very useful technique that doubles or triples what you can do with a knife. Folding knives cannot be batoned because the hinge simply will not withstand the abuse. No matter how beefy the construction or how clever the locking mechanism, a folding knife will soon break if you whack it with a stick. If you choose to carry only a folding knife, bear in mind that you're trading a lot of performance for a little convenience.

Both of these knives provide a similar sized blade, and both cut wood superbly. The folding knife is easier to carry and the only style knife some people will always have with them. The fixed blade puukko knife is vastly superior for doing chores as it can be batoned with a stick whereas a folding knife cannot. The tip on the folding knife is not as useful as the fine tip on the puukko knife.

Strength, size, and weight

Size is very much a personal choice. Start out with a knife with a blade equal to the length of the handle and about as wide as one of your fingers and go from there. Blades from 2" to 5" are the most reasonable. Past 5" two things happen: the knife gets big enough that carrying it becomes an issue, and there's enough extra blade sticking out over the work that it presents a safety hazard. It's easier to keep track of what a 2" blade is doing than what a 9" blade is doing, especially when what you're cutting on is only an inch wide to begin with. Of course a 2" blade makes a mighty small target for a baton, and you have to attack a loaf of bread from all four sides and you still might not get through. Three to four inches seems to be about right for most folks. A blade wider than two fingers looses versatility while gaining weight. Very wide blades are a benefit in the kitchen when you're cutting uniform slices of eggplant, but of little use in the bush. A good sharp point gives you a thin section of blade that will get into tight places and do fine work, which can be extremely useful. I avoid knives that don't provide a thin, sharp point.

It's entirely possible to break a fixed blade knife by overly aggressive batoning or prying, especially if trying to split pieces of knotty wood by whacking your knife through them lengthwise. In choosing a fixed blade knife there is a direct trade off between strength and weight. The type of steel also makes a difference, but not as much as some people would have you think. Thick, robust blades are stronger and will withstand more abuse than delicate blades (especially while batoning), but they are heavier and often less efficient at cutting chores than thinner blades. Weight is a big issue. A knife gets carried in addition to everything else you might want to have with you and you might go for days without needing a knife to do anything more stressful than open a food package or clean under a thumbnail. The pounds we carry don't matter-it's the ounces that get us.

Left to right: EnZo Trapper, Fallkniven F1, and Bark River Bravo 1.A knife I'm very fond of is the Bark River Bravo 1, but at 10.5 ounces with the sheath, I simply won't carry it. It's relegated to my survival pack rather than every day cary. What makes it so heavy is it's made from .215" thick steel— nearly a 1/4" wide at the spine! By comparison, my Fallkniven F1 is just slightly shorter and made from .18" steel and weighs 2 oz less. You wouldn't think that 2 oz would be a deal killer, but apparently it is. I routinely carry the Fallkniven F1 and never carry the Bark River Bravo, even though I like it just as much if not more so. The knife that I carry the most (EnZo Trapper) is .137" thick and 6.5 ounces with the sheath— 4 oz less than the Bravo 1 and 2 oz less than the Fallkniven. The fact that it weighs less is a big part of why it gets the most use.

Needless to say, the Bark River Bravo 1 is going to withstand more abuse than the EnZo trapper, and there are circumstances where this is important. But it's overkill for daily use and heavy enough to make my belt slump, so it doesn't get carried. And to be honest, I don't recall EVER breaking a fixed blade knife. Granted I've never had to hack open a steel oil barrel to rescue my imprisoned midget comrade, or dig my way to freedom through a solid meter of granite prison stones, or harvest a mountain gorilla for meat by prying its cervical vertebrae apart after pouncing on its sleeping body in a nest of sticks and leaves and bug larva 90 feet off the jungle floor. But I've done lots of other shit, some of which would make you mildly uncomfortable to hear about. So I pretty much know my stuff.

Top to bottom: Bark River Bravo 1, Fallkniven F1, and EnZo Trapper

Knives as weapons

Let's be frank: the woods are an extremely dangerous place. The only reason you don't hear more reports of people being attacked by wolves is because it happens so often it's not even newsworthy. Montana ranchers alone estimate no fewer than 40 people are mauled by bears every day! And it's well known that mountain lions live almost entirely on human flesh, which is part of what makes their eyes glow in the dark. Danger lurks everywhere and all animals are out to get us. Now that we're all on the same page... /sarcasm.

Yes, knives make mighty good weapons, and the bigger the knife, the better it serves that role. But this is a negligible function for the backcountry pilot and one I only bring up in hopes of illustrating the foolishness of taking potential lethality into consideration when choosing a knife. Now if something furry is trying to turdify you, by all means fight back with whatever is at hand, and if that happens to be a knife then great— stab and slash away. But choosing a knife with this in mind is ridiculous. Even a very large knife is an extremely poor weapon against a wild animal. If you're afraid of being attacked then carry a gun. Hand-to-paw, (or worse yet), hand-to-hoof combat isn't going to end well for you regardless of what sort of knife you have. Besides, as we've learned from such documentaries as "The Grey" a far better strategy is to glue broken glass to the knuckles of your gloves and punch the attacking wildlife to death.

Even a 12-gauge loaded with slugs seems inadequate when you see this outside your tent flap. What possible use do you think a large knife is going to be in a confrontation?

In the event of aggressive bipeds, well, a man with a knife will best a man without a knife with monotonous regularity. But people tend to get extremely angry when they've been subjected to injury, even if they've brought it upon themselves and the other party was just acting in self-defense. If things are amped-up enough that you decide to start cutting, you're probably going to have little choice but to keep cutting until the job is done. Unless you're both justified and prepared to commit homicide, you'd best leave your knife out of any intraspecies conflicts.

You can't stop at just one!

Just like it's okay to have more than one wrench in your tool box, it's okay to have more than one knife in your kit. Assuming that you carry a survival pack or vest, there should be a knife in it. This knife really doesn't get used unless the survival kit gets put into play, and it should be a fixed blade, NOT a folder. This is a very important part of the kit, but you need more than just that. You need a knife that's always with you regardless of what you're doing-a knife that gets carried on your person everywhere. Unless you're some sort of friendless super-dork that wears a survival vest everywhere they go, chances are good that when you really need a good knife your vest is going to be sitting on the back seat of your plane, woefully out of reach.

For most people that everywhere knife is going to be a folding knife. Around about thirty-five or more years ago a company called Spyderco started making knives with humped backs and a large hole in the hump. The hole made it easy for your thumb to get purchase on the blade and open it one-handed. People who knew knives had been one-handing Buck 110's and other large folders for years, but this new knife design made one-handed opening easy for anyone no matter how inept so long as they had a thumb, and to top it off Spyderco put a clip on the handle so you didn't have to dig to the bottom of your pocket to find it.

And it was good! A true revolution in knife design just like that. A folding knife that can quickly be opened and closed with one hand and sits poised at the top of your pocket is by far the most convenient knife you can cary, and one-handers now make up about 90% of the knife market. But since the world is what it is, the vast majority of those knives are poor choices for the woods. Knife makers don't make knives to perform, they make them to sell, and since a whole lot more people watch TV and play video games than work in the woods, the knife makers (even the high dollar ones) create knife designs that are visually interesting and useful for random tasks, but often poor performers in the wilderness. Further muddying the waters is the past decade of war the US has been involved in. Knife makers target the active, retired and wanna-be military market, making an endless series of knives that look "tactical" and which are designed more as fashion statements or sudo-weapons than tools for the woods (think tanto blades). Many of these aren't poor quality knives, but they are a poor choice for the bush.

Assisted opening and full on switchblades are fine if that's what winds your watch, but they offer no inherent advantage in the woods and are generally not good wood cutting designs.

Around town and day to day I carry a pocket knife and call it good, but in the woods I always have a fixed blade knife on my person in addition to the pocket knife. Not because I'm worried about survival, but because it makes my life easier. The routine fire lighting, fuel collecting, and posing for dramatic photographs is made so much easier with a proper sheath knife on my side. And in the event I'm caught out away from camp overnight, it's going to make my life MUCH easier. Cut a half-dozen fir branches with your pocket knife and another dozen with a fixed blade knife and you'll see what I mean. You can make an emergency shelter with a folder, but you won't enjoy the process.

From top to bottom: Microtech, Bradley, Benchmade, Laguiloe, 90's vintage Cold Steel Voyager, and Enzo Borka. While these are all quality knives ranging in price from $400 to $40, only the Cold Steel and the EnZo have blade geometries that lend themselves to efficiently cutting wood. The difference in performance is startling when you put them all to work making a pile of shavings, and the EnZo Borka is far and away the most efficient.

If a knife won't efficiently cut through wood, it's a poor choice for a wilderness utility knife. Most one-hand knives on the market today are marginal to poor wood cutters. Cutting wood efficiently takes more than just a sharp edge, it takes a certain blade geometry. For whatever reason, that geometry is not very popular with the current (or previous) generation of one-hand opening knives. They're as handy as a pocket on a shirt but just don't work worth a damn in the woods.

Here are some things to look for in a knife: A blade with a straight belly (edge) that curves up into a good sharp point. The edge should run straight until it curves up to the point, without hollows or bulges. The back of the handle and the back of the blade should make a more or less straight line. Avoid serrations as you would herpes-they are of no benefit in the woods. Leave the serrations and tanto style blades to the mall ninjas and video game warriors. A double edged knife is of no value, and a thinned-down spine or sharpened false-edge is also a poor design for bushcraft. On a folding knife the locking mechanism is less important than the construction of the pivot, which is where the knife will loosen with normal use and break under hard use. Buttery-smooth, super-fast-opening knives tend to be woefully under built at the pivot and are totally unsuitable for wilderness usage. Always choose a stout pivot over speed of opening. A guard is of no benefit unless you're stabbing things (which you won't be) and often gets in the way of normal chores. I've never seen anyone injured by their hand slipping down onto the blade for lack of a guard.

This custom made Dozier skinning knife has a choil, or a unsharpened section of the blade adjacent to the handle. Choils have some usefulness in a skinning blade but are a poor choice for a utility knife as they deprive you of the most efficient part of the blade for cutting wood. Avoid them in a utility knife.

Multi-tools are not knives

Yes, they usually have a knife blade in there somewhere, but they are universally poor quality and completely lacking the geometry and strength needed to do any real work. You wouldn't count on a multi-tool to change your spark plugs, so don't count on it to do even light woods chores either. If you carry a multi-tool that's great, but lord help you if that's all the knife you've got.

Many people figure a knife is a knife is a knife, but different knives preform dramatically divergently in regards to cutting. While any sharp knife will cut meat or vegetables or snitches, it takes a certain geometry to cut wood shavings, and some blades will do it with a fraction of the effort of others. The only way to know for sure is to try them, though a knife with a scandi-ground blade is almost guaranteed to be a good wood cutter (see the EnZo Borka at the bottom of the line of folding knives, or the five Scandinavian-designed knives below). Traditional pocket knives like the stockman or trapper style knives your grandpa probably carried also tend to be good wood cutters. (Grandpa was probably more interested in getting some work done than in looking deadly on his Facebook page.) Some people are leery about non-locking blades, but I've never had a problem with them closing on me accidentally. Maybe that's because I grew up with them. Brains! Engage them!

The good old Swiss Army knife with non-locking blade. They are incredibly useful at a low price, but require some simple thought to avoid a move like closing the blade on your fingers while gripping the knife. Primary feature: Macgyver nostalgia.

Using a knife to carve precision components will tell you a lot about how it will perform. The small puukko style knife is one of the best I own for precision carving, such as this spindle for a shave horse built entirely with hand tools from locally harvested wood. I put a rather large handle on the relatively short blade to go with my large hands and to be more comfortable during hours of steady whittling.

Three folding knives I can whole heartedly recommend for working in the woods are the Enzo Borka and Birk with scandi-ground carbon or stainless (NOT D2) blades, and the Helle Dokka. The Enzo knives have a pocket clip and studs for one-handed opening, though they are pretty robust and don't flip open like some other knives. The Dokka lacks a pocket clip, which is unfortunate because it's an excellent knife. A moderately handy person could affix a clip to one if they so choose.

A typical puukko style knife. Puukko's are unparalleled for usefulness in the woods. This puuko was use for the precision carving work of fashioning some wooden utensils. This knife was used to carve a feather stick, which is a fire starter where the shavings are left attached to the wood. Making feather sticks takes excellent knife control and a sharp blade.

In a fixed blade knife I don't think there's a better choice available than the puukko style knife. A puukko is a traditional Scandinavian knife with a handle and blade of about equal lengths, straight backed, with the cutting edge going right to the end of the handle. Traditionally scandi ground, they are superb wood cutters and balance strength and weight about perfectly. Developed and refined over centuries by people living in the northern forests, they are an ideal woods knife. Many of the most successful bushcraft designs are very close interpretations of the 700 year old puukko design.

Inexplicably puukko knives are little appreciated in the US (probably because Sylvester Stallone never decapitated a ignorant deputy sheriff or gutted an uppity alien with one), though several commercial companies make excellent puukko style knives and you can find them online. I've adopted puukkos by buying the Scandinavian-made blades and then putting my own handles on them. It's very satisfying.

Knife makers

The state of knife manufacturing in the US is not what it used to be. The classic knife factories like Buck, Case, Schrade Walden, Western, Gerber, Kershaw, Ka Bar and Camillus are not quite what they were when I was a kid. Most of them have moved overseas, and while the names remain the same, the knives do not. Some of what they offer is good, some of it is dreadful. As a general rule, if you see a knife in a blister pack hanging from a peg, keep going. Thirty years ago you could go into a hardware store and pretty much sum up the quality of a knife by the brand it was stamped with. It's not the same today. For one thing, hardware stores barely exist, and if you do find one they probably don't carry knives, and if they do carry knives they're probably crap. If you ever wander into a old-time hardware store that has any American made knives from back when they were actually made in America, buy one or two or ten. They just don't make them like that anymore-at least not for such little money.

Wenger and Victorinox are still the same as they were thirty years ago, and surprisingly affordable for the quality. Swiss army knives are light for most tasks, but they cut better than many of the one-handers, and often come with a super-handy saw blade and cork screw. Benchmade and Spyderco make high quality knives, though whether they are good value is open to debate. Cold Steel has some of the most ridiculous marketing out there and some truly stupid designs, but they occasionally produce an excellent knife at a very reasonable price. If you want a high quality traditional folding knife I recommend looking at Great Eastern Cutlery and Northwoods Knives. If you don't lose them they'll last a couple generations. Bring your wallet.

There are a plethora of custom and semi-custom knives available as well. Blind Horse, Fiddleback Forge, Lon Humphry and others are available on demand with some limitations. North Bay Forge makes high-carbon knives that get sharp enough to frighten a brave man and hold that edge with the tenacity of a hungry hyena. Bark River is really more of a small factory than a custom maker, but they make a variety of designs adorned in about any handle material you can wish for. There are dozens of quality knife manufactures not listed here-as long as the knife has good geometry, good steel, good heat temper and a good sheath, the brand doesn't matter.

More European knives are available now, though you often have to go online to find them. Fallkniven makes excellent knives across the board, as does EnZo, Roselli, and Helle. These manufactures not only make high quality knives, but their designs are generally very well suited to working in the woods. I whole heartedly recommend them to anyone looking for a good cutting knife they can be assured will perform, and I personally prefer their designs over most US designes.

These five knives are all based on Scandinavian designs and scandi-ground, though only the far left one is a traditional puukko style. The two far left knives are Polar knife blades I put handles on. The 3rd and 4th from the left are EnZo Trapper blades in two different lengths, and the far right knife is made by Brusletto with a custom handle. All of these knives carve wood excellently, though the Brusletto knife on the far right never gets carried because it's simply too long and the extra length is a hindrance more often than it's a help.

Almost without fail you get what you pay for in a knife. That doesn't mean than an expensive knife is going to perform well (quality materials don't make up for poor design), but it does mean than an inexpensive knife probably won't perform well. One of the exceptions to this is the Mora knife company. They make a really well designed and very usable fixed blade knife (puukko style) for around $25~$50-by far the best bang for the buck in the bushcraft cutlery world. A $25 Mora isn't going to be as nice to use as a $150 EnZo Trapper, but it'll get the job done and work better than most of the $200 folders on the market today. They take a simple, proven design and build it out of decent material without flash or flair, and it works very well indeed. Personally I think it's the scandi-grind that makes Moras work so well for the price, but they get the balance and geometry right, too.

Steel

Knife steels can be broken down into two broad categories: stainless and non-stainless. There are a few dozen subcategories in each of those, but the first question you need to address is whether you can even consider a non-stainless knife. Some people simply cannot be bothered to care for a tool. They don't think about their tools until they need them, and once the chore is finished they don't think about them again until the next need. These folks would do well to stick to stainless steel knives.

For more fastidious users, carbon steel knives are perfectly fine anywhere but in a salt water environment. One thing that has never made sense to me are carbon steel knives with a protective blade coating made out of epoxy paint. The makers of these knives tout the strength, resilience and easy sharpening of carbon steel without the worry of rust, but it's just a gimmick. Rust on the side of a knife blade isn't a problem. The problem is that rust attacks the edge of the knife and dulls it while you sleep— something the epoxy coating cannot help you with.

Stainless steels will not throw a spark when struck with a hard rock (flint) the way carbon steel will, but this is of marginal importance. Lighting a fire with the spark from a piece of steel requires special tinder (char cloth or true tinder fungus) that has to be prepared in advance and carried with you, and there's little reason to do that when you can just carry matches instead.

Personally I tend to prefer carbon steels because I like the edge they take, and since I'm fanatical about caring for my tools, the rust issue doesn't phase me. That said, I also have several stainless knives I'm quite fond of. I've gotten very good service out of VG-10, 12C27, and N690Co to name a few high quality stainless steels. About the only steels I can say for certain I do not like are D2 tool steel, and the powdered wunder-steels like CPM S30 and other variants. Not only do you pay a premium for them (as much as double), but they require special tools and skills to sharpen and are all but impossible to maintain in the field. And I've simply never been able to get them as sharp as other steels. Holding an edge twice as long is of no use to me if it's not an edge I'm happy with to start. Maintaining a razor edge on normal knife steel in the field is a small chore, so I never understood the need for super-tough steels that don't sharpen well to begin with.

Speaking of sharp, you need a sharp knife. It should shave the hair off the back of your knuckles. If your knife isn't sharp! Sharp!! SHARP!!! then no other attribute it possesses will compensate for that fatal flaw. Either figure out how to keep it razor sharp or discard it for a knife that you can. A dull knife is an abomination and an embarrassment while a sharp knife is a pure joy to use.

You can't learn how to sharpen a knife by reading an article. It's something that takes practice and care and a surprisingly long time to master. I'm not going to try to teach the fundamentals here— there are better resources out there. But it's important to be able to sharpen a knife in the field, so some mention is in order. I carry a small diamond stone and several 1" wide strips of wet/dry sandpaper in grits from 120 to 5000, and a small strop impregnated with aluminum oxide. The diamond stone is a fast cutting grit that doesn't come into play unless the edge gets really damaged. The sandpaper is either stuck to the back of my strop with carpet tape, or if I'm backpacking and going light I leave the strop behind and lay the sandpaper on a smooth surface so I can strop the edge backwards along the abrasive. This is the best technique I've found for keeping my knives razor sharp in the field.

This is a sharp knife. If your knife won't easily shave hair it's not going to easily shave wood.

Sheaths

If you're carrying a fixed blade knife you need a sheath. Generally knives come with a sheath and thats what you're stuck with. I've rejected knives I otherwise liked because I didn't like the sheath. A deep pouch type sheath that's open at the top and leaves an inch or two of the handle exposed for grabbing is a secure design. Often the sheath will be suspended by a "dangler," or a separate piece of material that allows the sheath to swing more freely than if the sheath was attached directly to a belt. Putting a small carabiner or clip on the dangler can help affix the knife to your clothing when you're not wearing a belt. Some Scandinavian sheaths incorporate a mechanism for attaching them to your suspender buttons— a feature that works very well if you're fond of BDUs, as the buttons are the same size. Folding knives worn on a belt sheath never made any sense to me. If I'm going to wear a knife on my belt I want the utility of a fixed blade.

"Neck" or "necker" knives have become popular in recent years. Essentially they are a small, lightweight fixed-blade knife designed to be suspended around your neck. Often they are excellent knives, and carrying your knife on a cord around your neck is nothing new— woodsmen have been doing it for years, tucking the knife under their shirts to keep it out of the way when not in use. Unfortunately many of these necker knives come with a sheath that holds the knife upside down. It looks cool and you can reach under your shirt and pull the knife out lighting fast, and it's fantastically stupid.

Heed my warning, NEVER CARRY A KNIFE INVERTED AROUND YOUR NECK! No matter how secure the retention system seems, the only safe way to carry a knife is handle up, blade down, with gravity assisting in retention and a minimal amount of knife handle protruding from the sheath. The risk isn't that you'll lose your knife (which you eventually will), the risk is that the knife will fall into your waistline or lap and you'll drive it into your guts when you bend down to do something. This is not a hypothetical risk, it's a forgone conclusion if you carry long enough.

Small "neck" knives like this one from Bark River make excellent utility knives, but the sheaths they come with are often inadequate for safe carry.

When I started "making" knives (putting handles on purchased blades) I needed to make sheaths for them. I started working with Kydex and I was convinced I could make a secure sheath that would hold the knife inverted, either around my neck or on my pack strap. I utilized every design feature I could think of, including extremely strong magnets, and I made some very secure sheaths. They actually work pretty well on the pack strap and even on my kayaking life jacket, but they all failed when used around my neck. The reason is that there is a tugging action between shirt and skin as you move around. The first time my knife freed itself it fell out of my untucked shirt (thank god) hit the floor, bounced, and opened up my ankle. That took 13 stitches and by the time my wife was done suturing me I was sitting in a puddle of blood the size of a child's inflatable pool. The second time a knife freed itself (different knife and sheath, but same dumb-ass way of carrying it) it was only pure stupid luck that I saw it before I moved enough to drive it into my abdomen. It was close though— close enough that I finally got the message. Now if I carry a knife around my neck it's suspended in a deep reinforced pouch sheath, handle up.

It's your funeral. Carrying a knife like this is a really, really bad idea. This is a much safer way to carry a knife around your neck. A neck knife needs to be quite lightweight or this method will quickly be fatiguing.

Knife safety

Don't cut yourself. Sounds simple, but one way or another people still get cut. They say a dull knife is more dangerous than a sharp one, and that's true up to a point. Because they require more force to use, dull knives are more likely to slip and end up somewhere they don't belong— like in your thigh. But any knife will cause severe injuries with a slight misstep, including inflicting injuries that can be life threatening in the bush. There are right and wrong techniques for using a knife, and deep in the bush is not the ideal place to learn or practice them. If you're not a cutter but want to start, learn the basic skills at home next to a phone and an urgent-care facility.

Knife safety really comes down to don't cut towards any part of your body. Before you apply pressure to the knife, think about where the blade is going to end up when (not if) it slips or goes through the material before you expect it to. You need a safe follow-through trajectory that ensures that the blade will not strike your body before the energy is used up. To limit the potential energy, try to use short-throw muscles so a slipped blade won't travel as far. Don't scratch your nose with the hand holding the knife— you'll poke an eye out. When notching a stick, don't have your thumb directly under the blade, but rather have it off to one side. Now obviously you're not going to accidentally slice clean through a 2" thick stick and cut your thumb, but if you're always in the habit of operating with your thumb out of line with the blade you won't inadvertently use the wrong technique when notching a small stick that you could cut all the way through.

Holding a piece of wood against your chest and pulling the knife towards you is perfectly safe if you hold the knife in such a way that your hand hits your chest first, not the blade. Likewise, holding a stick and knife close to your chest and cutting by pulling the two apart is very effective since it uses the strong back muscles, and it's very safe because of the short throw and clean follow-through. Resting the end of a stick on a large piece of wood while you shave it down steadies the stick and reduces the energy you need to expend. Using a piece of wood rather than the dirt or a rock to steady the stick protects your knife edge in the event of a slip.

Using a knife

We learn by doing. If you want to be an expert bushcrafter, you need to go out and craft some bush. Getting a pilot certificate requires a minimum number of hours of actual flying. That's because it doesn't matter how well you intellectually understand something, you aren't going to be any good at it until you actually do it. Using a knife is no different, though watching someone bugger up a feather stick is not quite as entertaining as watching someone bugger up a landing.

Using a knife to process wood is every bit as much of an art as butchering game or filleting fish or preparing a salad of julienned root vegetables in a five-star restaurant. It's the simplest thing in the world when you watch an expert do it, and damned difficult the first time you try it for yourself. Like everything else, you have to practice if you want to be skillful. Carving spoons or spatulas is excellent practice, and no matter how crude they turn out you'll love them (so will your mom.)

Knife skills aren't something your born with, they're something you have to learn with practice. The ability to cut wood safely and accurately is just as much of a skill as butchering game or working in a professional kitchen. When you can carve a kitchen utensils that your wife will actually use, you're on your way; again... utensils she will actually use. Just saying.

Making a pile of shavings is both reason and reward enough! If you don't get that, then for the life of me I don't understand why you've read this far. Just whittling a pile of shavings to start your fire will teach you more than you'd suspect, and give you a sense of accomplishment that likely trumps everything else you did that day. Sad, sad, sad... but true. Selecting wood from your environment and turning it into tinder and kindling will not only teach you knife skills, but it will teach you things about different types of wood that might be invaluable later on-like: "choke cherry is really, really, really hard to carve", or "I'm allergic to spruce sap", or "rotten logs have wasps in them!"

Choosing to use a knife for a given chore when a more efficient tool is available (axe, loppers, saw, handgun) is how you develop the knife skills that will carry you through in a emergency.

This pail of fatwood shavings makes lighting the wood stove almost as easy as turning up a thermostat. A few hours shaving pitch-saturated pieces of pine builds your knife skills and sets you up for the coming winter's lighting chores. Tell your friends and relatives still using newspaper to suck it.

Live, unfrozen trees the thickness of your forearm can be easily cut down with a knife. Use your body weight to bend the tree over and cut with downward knife pressure where the tree bends. Keep your thumb off the back of the blade and rock the edge through the fibers. The bend will open the cut as you go. Even larger trees can be cut this way if they are first worked back and forth to loosen the fibers and a second person applies the weight while you cut. Prior to reaching the end of the cut reduce the amount of bend or the tree will break before you cut all the way though. Limbing the tree with the aid of a baton prior to cutting it down can save work. I've harvested hundreds of Douglas Fir saplings from overcrowded, sun-deprived stands to use in various applications, everything from walking sticks to building material, and I've harvested them all with a knife.

When I set out to build a railing on my porch I opted to use Douglas-fir saplings for the rails. Each of the 91 rails was harvested from the forest, peeled, and whittled to size using only a common sheath knife. While there were easier ways to go about it, using only a knife was enjoyable, quiet, and useful in building knife skills.

One hike I do routinely for exercise starts in a large stand of stunted, sun-deprived Douglas Fir saplings. I'm fond of a walking stick, but rather than bring one with me I cut a new one each time I go out hiking. Limbing, cutting and skinning a sapling to use as a walking stick is extremely good practice and a lot of fun. Obviously there are places where cutting live trees (much less dozens of them) is inappropriate, so you need to use some discretion.

I should make clear that I don't use a knife this much because I think it's necessary in order to be a good woodsman, I use a knife this much because I really enjoy using a knife. Using a knife as much as I have has given me pretty particular ideas of what works and what doesn't. If you've got a different way of doing things then great, do what works for you.