ESEE Knives: Picking the Right Knife for the Right Job - The Out of Doors Episode 7 transcript

how are you good I'm good so hey you know we were talking over at Shot Show over in Las Vegas about six months ago you were preventing a little bit talking about batoning how it's so controversial yet amount of your warranty claims is due to tip failure people crying on their knots now I've been talking with my buddy Joe from survival attitude and you know we were thinking let's bring this a little bit deeper right it's really about the right tool for the right job it's not the tip testing thing it's the right tool for the right job right absolutely first and foremost yeah but then also um it's about knowing the limitations of whatever equipment is that you're using right so whether it's a 1095 blade or a higher Rockwell stainless blade it's really up to the user to understand the limitations of whatever it is you're using that's right and so if you treat everything like a hammer then everything's an anvil you know so so let's let's be smart about what we're using and I see a tool as a resource so let's protect that resource and use it for its designated task in case there does come a time where you have to use it outside that task if it does become a survival situation scenario or something then then you got to go outside the lines but you don't try to create those problems well and you've got to remember and and people forget this sometimes the original intent of the knife design had that use in mind you are very practical and task driven as a company absolutely right so your designs emulate those tasks that you had in mind when you designed it in the first place now you can't control what customers are picking up your knives right they're coming from all walks of life all different tasks in all different minded so again to your point understanding that tool the design elements behind it and what that steel with that material the thickness even all the way down through the fine details the thickness of the tip it's not the fact that you started with a 3 16 spine it's the fact that by the time you get down in those you know bunch lines and grind lines all the way down to your relief edges I mean at that point well yes that's going to act differently from knife to knife from model to model and tasks yeah so what you would use a CR 2.54 is you're not going to use it the same way that you would at sc5 correct all right so what we're going to do we're gonna cut we're going to go to some field testing we're going to break out a bunch of your models and we're going to put some of this to practical use we're going to bring this conversation a little bit deeper what do you think I'd love to see it all right and so I love seeing people do real world stuff anybody can shoot our knives with a gun but uh what we really like to see is we really like to see people to use them in the way they're made and then if you're going to use them to test them and test them in a real world laboratory not in some kind of a dream world or some experience scenario all right well I'll tell you what we're very much uh I would say Woods Craft biocraft types I think a lot of people that use your knives you know obviously you have a whole tactical side and people that are more operators that are going to use them but your general users can connect to some sort of fire craft some sort of Woods Craft so let's let's go to some firecraft and Woods Craft tasks let's get these models out there let's give them a run so Shane appreciate it man we'll follow up with you soon [Music] thank you [Music] foreign Eric from Outer Limitless here with the Out of Doors episode seven I'm sitting beside none other than Joe from survival attitude what's up buddy good morning Eric how are you good morning good morning hey fantastic to be here yeah thank you very much I appreciate the uh you know opportunity here at your humble abode my boat is your boat brother this is awesome we have a really exciting exciting video here today you know we've been talking about this actually for quite a while you saw the introduction with Shane from SE knives so Shane thank you very much for that you know he brings up some really interesting points as somebody who's deeply involved in Essie's warranty and claim service and really you know helping out the customers he sees a lot of Trends now this whole thing started with sort of the debate about batoning batoning can be a little bit controversial some people really don't believe batoning their knives but if you're an Essie fan you've probably done it from time to time now Shane's point is he actually has a lot more warranty claims from people abusing the tip and you know prying and different things like that but we talked about this and said let's get a little more in depth maybe it's not so much about the batoning maybe it's not so much about the prying but it's really understanding your tool using the right tool for the right job and I don't care if it's you know SE or otherwise this goes for any tools including knives in this particular case we have an awesome test subject with Essie knives what do you think Joe the right tool for the right job it's everything you know and going into the challenge before we go into the opportunity I'll give you just a real quick example so a close buddy of mine went on a camping trip and canoe flipped over it was cold even in the summer this is way up North and he at the trip she told me he broke his buck knife and it said whoa just curious because we love all different manufacturers here I said was it a buck branded knife or a buck style knife you got in Walmart he goes how'd you know it was the ladder I said okay and so in the end of the day he had the Baton through a pretty big log that knife was probably a 20 knife we don't know about the heat treat probably thinner stock and it didn't get him out of that jam okay he's not a survivalist bushcrafter he just had the one tool it doesn't matter what you have if you have one tool and you are in the Out of Doors you need to study that tool you need to research that tool and what we call that Eric is backyard Bushcraft do some practicing with it if it fails in your backyard it's going to fail in the field but we're going to go to some technical aspects of Blade shape geometry rockwool hardness Steel type if you don't know any of that you can just take a look and say is this a really thick knife does it have a really thin tip there's some things we have to really understand before we get into the bush it's going to help us out of a jam because it can happen no it's it's really important and you know just at an initial Glimpse and it's funny that you said the buck knife example but but just here I mean these two knives at face value if you look at them real quick you would think they are literally exactly the same but they're not you need to be very careful and these are both the same pretty much the same model of an sc knife but we're gonna talk about it so uh here in the Out of Doors well Joe there's a few things about the out of doors we need to certainly accomplish I mean first and foremost it's about the blade second it's about being out here enjoying time together in the out of doors but it's about making some food and most specifically making some coffee I don't know about you Joe but I need my coffee I need my coffee Eric how are we gonna make it well so we're gonna do a few different things today to really show and demonstrate these knives we're going to get into some fire prep we're gonna get into some food prep and then we're gonna talk about some utility tasks now there's no doubt that s knives has operators and you know military personnel law enforcement that utilize these knives but for the general user somebody who's going to be your typical you know customer and typical user of these knives I think they could relate to some fire prep some food prep and some of those utility tests what do you say camping hunting the genre is huge in the end of the day it is the out of doors all right well let's turn the corner here let's get into some fire prep what do you say I'm hungry I'm getting a little chilly it's a little Breezy here in the fall let's do this let's do it all right so Joe in front of us this is combined our SE collection now if this is really any indication of what we think about Essie knives the quality of Essie knives and the experience that we've had with SE knives I don't know what else would be uh this is pretty serious horsepower here I'm not a fan but but what we need to do we really need to start getting into this uh fire prep so the first thing is processing down our wood and for me and the way I think about it and the way I operate when I'm actually in the wilderness getting the biggest wood and then process process that down smaller and smaller and smaller so the first thing for us is really going to be some chopping and there will be some limitations in these models we really need to think about those tasks and you know why we are choosing the knives we would choose so uh Joe out of all these what do you think what should we do you can go largest to smallest if you want to take that route starting with the fungus kind of work our way down again going into uh it's uh Effectiveness limitations and we can spread that all the way down to you know the candor so I mean when we're talking about the chopping of course uh there's going to be a size limitation a weight limitation you know the physical limitation of the knife there's also the geometry the handle uh you know how it fits in the hand the hungless is really the intended tool in uh you know does Essie have you know an ax they do but in this particular case we're not talking about axes we're talking about the knives so the hungerless really is the tool in Essie's collection for this particular task all day long a hot tropical weather Vining cold extreme weather when we start to get to frozen core of hardwood we have that span and typically in my opinion the colder the weather the bigger the fire you need right you just have to sustain more you want to get it cooking and get out there less so you chop the big ends you need the English Yeah man so chopping tasks really want that length you want that pendulum swing to limb to break branches down even to break down longer logs into smaller pieces bungalus we know sc6 you got a couple here got some great length okay thinner stock but we have that ability to chop I'm going to get that weight right down with a nice full flat it's going to de-lim like nobody's business okay going into the five we've got some shorter length here but we do make up for it in weight got some great weight here some quarter inch thick stock same familiar handle as the six when you throw a pinky linion on any of these knives especially if you've got the weight of the five you just get that cracking right down and we could do some chopping okay less for size but we can still get the job done I have done some shopping with the four but that's where things kind of fall short don't have the distance don't have the length we don't have the weight really lightweight so I would say that's where I draw the line if we need to do some chopping we could do some Cross batoning or delimiting with the Baton just gotta hope that we find a pretty solid piece of wood to do it often when I'm in the woods that I have to chop I can't find a good piece of art wood so the weight of the five the length of the six does it right but anything else smaller might not be the right tool but right to ask all right so as Joy had mentioned the se6 is definitely going to give us the ability to do some of those chopping tasks here I have an aftermarket handle you'll notice it's a little bit slabsided the sc6 the nice thing is there's a lot of aftermarket support they also have the Palm swells so you know depending on exactly which model you get you can get the Palm swell now this is the standard se6 the other thing we're going to test out here which will be interesting really to get an understanding this is the se6 HM it has a little bit more of that broomstick style handle so for the chopping tasks how's it going to index so not only do you sort of need to think about yeah it's an se6 but maybe you'd choose one model versus the other depending on your needs so in this particular case it'll be interesting to test out the HM versus the original and really see which one performs better if there's any difference maybe they're exactly the same and just gained some Impressions so we're going to give each one of these a try a few options Eric we didn't talk about was the classic cm6 older model but we have some great length we've got the ability because we actually do have nice shouldering here on this High saber so we could do some cracking but we also have a little bit of a swoop in the back so I think in the end I want to give this a try for some chopping also the classic laser strike as you saw the comparative we've got a lot more length than the four got some real nice thick slabs here Micarta got a really high saber so we can't get some cracking but we got some good length with some chopping with a little bit of hook in the back you can lock in and bring it right down so I've never Chopped with these two and I'm excited to see how they perform I think we should throw it in the chopping mix all right so we're going to do a couple of different limbing tasks here first we're going to go with the six now I'm going to run both the standard six and the HM so I get a little bit of an impression on how each one performs and how it feels in the hand whacking my knuckles all right so that's the standard six as you can see it's actually kind of nice having that little pinky lanyard Joe you do that a lot which is awesome so that really helps out and you can see you know a couple times I was definitely bouncing off the branches you can see the ones where they actually cracked takes a little bit but some real nice clean cuts and that's the thing the sc6 being a full flat grind all the way to the top of the spine 3 16 of an inch thick 10.95 has that sort of medium Rockwell gets you to around I want to say 56 to 58 somewhere in that range so a good quality steel for this and great option so let's go to the HM get a little bit of a different feel here so again with the HM having that little pinky lanyard this actually came like this already set up which is cool and you'll notice this particular model does not have a finger choil so I actually get a little bit more blade length same stock thickness and a different handle again a little more of that I'd call it maybe broomstick style but it feels really good brand new Factory Edge see real clean cuts no problem there and there you go actually feels really good I like the way this feels in the hand no hot spots really locking in well and the fact that it's even a little bit round compared to the uh you know standard sc6 handle I don't have any problem with it it's not like it was spinning in my hands or anything so I would say this is definitely a solid option here we go freshy sc5 bone stock no pinky lanyard I want to see what kind of weight we can get out of this thing deliming as is bring it right back nice sweep on these plate just get you locked in the back of this guy because you're going down quick no-brainer you guys know how I you can clearly see even though the five does not have the same length as the six it will do this work easily so for limbing tasks I can say I definitely recommend the five perfect perfect knife now keep in mind with this entire video this is not really so much of like a comparison or a versus we're really just trying to show the knives in the Essie lineup that can do these tasks so here the cm6 again it's going to be a good option enough blade length nice handle should make it right through again Factory Edge brand new knife let's give this a shot feels a little lighter of course I'm coming off of hitting with the five but nice and clean no problem with the cuts that's going to do it easily there you go now of course this can do it I would suggest some sort of a lanyard you do not have that lanyard hole this does feel like it wants to slide away on me just a little bit while I'm doing those sort of striking tasks so you need to be a little bit careful the fact that this does not have a landed hole it's just a consideration let's look at the laser strike here this is a new acquisition for me watching a video with Shane and Jeff at smoking about Knife Works they had that budget limit pick a knife pick a survival tin whatever Shane picked this which I thought was pretty interesting so I had to grab one myself never really limbed with it but let's take a look no pinky lanyards so we do have a little bit of hook in the back and obviously we're getting you know less diameter in the branches as we work our way down I think a sense of How It's performing it is taking her wow I kind of didn't expect that wow that's pretty impressive um controllable very balanced light in the hand but just to me it cut a little better than I thought I'm very impressed with laser strike for deliming so each one of the knives here today with a slightly different grind the laser strike here I would call this a very high saber grind I was actually pretty impressed at watching Joe do some of the living tasks that'll be worth me giving it a try myself um obviously the blade length a little bit shorter than the other knives we've tried so far but seems to be happy with these tasks hmm real clean cut makes its way through with ease now my impression of this it does have maybe just a slightly shorter handle and when I say shorter really just the area between these kind of little Trails here so your little you know finger choil and a little pinky choil there a little bit of a palm swell a little bit slab sided but at the same time it'll definitely do that work so I mean you can get away with it with the laser strike really cool so the last Model we're contemplating doing the limbing tasks the se4 so here we have two different versions one with serrations one with a plain Edge now Joe's here with the serrations does have a pinky lanyard this one does not but the nice thing it has the lanyard hole so to each their own you can also get these with the Palm swells these happen to be the original Factory slab sided handles but as we get into this here probably the Practical limitation for some limiting tasks so now as we get into this I'm definitely going to struggle a little bit but mostly from the standpoint that at this point your hand gets very close to the working surface and as you go to strike you're probably going to do some damage to your knuckles whacking into the bark whacking into branches that's another reason why the smaller the knife it just becomes a practical limitation for your ability to functionally work and as I'm mentioning you know I'm literally whacking the branches with my fingers of course the Blade's going to be sharp enough to cut through the branches no problem you can see nice clean cuts but it does lack a little bit both in mass and in handle length now this is where the pinky lanyard really can help it does a couple things at this point I can literally get my hands further back which is going to you know help get my hands a little further away from the working surface gives me a little bit of that pendulum swing real thick branch here a little bit impractical but that's the whole purpose of the outer doors you can see I'm struggling with control my strikes aren't accurate there's a couple of reasons for that the handle length this blade is just literally the handle just trying to come out of my hands that's part of it I'm trying to avoid totally nailing my hands on the working surface and just not a lot of blade length not a lot of mass and of course if you at least weaken your branch sometimes that's all it takes to get down and through something so can you do it sure and to Joe's earlier point you could use this to kind of cross baton Whittle your way down and through this kind of beaver that out a little bit but for chopping limbing it's getting a little bit small a little bit light all right so what we're going to do to further demonstrate The Chopping tasks at this point we've laid out a board beginning to end with all the knives that we've talked about we're going to now introduce the hungerless for the heavy chopping tasks I think you'd all realize that the hungerless could certainly do those limbing tasks but now getting into this we're going to basically do a 10 chop test with each one of these blades see kind of what we get for results I mean they may vary but there's only one way to find out and that's to get into it we've got some consistency with this piece of Oak railing so it's nice for a controlled environment don't mark my spelling on the homeless but it is what it is 10 shops [Music] foreign [Music] call 10. laughs ten yeah sc6 standard I see six standard six hm [Music] oh a little bit there that's close let's say that's about it you went wide I did I went narrow [Laughter] how did it looks of that piece of a little grailing it's hard yeah this is hard stuff I can see five here we go oh nice compared to the six the one thing is I felt that it had less control um I tried to get the line away and just without that lanyard the weight wanted to bring it back at the different locations the six I felt was just that nimbleness the the little bit lighter but had the length I felt to control it a lot easier um but this thing when it bit it bit pretty hard cm6 [Music] a couple of tough strikes there's trying to get this to chunk out now I can tell you look at the grass on my hand there's a reason for that every single strike down onto the surface trying to get that weight so you either need to get this up off the ground for your work would have been nice to have that little pinky lanyard on there it can do it I just feel like you're gonna struggle a little bit laser strike here we go foreign but if I did where are we at just curious it performs better than I thought it would very impressed with this knife so I'm definitely intrigued I mean having this in my hands I might as well use it so I'm gonna give it some chopping tests gonna go in the same spot as Joe 10 chops here foreign my problem and some of this is me but when I start to get into the shorter knives and the way I hit you know Joe I feel like you are definitely coming down with your hand up off of the ground I mean I'm more like it's probably the drummer in me I mean I definitely start punching the ground I mean I'm working down on the surface so I don't know if that's taken away from the actual you know like capability of the knife or if I'm just literally just punching the ground and it doesn't matter but um you know to me when you start getting into the shorter knife shorter blade length shorter handles it's going to be a bit of a struggle so laser strike is on the edge for me although I was pretty impressed with it doing the limbing task so I mean still in that survival knife class I'd say and speaking of shorter blades well here we go with the four now for this particular chopping test I am going to sort of seat this up just to give me a little bit of room here and let's give this a try so this is the standard the uh you know full length Blade no serrations so plain Edge foreign what was that I cannot even get a full grip on this this really does require a pinky lanyard look how far off my strikes are I mean totally user error I'll give you that but at the same time with a pinky lanyard I think it would make a big world of difference in fact before I even let Joe go I'm going to try it here with his serrated version let's give this 10 more chops I mean still a struggle but a little bit better not great very light short handle not quite gonna do it in my opinion for The Chopping tasks do a quick 10 without the lanyard quick 10 with the lanyard serrated but it won't make a difference because I'm going to try to focus on the belly no lender well deeper bites control was a little bit wonky because I threw the knife so far back that I really started to get the swing I think in the end of the day we're coming up to a conclusion is the right tool for the right task sc4 great all-purpose utility knife chopping might not be your best option hear that crack so the hungerless of course the largest knife in Essie's collection this is 3 16 of an inch nice long blade length got some good heft good weight good swinging power but more so you heard the crack the nice thing is this is a high saber grind anytime I get into splitting I do really like a saber grind now there are some competitors knives I'm not going to mention them very very similar full flat grind makes a big difference this will outperform most other knives in its class due to the fact that the geometry the blade shape the size the length the overall thickness thick enough doesn't need to be quarter inch to do what it's going to do but for the batoning tasks the splitting tasks the hungerless is going to be the king in the SE collection sorry Joe worth it Shin splitter wow okay so at this point we're gonna get into some batoning now each one of these knives is going to have a consideration due to the length of the blade and the overall capabilities some other things to note okay we got to be a little bit careful because we do have some different Steels so the steel is going to matter and then the other thing worth consideration the actual grind so as we look at this different knives different grinds different considerations all things worth noting but we're going to get into it all right here we go start with the six full flat no shoulder no saber so we do have the potential to kind of wedge in a little bit but we got some great length so and we have a choil which we're not really going to need for batoning okay but does give a nice option to have some nice safety back here keep our finger well away from the platonic strike right down the middle see where we're at nice little set in the center couple more I bring it right down so I can't Center anymore then I bring a little up they come through nice looking at these two models the standard six and the six handle modified okay note we have the same exact cutting length but got about an inch longer on this standard and with that broomstick style a funny feeling when we get into Feathering in different things so you get some twisting okay we're able to get a little more comfort with a wider variety of tasks choil okay we have that option to choke up this we're choking up almost to the point of kissing that little Edge right there but for batoning let's baton the same exact type of log and width and see how they perform we'll start with the Ajax it is nice back here to be able to hold laterally on the pommel it just feels really good that was that was awesome now let's try it with the standard get a little bit of control back here with the pinky and bring it right back to keep it farther away for safety with a toning I kind of like that a little bit different uh varied in the wood I wouldn't say it was easier because of the knife I would have to say it was because of the wood but the bigger difference was I just felt really safe bringing it farther away I feel like subconsciously was able to make a larger swing um this felt a little bit better batoning just my opinion so now moving on to the cm6 again some considerations worth noting you're gonna get that same 3 16 inch stock thickness a similar handle length to the standard sc6 but you do have a sharpened Swedge so this might beat up on your baton a little bit it's also not quite as flat across the top so you may have a little bit of an angle to contend with but we're going to play with this anyway and see how it does you get a nice saber grind that's a difference here so you know nice mid height I'd say two-thirds of the way up the blade so this should do a pretty good job on cracking now this particular piece of wood maybe just a little gnarly I'm going to take a couple of bites at it and not try to go the whole way across well you know what you know what we say around here just send it a real nice cracking action actually feels really good not a lot of shock in the handle and a couple of Little Miss swings there but not a big deal and watch this with that saber grind versus the actual standard six you get a little bit more of a cracking action this is a better side to show you you can see it's really starting to sort of wedge its way through the wood and blow it apart so the saber grind it does a fantastic job for batoning it's actually worked very well as you can see it did have some knots in the wood that can typically make it a little tougher blew right through it though blew right through it nice job the five we know how I feel about the five I love you buddy here we go this is a really really solid piece we're gonna go right down the center see where we end up [Music] look at that cracking right away I'm not even fully in if I start to break apart this wood but we really have to be focused on where we hit this because we're starting to lose on the length Advantage like the sixes I I I'm not joking here the six would not have done that it would bind and bind and bind until it hits the top spine and start to separate because we have like uh a little more than half on that shoulder and it's a thick shoulder that would stood no chance that was what three four strikes and we split one of the most solid pieces we have so effortless love the five so here we go with the laser strike this is actually my first time batoning with it we've got a probably 80 plus percent up high a little bit of shoulder on that saber so you have a lot of flat to contend with it's obviously great for slicing but you get some really good blade length here um choil I'm going to stay behind it I'm going to keep my distance when I baton it you got some 3 16 stock same as the sc6 let's see where we go with this thing my very first time batting with this guy I could do it I could do it again it's so much fun so you notice I personally keep coming back to wanting to test this laser strike so far I am really impressed with this knife overall it's doing a great job in almost every task and I love fire craft and just food prep outside more than anything so having knives that just are effortless and just enjoyable and filled though like just multiple roles I love that so I mean right away incredible cracking action it's literally effortless this laser strike is definitely impressive I love a saber grind I've always said that I used to be a bigger fan of flat grinds and just over time learning that quite frankly a nice saber grind is superior but that's just my opinion this laser strike is sweet so we know we've reached some limitations with the four for chopping however I have a lot of field time with my four I'm going to tell you a couple quick things about it before we're on this we have serrations I think sclerations are some of the industry best because you can sharpen them full length and it doesn't affect the actual cutting ability it sharpens it as one because the way they're cut and angled now I have hollowed out a very large piece of the steel in this knife to give it some more balance and lightweightness as I carry it not that it could impede in performance but just know that it's completely skeletonized in this portion here um what I do like about the four for batoning it keeps its thickness really aggressively to the end I feel very confident I'm not going to snap the tip off on this knife some other knives the way they do their Flats they start to thin out real quick and to the point of almost being paper thin up front that's actually relatively thick but let's test it big piece we're not going to have much tip out so we really gotta send and pray I'd have to say this wood just seemed a little bit not as naughty as others but the effort to just getting it done was incredible um I bet on a lot of wood with the floor great great batana for the size of wood that it's capable of so I don't know if you remember our intro but I said these two knives even though they look the same are quite different this is where this might make a difference in fact I'll say it definitely does we do need to take into consideration the actual material so here 1095 here S35 VN now in terms of Rockwell hardness and heat treat this here the 1095 this is 55 to 57 HRC here on the s35vn 59 to 60. now why does that matter well when you get into things that have shock like batoning it could really make a difference now in terms of toughness toughness comes from a knife's ability to flex and bend the lower HRC this is going to have a lot of flex and a lot of give on the 1095. well what's going on with the S35 if you're not careful hit it the wrong way or just the knife is not happy with what you're doing you have the potential to snap it it might be a little more brittle a little less tough it means you might get some better Edge retention overall it's going to be harder to sharpen in the field but it's going to also have some stainless property so s35vn striking a balance between the carbon steel which can rust in a humid environment and having these stainless properties so you need to think about your choice here carefully so again this is the se3 getting shorter in terms of the blades that we've actually tested today now getting into the batoning you're not going to be able to span anything significantly long but we do have some wood that we've already processed down and it should be a suitable test so I'm going to do my best to actually stress these knives I'm not going as far as to try to break them but if it happens it happens keep in mind the thickness this is only 1 8 inch thick stock versus the rest of the knives that we've taken a look at today either 3 16 or a quarter inch in regards to the se5 so let's give this a shot here now in terms of the span this log is certainly much larger than what I should be batoning so I'm going to have to take some bytes I'm starting with the 1095 and I'm going to kind of nibble away at this a little bit let's see if we can do it and you can see here that's about as far as I can go and still get on the tip but it means I'm wailing on the tip and again as I mentioned you can do it you just need to take manageable bite-sized pieces I have absolute faith in Essie's 1095 with the renowned Rowan heat treat no problem but what about the S35 VN well again keep in mind the fact that it might be a little bit more brittle the other thing to consider temperature can matter so freezing conditions super cold conditions makes your knife really susceptible to chipping potential Edge damage and the other thing is you need to pay attention to things like knots that you might find in your wood and combining Frozen wood in Frozen conditions with knots can be really damaging to your blades so you do need to be careful and just pay attention to the conditions but again the s35vn here this here I would see is pushing about the limitation for what I want to do in terms of the span foreign these track really well through the wood they are thin but they are capable full flat grind very nicely done so the se3 a little bit Limited in terms of the overall span but you can definitely do it rb3 love it puco Style scandi no relief Edge we just have it right here okay comes really nicely to sharpened spine got that nice blunt tip I'm not at all concerned about breaking that tip off uh but batoning could get some cracking early which is going to put a ton of stress on that scandi um roll across I have no chips no dings no rolls right now let's see what happens on this way oversized piece with knots for this little guy let's just put it to the test I'm gonna go right down the middle oh this poor little guy but 1095 give it a go I think I have to stop right there limitations of your knife it's just not your risk injury your risk damage of a tip of a knife that's not that thick here we did it we tried it but we didn't complete the task so I'm going to send this thing out let me try to do it as safe as I can kind of work it out unfortunately when this happens now you got to do a little bit of hitting on the handle which I really don't recommend you risk cracking the Micarta stay back because the knife could fly out nice light Taps bring it out there we go so let's do what Eric did we'll take some pieces off the side hopefully we should be in good shape nice know your limitations really really important um I don't even know if I want to do any more on that I'm gonna write down that knot but if we have to make a fire we're gonna start getting wood thinned out perfect so nice attract wonderfully we can get really small control hits look at that perfect spanning nice nice knife feels really solid in the hand just got some length limitations rb3 so when we have a zero ground scandi that means we're grinding all the way to the very uh Apex okay but with that said if we were to hit that knot and it was really cold I've done it with certain knives you could get a big old chip a roll um so you just have to know that for all the advantages that these have for carving tasks we are potentially putting a little bit of compromise to it because think about how paper thin to nothing to zero you're getting on the end however if you were to strap this over time and you didn't drop it properly you strapped it at a light angle or ground it on a ceramic stone you can get a nice little convex Edge out of that you can strengthen the edge of a scandi you're just going to lose the ability to have some really you know finite slicing carving okay so I'd rather have a knife that comes full um full scandi zero ground because I have the choice whether I want to bring it down to a slight convex it's very difficult to do other way around because you're grinding so much steel but be really cool if SC had one of these in a four but the rb3 it's actually one of my favorite Bushcraft knives now going back to one of the early Concepts Shane definitely had some concerns with tip testing with prying on knives this is going to be a little bit different but similar at the same time we're going to get into some stabbing now stabbing is a very effective means to splitting down your wood we're going to start processing down now to getting our kindling ready for our fire so here with the cm6 this could have a real good benefit because it has a sharpened Swedge now the other thing when you get into stabbing tasks considering the handle geometry and how it indexes so here you can see I would call this a mid-size guard it's not overly pronounced you should have plenty of handle and the ability to get your thumb up on top for positive lockup now I do still have a little bit of concern you should have some nice traction on the side of the slabs but at the same time just being really careful this is some thick wood I'm still trying to stab through some significant stuff now should this and can this do it well it's hard to say good positive lock up here stabbing through now this is where it really stresses on the knife that twisting action I might have to take a second bite because when you have something that's that sort of stabby you'll notice I went through the wood and down into my bearing surface so just something to consider if I get down into my original crack again you can definitely Twist on the knife if you're careful this is going to be a fairly refined tip but it should be pretty sharp it goes from unsharpened Swedge into sharpened tip so should be pretty durable but you definitely want to be a little bit careful but you'll notice for the stabbing tasks this can certainly do it now this is really going to stress on the tip of the knife you definitely need to be careful again I'm going to take a second swipe at this and there you go I feel like this piece of wood this should just literally sail right through it without any concerns no problem so cm6 real good for stabbing got the five we know the first thing about the five that's going to be a concern is the um the glass breaker tip here okay so we really have to be careful where we put our thumb but we can bring it right up to the side actually shouldn't be too bad let's take a nice piece here this has got some good density and get into it I know Eric does a lot of stabbing and more you know a third down I like to go a little bit more tip which is preference take advantage when the knife is buried in my bearing block I take advantage of that I twist out okay we have some real stoutness with that five let's keep going [Music] foreign this didn't bother me at all blows it right apart so again going back to my newfound infatuation with this laser strike you'll notice at 3 16 this still has a fairly blunt tip I mean this is gonna be really strong uh full flat pretty much through the tip section the saber doesn't start until a little further back so should have some nice penetration overall I'm going to go with Joe's method here a little further up piece kind of fell apart on me flip it around and there you go so right away this handle for stabbing is awesome you definitely have some good distance away from the blade so that helps but this nice round soft pommel end like look at the size of the handle my pinky literally indexing right against that softened guard and then my thumb over the top this to me is the perfect and almost ideal handle for these stabbing tasks in fact when I design I kind of design for this geometry so this just speaks to me personally very well I'm going to try a slightly thicker piece here to see how it does I mean just super super tough no worries at all they would have any problems and I can slam down on this without any concern so from quality of Steel toughness but geometry this is sweet all right rb3 just get into it I'm gonna stop right there this spine is so sharp that just in twisting it actually chunked out some pieces and it caused a little bit of binding that's interesting I've never stab cut with this um the uh blade guard is a little smooth and not as pronounced as others I don't have that choil and secondary you know grip like I did the laser strike my heart's pounding I felt a little nervous that I could potentially slide with this knife again we're dealing with more of a lateral twisting bushcrafty um I'd have to say I I just I don't recommend stab Cuts with this and I'm going to stop right there Eric I want to see would you take a stab at it and let me know your thoughts but be careful buddy so to Joe's point of course with every knife you need to be careful but you know we're getting into a little more of a Bushcraft style slightly smaller and of course that just ridiculously sharp scandy grind the nice thing actually about this it does have a fairly uh Stout tip All Things Considered so you're not going to have any problems with the knife it's just now we're talking geometry right so I'm going to put my thumb up over the top that's like that added security if the handle was much longer and I couldn't do this I might think otherwise I'm also going to go through a slightly thinner piece just for this demonstration but to get a feel for it here I mean I feel what you're saying there's not a lot of traction here it's fairly slick All Things Considered and the ability to just roll off and you can see I'm actually I don't know if I even want to do this my hand is definitely sliding down I mean essentially I got through this we can probably finish this off if I go a little bit lower here find that same crack there we go so can you do it you can but just remember I mean then with this entire theme the right tool for the right job you just need to be careful and understand the limitations in this particular case it's not so much about the steel it's about the geometry all right so this is going to be a little bit of a gamble for the stabbing tasks for a couple of reasons this here the Zancudo first and foremost full flat Grind All the Way to the Top Fin 1 8 of an inch thick stock S35 so again remember that hardness discussion we've got to be a little bit careful this might be a little bit chippy a fairly refined tip so we need to be a little bit careful now the other thing let's talk about the handle and how this is going to work out for me I do have the ability to wrap my pinky get a little bit of a guard there I feel like that should keep me fairly safe and my thumb over the top for that positive lock up so there are some attributes about this that I think will work to my advantage just trying to find the right piece of wood here that we can just test so again don't bite off more than I can chew let's give this a quick trial here that is definitely a lot of shock on my thumb and at that point tends to weaken my grip just a bit to where you know when I'm smashing on my pinky and I'm smashing on my thumb s might not be the best test for this knife so I might call it again we're looking for limitations and we're trying to call the right tool for the right job I can get into slightly thinner stuff so you know I just cracked on this end which was thinner and it can do it so maybe in some cases the right idea is just get yourself started you know who's to say you need to split entirely through all this wood so if I could get this started you know is that enough to kind of break myself off some pieces yes so again just be careful how far you're gonna take it I think this is going to be limited in the splitting tasks but it can certainly help you along the way got some little guys here two of my all-time favorites Zola and candaru I thought this was more of a a novelty no way shape or form a highly capable knife really really good for little splitting tasks Feathering and overall really small Bushcraft fires you got that nice shoulder got a good you know good saber grind there which is unique for a knife this size it's overall strength too if you're gonna do some sort of you know whole you know divots whatever you need to do it's got a lot of strength to this little guy we know this life the world over it's just an amazing all-purpose really pronounce uh blade guard there feels so safe with it we've got some jimping got a nice rounded pommel so let's just get into it and do some stab tests I'm gonna take a bigger piece here really bigger than I should be with this knife but I feel confident just locks in so confidently with that nice four finger grip it's the perfect platform to put your thumb down get that extra security you need we do have a full flat so we got great for slicing but we're gonna give it a test to see where it goes with the stab I mean I'm torquing on it I'm twisting that blade it's buried in felt so confident no risk at all of sliding down real thick hardwood here I am twisting on that blade I popped it out look at that no issues whatsoever the Azula is one tough ant I think we all know that let's go right into the candle and put this aside this little guy because three finger grips her really gotta really gotta Hammer stab this thing be very very safe be creative how are you gonna do it because you don't get the full leverage of our thumb holding on the pommel so all that safety is really relying on this little tiny finger guard but just be creative see we can do yeah do I get in there good go a little right back here see where we're at you know I'm gonna do something here a little twisted but we'll send it right in work our way down still twisting that knife believe it or not what is really hard but um a great little knife bites right in nice shavings which we'll get into a little bit later but you know what though you know let me take it a step further I got a ton of peace with it why not that's incredible I mean for knife this size would I have like a maybe a two inch Cutting Edge kandaru can do next Eric I think we should do some carving tests carving notching feather sticking is a little different but just to show different lengths of knife different grind types and what kind of performance we can expect different handle obviously so let's just get into it and see what kind of carving we can get out of these things I'm just going to basically hold a small piece grab a knife I like to choke up when I carve that's funny the stock um hungerless has really just a flattened okay um I guess ricasso area but if you put it on a grinder you just cup it out a little bit it just took two seconds on the grinder you're able to get a little bit of a spot that I can actually choke up on it bites in initially on that Apex but as soon as you flatten out so all this real estate it starts to struggle um you really got to keep it at a good angle to get any type of bite once we get it down it just it just it makes it really difficult okay but it can get the job done mine's not that sharp I don't keep my hungerless laser beamed because I'm chopping brush I'm hitting Roots hitting stumps I don't want the the risk of chipping in the field so I do not keep my hungerless as sharp as I would some of my others but certainly can do some carving as 85 thick has that sort of mid-height saber grind should still be nice and slicey you do have the ability to ride a little forward on your ricasso if you're careful every knife is going to have a slightly different edge geometry it's going to take a little time to find it this was a brand new Factory Edge today when we started all this field work so should still be plenty Sharp feels a little bit broad to me but of course you can do all these carving tasks and this is hard wood so every wood will carve a little bit different we're just going to start to get ourselves some I'd say mid-size wood for you know slightly smaller kindling or slightly larger tender all of this will go to good use as I bear down and dig you'll see I can start to get some healthy chunks I'm pretty much going with a hammer grip I was a little forward the first time now more of that full body grip here you can hear the nice slicing capability and that's it for the five so comfortable in the hand nice full grip definitely capable maybe a little broad but again this is going to be sort of your heavier Duty knife we're going to turn the corner here into the 6 hm so this should be a little more slicy in comparison so 3 16 inch full flat grind and that Bushcraft handle see how we do here so literally the exact same piece of wood even this is glancing just a little bit on this particular wood this is hard but as I take my time and start to find my edge geometry this knife feels so much different from the five just super light again trying to find the edge and get some decent sized pieces this is really going to help us sustain the fire early on until it really gets up to temperature having some nice stuff that's dry and we'll take a good spark is going to be critical you can see as I bear down a little bit more starting to get some healthier pieces what I can tell you is for my personal carving Style this is seemingly fatiguing my hand a little bit as I grip and it's going to be hard for you to see this it leaves a little bit of a hollow spot between so I end up with a great grip with my sort of forefinger and my thumb and then also with my rear fingers but in the middle which is really the strength of my grip it leaves it just a little bit Hollow there whereas the other handle style really fills that out so it is something worth considering I'm not going to say that this can't carve or is not a good Carver it's just for my hand size and my style leaves my hand a little bit fatigued 6 hm let's get into it I can stop right there I agree what Eric said earlier and I do struggle sometimes with these wide pommels whereas your natural grip if you look it's so much smaller your strength comes to me from the pinky up to your index finger and with this being built oppositely it forces you to want to really hug that little blade guard but we don't have a lot of strength back here I think this is an amazing all-purpose knife you certainly can take advantage of that without even a lanyard and do some great chopping okay um but for the Bushcraft tasks you have to choke up and I do feel that you're missing some strength um love the knife but again knowing some rotations baton's great you certainly can get right into it and get some nice chunks out if I do some notching and things of that nature okay but when it comes to some fine Feathering um it doesn't feel as comfortable uh quite frankly as the five did and I think a lot of that's due to the handle geometry look at the five you get that nice Palm swell really pronounced blade guard you get all your finger in there here we just can't get the strength because we're we're trying to choke up but at the same time we're pushing in that guard causing our hand to cramp so I'm a little fatigued right now if I'm just using this knife not a lot but a little and I can feel it right in my forearm the laser strike is going to have a number of different grips so you're sort of more Hammer grip forward on the choil to me I feel like this is just begging for the thumb over the top uh control already is just fantastic nice grind as we go nice and simple trying to get some of these feathers I love the edge geometry on this real easy to find I gotta tell you and you've heard me say it a few times this laser strike is really impressing me I mean just its General ability as a good quality field tool fantastic as I try to get some deeper bite I mean you can see that easily did the curls deeper bite [Applause] so now getting back to one of the strengths here of the rb3 should be the carving now a scandi grind is really going to want to bite and bite deep but you should be able to go nice and easy for some super fine controlled feathers which this Edge is freaking awesome right away you can see these curls are a little thicker than when I was doing with the laser strike but that's okay it's gonna just take a little practice to lighten up and really get that paper thin stuff but the effort is literally zero effort the edge geometry fantastic the blade sharpness on this is great even for something that's been used quite a bit and you can see if I'm careful and take my time I can find those paper fine curls it'll just take a little practice but look at how these are just curling over that's the quality of these curls and then hogging Through the Wood a scandi will just absolutely rip so again here no problem this is a nice little carving knife this is sweet first time using it holding it it's almost like a modern version of the Azula but there's one thing I want to say about this Zancudo is you got stainless so the first thing I'm noticing is this more aggressive drop point which as you know if you're skinning you're getting between the Kate you know the the skin and the and the meat vitals you're not going to be hitting vitals okay that's incredible it's very difficult to do that with flat topped you know spined knives so this is a great uh hunting knife when it comes to skin and gain let's see how it performs because the handle feels so good four finger grip carving hoo ey that's that's that's some fine curls that's fantastic try to get into some deeper oh yeah let me get in there nice and deep get some notching look at that's deep that's impressive wow to have the ability to have a hunting knife that can do the finer Woodcraft fire prep tasks is incredible I think this is this is like my unsung hero of the day this is a great knife just gotta get back at it it's a kudo so now we've got our fuel we've got our Tinder we need our accelerator found some Birch pork we have a couple different options here in Blade Coatings and spines we got okay the ability to put this in a grinder to make a nice sharp spine out of it but we don't today we have our coating I'm going to say this is absolutely we know that's not going to strike a fire same here this has no coding but it was tumble finished and with that we had some nice soft edges on the spine okay if we give it a try we don't even need to do it okay but cut the rb3 rb3 comes uncoated with a sharpened spine so let's try to get some little scrapings off of this birch bark if the wind doesn't blow it away first which it is um but we can do that kind of bring it in and let's see if we can get a sport we have a lot of wind here today Eric so I don't know how effective this is going to be maybe we just try to make a little bit of a wind blocker oh that's gonna work and um yeah we'll see I don't uh [Music] that's a little tiny guy right there the wind is to our disadvantage so we get a pause that's when you go to do things over take the time you get a little a little off of this get some scrapes a little tiny pile here to get that Lit then we gotta go ahead and grab our secondary pieces do it quick actually that helped a lot that wind blocker foreign situation you know it gets even tougher so but you saw me a little flame there the wind took it right out we're just gonna go lighter a lot of times I just cup it like this the wind's coming in from this direction and get the insert here at my dad's old Zippo nice as we'll do it right over our fire flip it around this guy here let's jump at that build bro that's good so now that we got the fire going turning the corner a little bit into some food prep each one of the knives gonna have a slightly different consideration I'm going to start with the cm6 I thought this would be an interesting choice where it's got that sort of nice I don't know it's almost got a kitchen quality balance to it where I think it'll perform pretty well for these tasks now we're also going to use the rb3 being that scandi grind and a little bit different you know it's nice to have a Bushcraft knife that'll also do the food prep tasks we have the stainless version of the se3 and the little kangaroo here just for some fun so as we get into it here the cm6 of course considering this has the sharpened Swedge just need to be a little bit mindful generally speaking pretty good slicing capability but I feel like just with some of the testing we've done I've lost a little bit of the sharpness on the edge that is a consideration with 1095 but the other thing about 1095 it's nice and field sharpenable so if you have a leather strop or something like that in the field should be more than enough to bring it back to good quality sharpness and worst case scenario for me as long as I don't chunk an edge I can usually get it back with a fine ceramic Rod so in combination that fine ceramic rod and then also honing it with that leather strap but doing a pretty nice job now for the rb3 feels very controlled for this action which is nice not quite the same blade length but you can certainly do these jobs a little closer in size to like a paring knife nice sharp edge and good quality slicing capability I'm going to turn the corner real quick to the se3 very refined Edge look how smooth and just precise these cuts are very nice and slicey and now for some fun the candaroo should be able to do these tasks it's going to be a little bit a little bit small but at the same time should be able to do it you never know when you're just gonna only have that knife in your pocket but I'm gonna have to take a couple of slices at this but you can definitely do it and again just a real nice refined Edge feels great I mean more than slicy enough to do this work as you can see here really nice refined Edge so very cool neat little blade it was new as of this morning but Eric's brand new 6hm broomstick handle we talk about cracking nuts or breaking glass I'm gonna try something a little different here today let me try to mortise and pestle some bean coffee beans we're actually doing it [Music] we didn't have a coffee grinder in the field and Iraq is a little bit too jagged we do have our SE and we'll see we can come up with here we're making some grinds down there we just say we finished this area and get some coffee going absolutely all right so unlike some of the other blades that we've seen today this one actually having it's one of the most conducive back end to it you know the se5 has a sharp Point wouldn't really work too well the six has an exposed Tang wouldn't work too well but here it's actually working fairly well all things considered and by the end of this process I'm actually going to get myself a nice coffee patina on this handle so I mean this is going to take a while but you definitely can do it pretty cool now I don't know how light how fine you like your grounds but I was able to get these pretty pretty well processed All Things Considered what do you think Joe how did I do I I still can't believe how well you did I think that back in the day before coffee grinders these were just chunks of bean who knows we were drinking that's what wait what I don't know there's no cheating on YouTube Eric you know that YouTube is all truth this is not fair I don't know we didn't see this ah take two so as I continue on with some of the food prep I'm just going to slice up some cheese and some salami having ourselves uh nice little uh I call it a charcuterie board so using the hm6 here nice handle length nice blade length very slicey that full flat grind is going to be wonderful for this yeah man nice clean cuts even on a softer cheese the ability to go down and through nice clean cuts the laser strike see binding up a little bit it's not quite as sharp has a little more let's just call it Field Time so the edge could probably use a little strut being that high saber grind again not going to be quite as slicy as the se6 but it definitely can still do these tasks nicely pretty clean cuts overall but something like the Zancudo is going to be fantastic really small but easy to use and the stainless properties is going to be wonderful this will clean up nicely even if you're out camping you know the ability to get this into like a river and just clean that up real quick it'll be no problem super clean cuts really really nice Hey Joe what do you got going on over there I'm using my homegirlus slash spatula slash fire poker to prepare the food it's nice to have the distance be able to get in here and not burn your hands just sit back and kind of poke the fire get it in the design very versatile the right tool for the right task [Music] having fun with these so we got the 6hm we got a lot of hot coals down here but you just do a quick smart about it it's able to get in there a lot of heat out of here I really couldn't stay here for a couple seconds but versus a kangaroo which I couldn't get here at all I'm at least able to get in kind of wreck the coals underneath a little bit of uh scraping off that soot but in camping in the old primitive bushed craft tests oh my sharpening my blade I've done it [Music] it's been good looking fast [Music] foreign if I grab a knife please do all right I don't have a spoon that'll sweeten it up now we got your coffee Eric cheers no grounds has it happened I'll pour for you since someone's got to do the filming fill her up yes sir all right this wouldn't be the outer doors without it whoa baby [Music] well learned buddy well earned flavor bites nice this looks like some spicy sausage we got here it is I love the spicy sausage a little Char but I'll tell you that's what makes it good oh [Music] so each one of the knife tips is going to impact your ability to kind of pick it out you can see the Zancudo is actually struggling just a little bit but it can do it [Music] rb3 little struggle a little struggle wants to cut it up ginger on the you know what this tells me Essie needs clip point all right they don't have any I know someone who could design one really accomplished maybe he's a police dog I haven't seen that's what I'm saying oh my gosh well food for thought did you say Food For Thought uh no pun intended go out here with the cm6 oh that's probably careful though sharp sharpened swag right let me grab more of a spatula Style maybe the where's I could do some scooping about spatula worked yeah see this is what I'm talking about that's that's a nice stuff I think if I want to spread peanut butter though I may use a little strike I just I just see it here we go [Music] all right so at this point we've done the fire prep we've done the food prep what about those utility tasks let's take a quick look at some basic sort of utility tasks you'll see what we're talking about [Music] put on it baton it [Music] foreign so at this point we have a number of materials we can use for some cutting and stabbing tasks so here leveraging the cm6 shouldn't be too difficult to get right through this foam very smooth nice and buttery smooth and even after all the fire prep tasks the ability to get on this [Music] cut right through that works well now keep in mind this also has that sharpened Swedge which actually gives you sort of a secondary blade now that's not quite as sharp as the primary Edge but at the same time it can do it is that primary Edge goes right through so the cm6 very good for stabbing and penetrating a little thicker here with some leather right through and slicing with ease so that's going to be a nice slicey blade for some of these slightly tougher tasks now back to the laser strike just for a second because my impression was this is a little of a I don't know more blunt tip so trying to stab through it's definitely going to take more effort slicing capability not too bad kind of need to literally slice and when you do that it'll go through a lot smoother not bad and then stabbing through the leather it will do it not quite as smooth as the cm6 but it definitely can do it I'm going to grab more of the EDC belts and see what kind of cutting we can get done here with just the uh old uh old garden hose here it's hard stuff's reinforced it could tell so we're gonna have to do some slicing it's tough oh yeah here we go nice oh that goes right through no problem wow beautiful let's grab the uh rb3 with that scandi it's a little bit wider when it shoulders out so it's kind of pushing the reinforced nylon aside first Cuts nice and smooth but then you really got to work it not as slicy as the three let's try this in Cuda wow [Music] I'd have to say Eric that's the easiest of all of them let me try that three again hmm tougher I feel like there's more power behind the three just in the handle it can really torque down on a little bit better um but they both cut just the same this shoulders out a little bit and it causes a little bit of binding and you really got to put some more pressure on it when you get past that scandi yeah but does the job still has great control nice job on the tube Cuts all three of those guys [Music] definitely going to be a lot more difficult with the blade and the leverage and like the question is like where do you grab it and you know are you trying to do this controlled or you're just trying to get rid of hoes if you're just trying to get rid of hose I mean that's easy if you're trying to be controlled it's a different story let's try real quick here it's probably next to Impossible but [Music] um at this point you can see it's pulling through I mean I made it three quarters or even more I mean ninety percent of the way through that's just tough cm6 [Music] again I just have to find the method and The Leverage is binding a little bit I gotta probably be a little more tactical and slice so you see it's not just going to do it with Brute Force so again it's being a little more tactical on my cut here getting down and through it's a little bit wide but at the same time it can do it and I suspect with the laser strike I'm probably going to struggle a little bit if I had to guess but the knife has surprised me the entire day probably not as Keen of an edge right now where this has been thoroughly used might just need a little bit of a touch up but again take your time and it will do it fairly clean a little bit of tearing not too bad all right so we've got some pretty good gauge probably propylene rope let's just get in with this double strand here on the rb3 see where we're at this rope is real tough don't let anybody fool you that's hard let me see two easy there could be dulling up a little bit okay let's try the three and this 35 VN oh thinner stock full flat slicey here we go proof is in the pudding that gets right through that's nice wow try to choke up a little bit see if it's a little bit easier much more power even a little troil does a nice job let's check out the Zancudo this has been a great performer all day oh shreds that wow I think that it's 35 VN is holding its Edge a little bit better than that 1095s a little tougher because a lack of control back here my pinky slipping off but it was a little bit longer I feel I get a lot more power out of it slipping a little bit back here but jimping in that ramp is subtle enough to get a little bit more power up front yeah that's good all performed very well I'd say in before row performance let's say number one number two number three so now slightly larger blades laser strike it's gonna definitely slide at this point I feel like we've given these blades a good run for the money it will get through it but we're struggling just a little bit so that was with the laser strike cm6 was brand new at the beginning of the day that's still going pretty nice you do not have a finger choil ah and it'll go it would be nice to have that forward control and the hungerless well gonna have to be a little bit careful this will do it with ease we already knew that [Music] can certainly cheat a little bit taking your time down on that belly tough of course trying to do this without cutting myself Joe there you go all right so Joe yeah survival attitude out of work today that was a huge amount of work but you know how much we just learned and witnessed and hopefully shared with everybody that was just useful information I know personally I learned a ton about all these great blades and just about knives in general it was incredible we have certain aesthetic uh appeals we like about the knives sometimes that's how we make a purchase like the looks of that one but at the end of the day you know if you're um into um handy person work around your home Le military or Bushcraft firecraft camping hiking backpacking which you and I greatly enjoy you know we're not going to carry three or four blades with us I still really think about not just what we're going to be doing that's the obvious food prep which they all can do right but like my buddy who flipped that canoe that's a very dire situation okay he had the wrong tool for the task you have to consider if it's colder I need to make a shelter do I need swinging ability should I have a fungalus um do I um you know have a uh a scandi because I want to spend days in the woods I want to make some um matches I want to make a a fire pot holder um could I have to make a snare or a trap that's candy is going to really beaver into that wood do I need a sharpened spine some people are smokers they have cigars and cigarettes they have a lighter with them already right not all of us do so we're relying on a feral Rod even if we don't have like an rb3 with a sharpened spine do we throw a quick grind on a six or a five to get that ability we can do we put a pinky lanyard on a midsize knife like a four um or six to get much more swinging power that's what a nickel modification right no and it's so true and even you know you talk about the blade geometry and the blade capabilities but the handle the entire package and we didn't even touch the sheath the sheath really does add to and make or break the user's experience that's a whole topic for another day the sheath is a whole topic for another day it's a Prelude that maybe we should talk about that in a grid in the Out of Doors you think about this right if you're hiking in Colorado Rockies and somehow you slip you're going to poke right through this like nothing and you could really hit a an artery okay we have something like a custom sheath I got a couple here um you know yellow Hawk custom Outdoors Doug Wilson we have 0.93 all around Kydex the chance of this hooking through and causing damage is is awesome slim to none so from a handle modifications to sheath type or the simplest approach it's a novice can do throw a pinky lanyard on throw an extraction bead for example some of the slickness of this handle because it's just softened over time I struggled getting this out of the sheath right I made this little thing now I can grab it right pull it right out quickly so these are things that you could do if you had just one knife you don't need a lot of tools to do these items but going back to the original discussion that you and Shane had the right tool for the right task I think just anticipating your conditions time of year but more importantly not just what you're going to use it for on a perfect scenario what could go wrong it's the imperfect scenario the imperfect scenario is when you don't want to have the wrong knife cutting or the wrong knife stabbing or potentially causing damage because you don't have control in the swing think about all these wonderful options not just some essay but any manufacturer any Superstore if you're going to spend 20 bucks on a knife you got a couple different options try to at least plan in your mind what that scenario is going to be and what could go wrong that will help you not just enjoy your experience but potentially save lives that's right because they save lives well Joe I mean to everybody watching I think we learned a huge amount today I appreciate the time it was fantastic I hope you guys enjoyed the that full-featured video today Shane from Essie and all the guys at SC thank you very much we greatly appreciate it so with that this was the Out of Doors episode seven survival attitude great job great job thank you so very much what a wonderful morning thank you guys thank you see you next time absolutely