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In a short sight­ed ambi­tious attempt to think about learn­ing more skills, I want­ed, and con­tin­ue to want to learn how to make a knife out aof a blank piece of steel.  It is some­thing that I have want­ed to do for a long time, as does a bud­dy of mine.  While watch­ing City Sur­vival­ist’s and Gavko’s Youtube chan­nels, I became moti­vat­ed.  I got a lit­tle excit­ed and bought a few bud­get blades I thought I might like to try to make myself.  In hind­sight, I should have looked at the process of mak­ing the knife before spend­ing mon­ey on the blades.  Liv­ing in an apart­ment SERIOUSLY lim­its what I can and can­not do both with respect to pri­va­cy as well as just not hav­ing the space to go through all the steps in order to build a sol­id knife or knives form scratch.

That said, I pur­chased three knives.  I bought them to eval­u­ate knife design, blade design, thick­ness as com­pared to oth­er knives I have, etc.  I pulled out some paper, and start­ed design­ing a blade and han­dle for my “per­fect knife” and some­thing I thought could be more “urban prep­per friend­ly” in design and ergonom­ics for sub­ur­ban and urban prep­pers.

The first, and the top one on the pic­ture, which may turn out to be my favorite “if” it can hold up under pres­sure is called a “Tim­ber Wolf Bowie Knife.  The knife itself is 9″ long, full tang, has a 4 1/8″ stain­less steel blade a hard­wood han­dle, and a leather sheath.

The Tim­ber Wolf Bowie Knife arrived pret­ty sharp out of the box.  I sharp­ened it just a lit­tle bit and it was shav­ing the hair off my arm.  Gen­er­al­ly the sign of soft­er steel sharp­en­ing so quick­ly, The blade is stamped Ger­man Steel, slight­ly hard­er steel than 440, I believe.  I real­ly like this knife, though.  The han­dle is ergonom­ic and com­fort­able, and the weight of this is good. It has a ribbed spine near the han­dle for your thumb, which is also pret­ty com­fort­able so that you can add addi­tion­al pres­sure for your cut­ting job.  I’m not sure how this will hold up if it is batoned to split some wood, but this spring I will put it to use and report back on it whether I use it hik­ing, camp­ing, or both.  It is a sub $20.00 knife, and I am pret­ty impressed with the design, feel, and qual­i­ty thus far.

The sec­ond knife I pur­chased was a Rem­ing­ton brand Fixed Blade Knife with leather sheath as well.  With a dif­fer­ent blade design, this too was a sub $20.00 knife.  At first glance I like this blade design as well.  Com­par­ing it to the Tim­ber Wolf Bowie Knife the Rem­ing­ton brand Fixed Blade Knife is a mil­lime­ter or so thin­ner on the blade, but is slight­ly longer mak­ing it a 4 3/4″ blade.  Like oth­er, it has a wood­en han­dle, sharp­ened razor sharp, is com­fort­able in my hand, is also full length tang.  My research also says this is a soft steel.  440, I think, so like pre­vi­ous men­tioned was very eas­i­ly sharp­ened.  Like the Tim­ber Wolf, it comes with a leather sheath.  This leather sheath is pret­ty heavy duty and feels well made.  Like men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, I will put this through the paces in the spring.

Last­ly, you may mis­take this knife for a Mora.  It is not.  It is a Mora knock off.  In fact, it is named Wahoo Killer Filet Knife.  Do not be fooled.  It is NOT a filet Knife.  It looks like a Mora with the excep­tion that it is not a Scan­di­na­vian grind.  It’s a straight edge grind.  It is 1144 Stain­less Steel and feels sur­pris­ing­ly like you are hold­ing a Mora Clip­per in your hands.  It is as thick and feels as stur­dy as a Mora.  The sheath looks and feels just like the Mora as well.  The best part about the  Wahoo Killer Filet Knife is that it is sub $3.00 at $2.59 each at Amazon.com.  I actu­al­ly pur­chased sev­er­al of them and gave them away, put one in my tool box, and oth­ers in oth­er kits.  As for sharp­ness, to be hon­est, it did not come the sharpest out of the box.  I have made many attempts to put a good edge on this knife, but think the edge that is on it is not the best and not a good angle.  I believe that if you buy this knife you will want to put your own edge on it to get it as sharp as it can be. More work, def­i­nite­ly, but what you can expect from a $3.00 knock­off.   If you have a Mora, you know they come razor sharp when they arrive, and that they are a very hard steel.  Specs on this knife are: 8 1/2 inch­es over­all, hard plas­tic sheath, tex­tured rub­ber­ized han­dle for a sol­id grip, and 1144 stain­less steel blade.  Don’t be fooled, even though it is a knock off, it seems like a good sub­sti­tute if you want to buy mul­ti­ple knives and are on a bud­get.

That said, as you can read, I have not put these knives through the paces, but I will.  For the prices you may want to add them to one of your kits any­way or put them through the paces your­self.

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