Last fall I wrote a post about three bud­get knives you might want in your pack because they were inex­pen­sive.  Last week­end, I had the chance to bring one of them camp­ing as we ope­nend up the camp­site for the sea­son.  Pri­or to going I gave the Tim­ber Wolf Blazin Bowie a quick sharp­en­ing and threw it in my back­pack for the trip.  When we got to the camp­site I jumpt­ed out of the truck and strapped it on.  It’s usu­al­ly the first thing I do, and usu­al­ly one of two knives gets strapped on, my Ger­ber Pro­file or my Ka-Bar Beck­er BK2.  I did bring my BK2, just in case I had issues with the Tim­ber Wolf.  As it turns out, I did­n’t need to wor­ry about it.

So, a lit­tle about the Tim­ber Wolf Blazin Bowie.  In size it is nine inch­es long over­all.  It is made of “Ger­man Stain­less Steel.”  If you click the link, you will see that Ger­man Stain­less is not the hard­est met­al, but not the soft­est, and is like­ly on the soft­er side, which makes it eas­i­er to sharp­en.  His­tor­i­cal­ly, soft­er steel also dulls quick­er.  I don’t know much about steel, so if you do, please feel free to com­ment.  How­ev­er, I noticed that it kept it’s edge pret­ty well.  More on that lat­er.

Click for larg­er image

When I bought this knife, I was attract­ed to it’s design.  I thought the han­dle looked ergonom­ic, the blade was deep, and it was a good thick­ness.  The knife itself is 3/8″ thick, as well as full tang.  The blade itself is an ample 4 1/8″ long.  I think I paid $20.00 for it.  Well when I received it, one of the first things I noticed was “Hand­craft­ed in Chi­na” on near the han­dle on the blade.  Sigh… Oh well.  It is what it is. The sheath was an inter­est­ing design, as you can see from the pic­ture, and seems an okay qual­i­ty.  Not the high­est, which seems to be a com­mon com­plaint among bud­get knife pur­chasers.  Yet still func­tion­al it sat well on my side from my belt.  As for bal­ance, the blade is not as heavy as the han­dle, so using it as a chop­per may not be the best option, although it was instru­men­tal in chop­ping small branch­es up to 1/2″ thick pret­ty quick­ly off of some fire wood.  Also as a “styl­ish” knife, when I went to baton fire­wood, I was con­cerned that it might not hold up, either.  I was dead wrong on that one.  The TIm­ber Wolf held up just fine.  In fact, it cut through most of the logs I was split­ting like but­ter, and held it’s edge pret­ty well through­out the whole camp­ing trip, which inci­den­tal­ly was only 48 hours.  It did slip out of my hands once or twice, but it was in the low 80’s and I was work­ing up a good sweat, and my hands were wet from the per­spi­ra­tion.

I used this knife on and off all day, baton­ing, cut­ting twigs off branch­es to use for the fire, cut­ting food, cordage, etc.  As a camp knife, it passed my tests with fly­ing col­ors.  As a knife I would use for an extend­ed peri­od of a week or more in the field, I think it would be fine.  If you were going to use it to cut larg­er saplings to build a shel­ter, you may need to baton it into the sapling to get a good deep cut in, as the blade is not as heavy or heav­ier than the han­dle so get­ting a good chop in might be tough.  I am not sure how long the sheath will last, so inves­ti­gat­ing a kydex or new cus­tom made sheath at some point might be a good idea.  Although, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, when you pay $20.00 for a knife, a $30.00 or $40.00 kydex or cus­tom made sheath sounds a lit­tle sil­ly.  How­ev­er, if the util­i­ty of the knife is far longer than the life of the sheath, it is not a bad invest­ment.

In the end, this was a good pur­chase, I will cer­tain­ly keep this knife in a pack and take it camp­ing again and con­tin­ue to put it through it’s paces.  If there is more to add lat­er, I will make updates to this post…

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