Survival knives are designed for work such as setting traps, cutting branches and skinning animals. Most survival knives have blades that are 4 - 8 inches long with a full thick tang.
Before the late 19th century, outdoorsmen and military personnel used knives that were like the knives used by butchers. Blades were thin and the handles were often no more than two wooden slabs riveted to the tang.
Today survival knives are usually heavy duty knives built for specific a purpose.Some survival knives have hollow handles, which allow the user to store additional equipment in the handle such as matches or similar small items, began gaining popularity in the 1980s.
On some survival knives, the spine or back of the blade is flat; allowing it to make a good hitting platform when pounding it with a hard stick to aid in splitting wood. Serrations appeared on knives in the 19th century for use as a wood saw or fish scaler.
The handle material of survival knives differs from one to the next. These can be hardened rubber, wood, bone (horn), polymer like micarta.
If your life is going to depend on a survival knife; it should not be thin and weak.
During WWII, survival knives were issued to aircraft crew, as it was a real possibility that these personnel might be shot down over wilderness or behind enemy lines. The serrations seen on survival knives are intended to allow aircrewmen to cut their way free through the relatively thin metal skin of a crashed helicopter or airplane. Those knives that do include functional saw-teeth still suffer from lack of blade length limiting the thickness of what can be cut when used as a saw.
Lifeboats aboard naval vessels contained survival kits including knives. These knives varied in design from one branch of the service to another. From Vietnam to the present, purpose-built survival knives evolved.
Some military redesigned the bayonet used with their issued rifle to include survival knife features. Bayonets functioned poorly as field knives, due to being designed primarily to turn a rifle into a thrusting weapon and only secondarily (if at all) to work as a field knife. The newer models function more acceptably for survival while remaining capable of being attached to the muzzle of a rifle.
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About the AuthorAl is a collector of knives of all kinds.
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