Knives!
Monday, May 7th, 2007 at 1:35 pm (gear)
We use knives for many things at Flying Cloud, and it’s important to have a good one, but please don’t spend a lot of money! In fact, the knives I recommend will be some of the cheaper items you bring to camp. Also, if you’re new to knives, please don’t experiment with it! We’ll teach you how to use it safely when you get here.
Here are some general guidelines, followed by links to two particular brands that I’m recommending.
Guidelines:
1) It should be a sheath knife or it MUST have a locking blade if it’s a folding knife.
2) The blade should be no more than about 4“.
3) The handle should be comfortable and fit well into your hand.
4) The blade probably shouldn’t be serrated, unless it’s a multi-blade knife and you have one blade with teeth and one without.
5) The blade should be straight and sturdy, but not too thick.
Recommendations:
Here are two knives that I use and really like. The first is by Mora, from Sweden. From their main page you can click on the ”products tab“ and the knives I’m recommending are the Clipper model, though others may be more to your liking. The main difference in all of these is stainless vs. carbon steel. Carbon is a bit softer, and thus easier to sharpen and less likely to snap, but stainless is perfectly strong and doesn’t rust, which can be invaluable at FC.
The other knife I want to suggest is usually available at camping stores, and is a folding-blade. It’s from France, and is called an Opinel. These knives are nice and easy and will sharpen to an amazing edge. I’ve had one for twelve years now and it’s still going strong. The link here is to the U.S. Store, but they’re for sale all over the place.
Since you’re buying such an important tool, getting ahold of a whetstone (a sharpening stone) to help you keep it sharp is a good idea too. You can get a nice coarse/fine double sided one for less than ten dollars.
Finally, make sure once you have your new knife that you get your name on it somewhere! If you can use engraving tool, write it along the side of the blade, or scratch it into the handle. Whatever you do, make sure it’s clearly yours!
If you’re new to using knives, please don’t experiment until you get to camp and we can teach you all about how to use it safely.