George
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Banned
Posts: 1,899
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Post by George on Dec 30, 2012 14:56:34 GMT
From my experience in the field, the 'gut hook' is just one more thing that goes blunt and is a pain to use. For cutting rope and cord, a full blade is 100X better if its not razor sharp, once the 'gut hook' is a tiny bit blunt you can kiss its use good bye. Basically for a survival knife less is better, the less that can fail (go blunt, break or injure the user) the better. Also the positioning is awkward, if you need a hook type thing like that just use a piece of wire, failing that a stick, the list goes on.
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Post by feral on Dec 31, 2012 5:03:53 GMT
AverageJoe summed it up quite adequately I think. It's hard to sharpen, it dulls to the point of being useless easily, it's usually at a bad angle to actually use for 'unzipping' a carcass and it really doesn't have any other use that the primary edge can't handle more easily. Additionally its location in your design would have 6 inches of saw and knife edge cutting up the stomach and intestines and potentially spoiling the meat. When I was less experienced and more influenced by what looked super cool with all the bells and whistles I spent over 300 dollars for a Tom Brown Tracker. A couple of years later on a whim I bought the old CRKT Corkum First Strike for less than a fifth of the price. Both have been put through their paces in the swamp, mountains, and deserts on 3 continents, abused, neglected, badly maintained, and used to perform tasks they were never intended to handle, and to be perfectly honest I've found the cheaper plainer knife to do everything the larger heavier fancier one does just as effectively.
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Post by Striderfly on Feb 21, 2013 19:27:18 GMT
Yeah, I'll bet you baton a little better with the tracker, and saw branches.
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Post by feral on Mar 5, 2013 6:36:16 GMT
Not really. The saw teeth on the back of the tracker have a tendency to chew up your baton while at the same time being fairly ineffective as a saw. It will work in a pinch, but trying to use a saw blade that's a quarter inch thick and 2 inches long with a handle curved in a manner that it makes leverage inadequate and nothing to grab onto but blade you're a lot better off just chopping whatever you were trying to saw.
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Post by MOK on Mar 7, 2013 12:31:47 GMT
Tends to be my experience with "sawblades" on knives in general, be it on Swiss army knives or Rambo-clone "survival" bowies - they're worth jack all as saws, and get in the way of using the knife as a knife. I've always found it faster and easier and often neater to just chop or even whittle down whatever little thing I could saw with the minuscule would-be saw. Heck, with such a short saw, you might as well just snap that twig over your knee.
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Post by Striderfly on Mar 9, 2013 6:29:44 GMT
Ok, so the Tops Tracker is one of my favorites. I don't baton into the teeth but rather smack the swale and use the straight blade as the ax. I think you'll find it works really well. Also, when that particular knife is new and the saw is sharp, they'll burn through a 4 inch green limb surprisingly fast. Saws work well in places you can't take a decent swing like a fork in thick brush ( and when you just can't break it over your knee)
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