Best Bushcraft Knife Key Features [Free buyers guide]

What makes the best bushcraft knife? How do you know which one. to choose?

As a Bushcraft and Survival skills instructor, students often ask me what is the best bushcraft knife? This journal entry, the foundational post of an occasional series, will provide you with knowledge to understand the typical key tasks a general purpose bushcraft knife needs to do. Along with the associated key features needed to help you decide what makes the best bushcraft knife. More importantly what makes it perfect for you.

Rushing around looking for a pen and paper to make notes? Don’t worry I have got you covered! I have created a free buyer’s guide summary of the key information, along with a handy checklist, that you can instantly download by filling in the form below.

Get a cup of your favourite beverage and settle in for a knowledge-packed read!

What makes the best bushcraft knife?

In order to understand this, we need to ask what are the typical key tasks that we use a knife for?

Before we get into the meat and bones of what makes the best bushcraft knife, we need to recognise that ‘best’ is a very personal thing. What you consider to be the best features to suit you and your needs may not be the best features to suit someone else. 

Your best bushcraft knife should be chosen as if its your only tool. You will need to understand the types of tasks you will be using your knife for and, to do those tasks well, it needs to be versatile.

So, what type of things do we use our knifes for when undertaking bushcraft activities?

• Need to start a fire? No problem, use your knife to process wood and plant materials for the fire, strike a ferrocerium rod or carve a bow drill set.

• Need to build a shelter? No problem, use your knife to process materials for structural members, covering and cordage.

• Need to process water? No problem, use your knife to make digging tools, containers, improvised filters and of course, build fires.

• Need to process food? Again no problem, use your knife to dispatch and process animals, process roots, vegetables and fruits, carve cooked food and make eating utensils.

You get the idea.

If we now look closer at those things we are using our knife on they all boil down to three basics things:

• Process wood into useable forms in five basic ways

  • Slicing with the edge to shape the wood

  • Cutting across the grain or fibres

  • Using the tip to create a hollow or concavity

  • Using the tip to bore or cut a hole

  • Using the blade as a wedge or lever to split along the grain or fibres

• Prepare/process food stuffs, either animal or vegetable

• Pound or scrape foods or plant fibres to extract useable materials

The short video below demonstrates how a knife is used to undertake these basic bushcraft processing tasks:

All these tasks, how often you do them and whether you plan to do them at all will influence your decision on what makes a knife the best bushcraft knife for you.

Generally speaking, a good rule of thumb for bushcraft activities is that we should not need to be using materials greater than the thickness of our wrist. With the right techniques our knife can easily handle materials up to this size. Materials larger than this need other more specialised tools.

What are the key features of the best bushcraft knife?

On to the knife itself! 

Let’s get our terminology straight, all speak the same language as it were. The pictures below describe the basic features of a knife using commonly recognised terminology. As with any specialist subject, there are some unusual names for features and confusingly different names for the same features! That doesn’t mean that those other names are wrong, it’s just a reflection of the rich heritage of the global knife industry. For the remainder of this blog post we will use the terms as identified on the pictures below:

Basic anatomy of the best bushcraft knife showing key features.

The technical bit!

There are three critical parts that make up the best bushcraft knife to make it functional but safe to use:

• The blade

• The handle

• The material properties

Before we can have a meaningful conversation about the features shown in the above diagram, we need to get a few of scientific terms defined and an understanding of basic material properties, as these effect the decisions made on the key features of the blade and handle.

Key material properties of the best bushcraft knife

There are four main material properties that we need to understand in our quest for the best bushcraft knife:

• Hardness

• Brittleness

• Toughness

• Ductility

These properties are all interrelated with a change in one affecting the others often in negative ways, and are controlled in the manufacturing process, usually when the blade is heat treated.

Hardness - this is the material’s ability to resist wear or indentation - so in the context of knives this translates to how long it retains its edge (stays sharp) for. Everyone wants their bushcraft knife to be hard but many don’t really understand that comes with some downsides.

Brittleness - is the biggest potential downside of hardness and not a desirable property in a bushcraft knife. In engineering terms, brittleness is defined as an inability to undertake plastic flow or deformation i.e. the material cannot easily move when subject to a force like being bent or impacting something (think levering and chopping and no, your knife is NOT a substitute pry bar!). Lack of plastic flow in this context could result in the blade snapping.

Toughness - is the material’s ability to withstand impact. This a really desirable trait in a working tool but has to be just right. As the Assyrians used to say, a bent sword can be repaired, a broken sword is no use to anyone. The two downsides of toughness are brittleness and ductility. Counterintuitively, as a tough material gets colder it starts to behave as if it’s hard and brittle. A consideration if we are using our knives in the boreal forest for example.

Ductility - defined as the percentage elongation at failure, it is the material’s ability to stretch under load. Unfortunately, if a material is too ductile this stretch becomes permanent. A ductile material will be prone to bending and denting, and will not hold an edge for long.

There are many other material properties but these are the main ones that concern us on out search for the best bushcraft knife.

Key Features of the best bushcraft knife blade.

The following descriptions relate to a knife being used for general bushcraft activities. Other specialist knives may have a different form based on their intended function.

Blade - its probably obvious but worth defining any way, the blade of the knife is the part that is sharpened and not normally where you would hold the knife. The blade has a number of key features that allow it to perform. Bushcraft knife blades are generally made of some form of steel.

Steel - many different steel types are used to manufacture knife blades, so many in fact you can find a dedicated blog post to the steels and their pros and cons here:

For the purposes of this journal entry, there are 4 main types of steel that you need to know:

1. Plain carbon steels. Good old iron and carbon heat treated to make it hard.

2. Alloy steels, often referred to as tool steels, are plain carbon steels with other elements added in to modify its properties.

3. Stainless steels (a subset of alloy steels) defined as a steel with greater than 11% chromium.

4. ‘Super Steels’ are created through the use of highly specialised manufacturing processes that give the steel outstanding properties. Many of these Super Steels are also stainless steels.

Blade length - whilst the portion of the blade between the handle and the tip is the blade length, this does sometimes get confused with edge length especially if the knife has a large ricasso. A good blade length for a bushcraft knife is 100 to 125mm or 4 to 5 inches. Blades longer than 150mm or 6 inches tend to become unwieldy when trying to perform detailed tasks. Blades below 3 inches tend to be good for detail tasks but are sometimes lacking when the knife is used for more demanding activities.

Blade width or depth - this is the distance from the spine to the edge. Bushcraft knives come in a wide variety of sizes often varying between the extremes of 16mm (5/8 inch) and 42mm (1 and 5/8 inches). The narrow widths tend to make good carving blades able to turn tight corners whilst, the larger widths are generally very robust and make good chopping and splitting knives but struggle to carve finer detail. A really common blade width is 27mm (1inch and 1/16th).

Blade thickness - is generally measured across the spine or thickest part of the blade  at right angles to the edge/spine plane. Thick blades tend to be robust but not particularly ‘slicey’ whereas thinner blades are really good at slicing but may not be robust enough for the full range of tasks. Bushcraft knife blades generally range between 2mm (3/32 inch) to 6mm (1/4 inch) with 3mm to 4mm commonly accepted as the best general purpose thickness. 

Tip or point - the tip of the knife forms a point at one end of the blade. On a bushcraft knife, the tip needs to be sufficiently pointed to allow the knife to bore holes and pierce materials, but be sufficiently robust enough to not break or bend. For these reasons, drop point and clip point blades, like those shown on the knives in the picture above, are common designs on bushcraft knives.

Edge - the edge of the blade is the part that has been sharpened and is used to cut.

Belly - the belly of the blade is often curved and usually forms the transition from the straight portion of the cutting edge to the tip. The belly offers a new portion of edge to the cut surface as the slicing action is made. Knives that have a large belly make excellent skinning knives, for example, whereas knives with small bellies are ideal for carving, allowing the edge behind the tip to be used to cut very small radiuses.

Grind - this is the area of the blade that transitions from the thickest part of the material to the edge. It is also known as a bevel and is sometimes confused with a micro bevel which is actually a type of edge profile. There are four commonly used grinds on bushcraft knives:

A - Convex - in cross section, the convex grind looks a little like a pointed ‘Spitzer’ style rifle bullet, a curve continuously falling away from the spine until it meets and forms the edge. This grind is very robust and for this reason, is commonly found on axes. The increasing curve helps protect the edge after the initial cut is made forcing the material apart with a wedging action. If incorrectly sharpened, a convex edge can quickly become too thick and wedge like - this is often the reason the convex edge gets a bad name. 

B - Full Flat - the full flat grind tapers evenly on both sides of the knife from the spine to the edge. On small carving style bushcraft knives, the full flat may also form the cutting edge whereas larger bushcraft knives often utilise a secondary bevel or micro bevel to form the cutting edge.

C - Scandi - short for Scandinavian grind. This grind has become the most popular  and common place grind on bushcraft knifes of the modern era. Typically, the blade remains rectangular until the grind line, the angle of which forms the edge and is usually around 30 degrees. I will let you into a little secret, personally I am not that keen on the Scandi grind on a general purpose bushcraft knife. Whilst it excels at wood carving tasks, I find it cumbersome to use around the camp kitchen and for other food processing activities.

D - Hollow - the hollow grind allows a very fine cutting edge to be established and was commonly used on cut throat razors. These days you are most likely to find a hollow ground blade on a bushcraft knife that has been designed for skinning. The downside of this type of grind is that the hollow grind leaves very little material supporting the edge meaning it can be relatively weak and easy to damage.

Ricasso - this is the unsharpened portion of the blade between the handle and the start of the edge.

Plunge line - the end of the grind visible as a line running up the side of the blade at the junction with the ricasso. 

Choil - a small semicircular or angled cut at the start of the edge often seen on knives with large ricassos. This area is generally a difficult transition from the angle of the grind to the rectangular cross section of the blade. The choil helps make this area neater for the maker and serves to make knife sharpening easier for the owner as it removes the wedge transition at the start of the edge.

Spine - the back of the blade which is usually the thickest part of the blade. The spine serves to add strength to the blade prevent it from bending. Depending on the way you plan on using your knife, you may wish your spine to be:

• flat (know as a 90 degree spine with a sharp edge), this can be useful for scraping,

• or domed to make it comfortable for use when carving with a supporting thumb on the spine.

Jimping - these are grooves or notches cut into the spine of the blade in the area the thumb rests to give it more purchase. For most general purpose bushcraft knives, this feature is unnecessary, although some find it useful for helping to strike a ferrocerium rod.

Serrations - serrations allow the blade to bite aggressively into materials especially those that are relatively soft and fibrous like ropes and cordage. Whilst they look ‘tacticool’, based on their functional capabilities my personal opinion is that they are best avoided on a general purpose bushcraft knife. However, if you want a knife for climbing or as a rescue knife serrations should be considered.

Tang - the tang is a blade extension that runs through or beneath the handle and allows solid attachment of the handle to the blade. On some knives the tang can also form the handle. There are three main tang styles used in bushcraft knives:

1. Rat tail tang - this style of tang is long and slender with a superficial resemblance to a rat’s tail. It’s not visible within the guard but often protrudes from the rear of the handle and is commonly peened over a washer to help secure the handle onto the blade.

2. Full tang - usually understood to mean a tang that has visible metal on the top and bottom of the handle for the full length of the handle in line with the blade. However, knives like the Mora Garberg for example, are also considered ‘full tang’ even though the moulded handle hides the tang on both top and bottom. Full tangs are generally considered more robust than the other types and are recommended for a general purpose bushcraft knife.

3. Partial or 3/4 tang - in this instance, the tang is relatively short and stubby, and does not protrude from the handle at all. Handles of this type may have a single fixing pin through them.

Key features of the best bushcraft knife handle

Guard - often also referred to as a quillion. Guards can be integral to the blade or handle or an additional part assembled to the knife. In the context of a bushcraft knife the purpose of the guard is to stop your hand moving or slipping onto the sharp edge. Whilst considered a positive feature, especially on those knives aimed at beginners, the guard can get in the way of some grips and cutting techniques.

Bolster - Bolsters are often added to knife handles to improve the overall look but can be integral to the blade. Outside of looks, bolsters help form a smooth transition between the blade and the handle, and depending on the blade style, can help balance the knife in the hand. 

Handle - it almost goes without saying but this is the part of the knife that you well, handle! Handles can be made from a variety of natural and synthetic materials in a variety of shapes and sizes. The key feature here, for me, is comfort. If you are using the knife for extended periods of time the handle should not hurt the hand, whilst retaining adequate grip to allow use of the knife safely, even when you hand is wet and cold. If possible this is a real try before you buy area.

Fixings - come in a variety of types, some permanent, some designed to allow the handle to be removed or replaced. Irrespective of the type, they should be secure and not cause hot spots on the hand when using the knife for extended periods. This includes any counterbores that may be present to recess the head of the fixing.

Lanyard Hole - another obvious one really. A hole usually at the rear of the handle but sometimes just in front of the handle to allow the attachment of a lanyard to the knife. If you intend to use a lanyard with your knife, ensure the edges of this hole are not sharp and remember that with a lanyard around your wrist, the knife is attached to you - drop it and it could swing into you and cause a nasty injury. It has become quite popular to attach ornamental knot work to lanyard holes to help remove the knife from the sheath or pocket (in the case of a folding knife) rather than use with a  lanyard in the traditional sense.

Pommel or butt cap - with similar uses to the bolster, a robust pommel has the advantage that it can be used to hammer if needed. In this role, caution should be applied as hammering with a pommel incorrectly can lead to a nasty injury. 

Best Bushcraft Knife key features summed up

Key to determining what may be the best bushcraft knife for you is deciding what exactly you plan on using it for. As a minimum, for general purpose bushcraft use your knife must be able to process wood in a variety of ways, allow you to prepare food stuffs and ideally allow you to pound and scape materials.

Understanding the key features and their technical names discussed in this journal entry, will help you become an informed consumer allowing you to make the best choice for you first time without a lot of wasted money or effort.

The next journal entry in this series will look at the best bushcraft knife for beginners.

Good luck on your search for the best bushcraft knife!