Well, folks, this might be an unpopular opinion post.
When I got started on blogging, there was no such thing as a thriving bushcraft community. Of course there were people like Rüdiger Nehberg, Mors Kochanski, Ray Mears, Anton Lennartz and the BBQ bear, but it was a bit of a niche activity. And to be honest, maybe it was a whole lot cooler. You know, the way mountainbike riding was cooler. It wasn't easy to get started, there were few people who could tell you the how-dos. And of course we all fell for movies like Rambo or other "survival " shows. On the other hand, well, if you used your shit, it quickly became apparent that reality was a whole different thing. As a kid, I broke about five Rambo knives, as we called those hollow handle shrapnels you could get for cheap at the Hardware store.
I got a knife as a kid that rode in my pocket most of the 45 years since I got it. I had to sharpen, as in reprofiling the blade, this knife once in 45 years. Of course I had to strop and hone more frequently, but I had to sharpen once.
It was a Wenger SAK. With a saw, nail file, awl and stuff like that.
I also bought a cheapo Ka-Bar lookalike, which performed admirably until I lost it. Actually the tang was stronger than the original, but the blade was quite thin. It didn't break, though.
Now the world has changed a lot. Survival takes place in entertainment shows and there are a lot of experts on the devil's own web, some of whom are really great teachers, but on the other hand those awesome teachers are rarely the ones that go viral.
The harsh truth about survival is that survival is when you are in a liferaft fleeing a warzone with your kids, survival is what a Ukrainian mother does when she walks 85km with her little ones on one pot of boiled potatoes in -35° Celsius, survival is what some indigenous kids do for two weeks in the jungle after their parents died in a plane crash. The truth is that noone in their right mind would ever want to get into a survival situation. My mother walked on the hand of my grandmother all the way from Silesia to the Ruhr region in Germany, my father survived heavy Bombardement in an air raid without a shelter. They had to survive, and they did. I am living proof of the fact. They all had in common that they very much appreciated and loved their creature comforts afterwards.
That is not to say it is not a good thing to know things, to practice and train. First aid is one of the highest priorities. You don't sneak up on sentinels. And as I have said time and again, the very notion of a knife fight is absolutely silly. You win a knife fight if you do not get into knife fights. Even combat knives most of the time just prepare food and open boxes. Knives are tools and should be seen as such.
What most of us do in the woods, well, what is it? To me, it is a lot of woodcarving and foraging, food prepping and cutting cordage and fabric. Snacking, whittling a stick and fun projects.
The Opinel most certainly is not a heavy duty knife at all. It is a time-proven design with some shortcomings and a lot of strengths. If it gets wet, the blade often gets stuck in the handle, because it consists of five parts: Handle, blade, collar, rivet and Virobloc looking collar. If the wood of the handle gets wet, it sponges up, increasing friction. On the other hand, well, there are five parts. You might destroy the knife if you abuse it, but you could repair it forever. That said, it is not really easy to destroy it if you use it sensibly. The Plus side is that there are few knives that are as sharp out of the box like the Opinel. You can, for example, cut wobbly mushrooms freehand. The grind is a very high and thin convex bevel to zero. Making feather sticks isn't easy at first, because you tend to cut all the way through the stick at first due to the slicey grind. You can use the spine to strike sparks from a ferro rod, but also as a steel for striking a flint. The knife, even the biggest ones, for the 12 and 13 are almost sword-like, are ridiculously light in your pocket. Food prep is where the knives really excel, so much in fact that the magical sorcery troll and myself use the 12 in the kitchen instead of our not exactly crappy kitchen lasers. The knives are well balanced and can also be used for delicate carving tasks. Carving tent pegs, spoons, forks and whatever takes next to no time. Herbs and mushrooms simply fall apart.
The knives are light enough not to notice them in your pocket. They look civilized, and are so socially acceptable that the name is held synonymous with folding knives in French dictionaries. It is perfectly legal in Germany and even in the UK, the smaller ones will normally be acceptable in legal reason contexts, say, gardening or hiking and foraging. It is a survival knife because it is more probable that you have something like that on you when you get into a less than agreeable situation.
And the simplicity is inviting your creative impulses. Opinel even offers chunkier handles for you to carve. It can be truly yours afterwards.
The culprit, however, is that price. The simple carbon models cost up to 25€ today. So, if you want to get started, get yourself one. It is not perfect, but actually you could change that with very simple tools. Maybe I can walk you through the process in a future post, so stay tuned!
Thank you for reading, cheers!
