Top 3 Military Survival Knives

The military style survival knives are popular based on the rugged appeal and the publics fascination of them from military movies. With that said many of the military style survival knives are very functional blades.

Kabar Becker BK-17

The BK-17 is designed after the pilot bolt knife, it has a clip point blade with a blade length of about 4 inches. The major upgrade of the pilot bolt knife is the BK-17 is full tang, versus a stick tang. This allows the added security of a heavier duty knife.

ESEE 4

The ESEE 4 is a great knife in its own right, it too has a 4 inch blade. The ESEE 4 is full tang as well and is a well respected survival knife. This was actually the first survival style knife I bought.

Kabar Fighting Knife

This is the trademark knife you see soldiers with in the movies, they have a clip point, usually longer than 4 inch blade and they are not full tang. The older Kabar fighting knives are pretty solid but I've see a decent amount of the newer production ones break.

The Verdict

If you are going to functionality I would go with the BK-17 or ESEE 4, if you are going for that classic military look then the Kabar Fighting Knife might be the way to go (just realize its limitations).

ESEE Camp Lore Survival Knives

ESEE knives is coming out with a camp-lore line of knives, they are expected to ship to retailers sometime in June 2014. There isn't a lot of information about them at the moment but there are three design pictures I have found. Be sure I will update this blog post when I have more information. (**Edit** Last I heard the Camplore line will be released some time in October**)

The first on is a scandi ground knife that looks to have a 3-4 inch blade.

Next is a camp lore knife they designed with the input of Dave Canterbury which looks to be a bigger flat ground knife ( I really like the contoured handle on this model).

The last one shown here I am not crazy about personally. 

Here is a video from Shot Show, where they give some background and a live look at the RB-3 Camp-Lore knife (the one that is shown on the first picture on this page)

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