My oldest is turning 15 next month. He's been asking a lot of questions so we finally had "The Talk." It took some doing but I think he finally understands about what makes a good knife--steel, heat treat, design, etc. Now my challenge is figuring out what I can help him get. Wife has allocated 50 for a gift. He wants a 'camp knife' and has used several of mine In different sizes. Ideally, a $50 used Chopweiller would be the blade of choice, but that's never gonna happen
Both he and his younger brother have a good hunting knife and a good edc. Their sisters (when old enough) have ESSE Izulas in pink with Kryptoglow scales waiting for them--still figuring out what hunting blades they'll have. But none of them have 'camp knives,' or an all-around blade for chopping, hacking, splitting, food prep, and everything else that might be required of a blade.
This started off with a fascination with the Ka-Bar Marine Fighting Knife. He thought that was THE ONE, until I explained about rat tail tangs and the likelihood that the blade would snap in two if he used it for heavy batonning. I explained that it might be good as blade for hand-to-hand combat, but it wasn't really designed for heavy use in a survival situation. I also pointed out how the last time we went hunting, I needed to use my INFI-du to dig the bottom of the ladder stand out of the frozen ground in order to reset the stand and make it solid for use. There was a lot of prying and lateral force applied to the blade (ground was reeeeeally frozen). Trying to do that with a lot of those 'survival blades' would probably have resulted in catastrophic blade failure but was not problem for the little Rat.
While there are several great makers who excel at their craft, there are only a handful of makers I would consider for a 'do it all, trust my life to it' kinda knife--Bussekin top the list followed by ESSE and anything made by Justin Gingrich. I've had too many issues with Ontario and Bark River to consider them for that role.
So I'll pose it to you: what knife would you trust your son's life to in the $50-100 range? What size, model, make and why? Used blades are fine. I have my own opinions, but would be interested in hearing other folks' wisdom/reasoning/rationales.
I may be able to convince his grandparents to throw some funds into the mix--they've noted it's getting harder to pick out presents for him.
