Recently I spent several days on a backpacking/hiking trip. As always I brought my well-usedKa-bar knife along. I’ve had it for years, and love it. It gets ten times as much use as the multi-tool when I’m in the woods and would consider it foolish to go into the bush without it.
The problem is that Ka-bars are not rust-resistant: they have a black paint/powder coating that tends to chip off, and the steel underneath rusts easily. A real pain to deal with after a day of hiking. I’ve had this knife since I was a teenager and most of the coating has worn off. I’ve taken to carrying some fine sandpaper along to help clear the rust each day.
So I’m looking to replace it with a similar knife in stainless steel. I don’t want a Bowie knife, they’re too damn big. If I could find a Ka-bar in stainless I’d be ecstatic. Since I can’t, I’m looking for something as close to a Ka-bar as possible: something that can be used to hammer tent stakes, cut kindling and chop brush. All without rusting.
Anyone have any suggestions on a good replacement?
I love my grohmann knife. I’ve got the #3 Boat knife and it works very well as a camping/hiking knife (not to mention little tasks around the house). They also have a page of factory seconds that are half price. I purchased a second and it just has a little mark next to one of the rivets. I had to look very closely to see it and it saved me 50%.
That said, KaBar looks like they use 440 steel, a high-carbon stainless steel.
I can’t tell on their website which knife uses it, but a bit of research might tell you.
KA-BAR does make a stainless version of the iconic 1219C2 Combat Knife (first issued to the USMC in 1942, and consequently popular with other branches for its utility and durability). The original KA-BAR was made of AISI 1095 low carbon steel, which is readily hardenable (although the quality of heat treatment varies in different lots and makers).
KA-BAR does make a stainless version of the iconic 1219C2 Combat Knife (first issued to the USMC in 1942, and consequently popular with other branches for its utility and durability). The original KA-BAR was made of AISI 1095 low carbon steel, which is readily hardenable (although the quality of heat treatment varies in different lots and makers). The modern stainless KA-BAR knife is made of 440A stainless or AUS-6 (as are most SOG and Gerber knives). This steel is certainly very corrosion resistant and demonstrates good toughness, but its hardinability, and therefore edge-keeping capability, is frankly not good, and in fact, overuse of this steel for knives has given stainless steel a bad reputation among people who do not understand metallurgy. 440C (and the complementary AUS-8A and AUS-10) is a better (and slightly more expensive) material that has nearly as good of corrosion resistance properties with only a slight reduction in toughness and substantially better edge-holding. ATS-34 and 154CM are also often used, though generally in smaller folding knives due to cost and the difficulty in holding optimal heat treatment conditions in thicker blades.
Personally, I have a Gryphon M-35 Combat/Utility knife (which is essentially a modernized KA-BAR sans the hammer pommel) that has served me as a general purpose camp knife for about twenty years that is 1/4" thick AUS-8A; it is easy to put a nearly shaving edge on and retains it quite well after use. For a real hard use utility knife, the tool steels such as A-2, D-2, O-1, or the CPM steels are preferred in really high end knives for the toughness (often at expense of corrosion resistance and/or edge holding capability). However, I’ll point out that the knife adopted by the US Air Force Pararescue Jumpers (the USAF’s Special Forces contingent that exists to rescue pilots and other “operators” in behind the lines extraction) uses a custome knife made by Jay Fisher made of plain 440C. Of course, the PJLT is an extraordinarily expensive knife for a usable field knife, and I wouldn’t recommend it for the average camper, but all practical purposes, these operators probably use and rely upon their knives more than any other service, and while Fisher can claim substantial experience in the methods of hardening 440C to optimal conditions, the fact that he recommends this steel over ATS-34 tends to suggest that you can expect good service in a properly conditioned knife of that material.
However, there is nothing really wrong with carbon steel for a field knife. Many knife makers offer corrosion resistant coatings, and the mild corrosion on the edge, as long as it is controlled, will not substantially effect cutting performance between sharpening. The cheap solution would be to simply re-blue your existing knife. I’ve had good luck with Becker K&T knives (even after the company was absorbed by KA-BAR) as heavy-duty field/utility knives. Some people like Cold Steel, and I personally have a SRK that is as old as the Gryphon and has seen much use, although I regard it as more of a sharpened crowbar than a knife.
