This knife is a mix of paring knife/slicer and Each Day Carry knife. It may have a spot in your survival gear.
by Leon Pantenburg
Disclaimer: Bark River provided to product for this assessment. I don’t work for Bark River, and I used to be not paid to assessment this knife. This following in my view, and no one had any enter into the publish.
My most neutral knife reviewer is my spouse Debbie. She is used to new knives showing within the knife drawer and makes use of them as wanted within the kitchen. She grabs no matter knife is helpful and seems to be helpful for the duty at hand. It didn’t take however one use for her to latch onto the Water Moccasin.
“It is a nice paring and kitchen knife,” she mentioned. “It stays within the knife drawer.”
Most of my knife evaluations begin within the kitchen. My reasoning is {that a} helpful knife is helpful in quite a lot of conditions. If the knife can deal with cooking chores, it could work out nicely when used exterior. So the Water Moccasin joins the Mountain Man, Fin and Bone, Sportsman, Petty Z, Kephart, Bird and Trout and others which might be relegated to the kitchen. I’ll sneak them out throughout deer season, however in any other case, they reside on the knife rack.
Listed here are the Water Moccasin specs:
- General Size: 7.75″
- Blade Size: 3.75″
- Blade Thickness: .125″
- Deal with Thickness: .52″
- Tang: Full
- Blade Metal: MagnaCut
- Weight: 2.93oz
- Nation of Origin: USA
Right here is the great things:
Level: The upswept point provides the gap from the purpose to the sting a pleasant stomach. This makes it a great skinning blade, notably across the neck and shoulders of a whitetail.
Grind: All Bark River knives are convex grinds. That is one purpose I’ve so a lot of them – the grind simply flat-out works for me. The grind is well sharpened and maintained, and this turns into a giant promoting level within the backcountry.
Full tang: This implies the blade metal runs all through the deal with. It’s the strongest possibility for a blade/deal with mixture. It’s the solely possibility, IMHO, for a knife which may find yourself in a survival scenario.
Metal: I’m a hardline A2 and CPM 3V consumer. My pet consumer knife (proper now, anyway) is my BR UP Bravo in A2. It has gotten used exhausting since I acquired the UP Bravo and UP Gunny three years again, and I’ve no complaints in anyway. I even have knives in quite a lot of different steels that work very nicely for me.
My pet knife earlier than I acquired the UPs was a customized Ambush Tundra in CPM 3V that Pete Winkler re-handled for me. It was used to course of a number of deer and elk, went on a number of canoe journeys and carried out splendidly at any process.
I’m not one who has to have the newest super steel in a knife. That mentioned, I’m actually liking the MagnaCut metal within the Water Moccasin blade. It holds an edge properly and appears virtually stainless. I intentionally smeared and left some mustard on the blade to check the stain resistance, and the metal cleaned up nicely.
Deal with: Accessible in quite a lot of supplies, the deal with is .52-inches thick. My Water Moccasin is in inexperienced micarta. For a working knife, micarta can’t be beat.
Then there’s this ( Ticky nitpicking so you understand I’m not writing advert copy!):
Deal with: The deal with is .52-inches thick, which is just too slender for my glove-size massive palms. It may simply be thickened to about .8 inches, and that may make this extra of a consumer knife for me. The deal with suits my spouse’s hand properly. Since she might be utilizing it greater than me, it’s a great match.
Blade thickness: The blade must be thinner. The blade design is fantastic for paring knife use, nevertheless it doesn’t must be as thick for peculiar use. This knife just isn’t one I’d selected for gutting a deer or elk, nevertheless it may definitely work nicely as a small sport knife.
So what’s the decision?
Any knife is healthier than nothing, and any knife might find yourself as a survival knife. I wouldn’t need a Water Moccasin as my solely knife in a survival scenario however there’s a place for it in my searching and fishing gear. It will make an ideal small sport knife, and can be extremely helpful round camp.
With its high quality elements and design, the Water Moccasin is a keeper – even when it by no means makes it out of the kitchen!
Get a Water Moccasin here.
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