8 tips, photos of the best knives

/Accessories and decor/Cookware and cutlery/

Choos­ing a kitchen knife for pro­fes­sion­al chefs is a whole sci­ence with its own ter­mi­nol­o­gy, secrets and rules — after all, for them the knife is almost an exten­sion of the hand. It is not nec­es­sary for us, the towns­folk, to under­stand all the intri­ca­cies of this sci­ence and have a com­plete set of tools, but every­one can learn to dis­tin­guish good kitchen knives from bad ones and cor­rect­ly com­pose their “chef’s three”.

Handle selection

Today, han­dles are made of var­i­ous mate­ri­als and var­i­ous shapes. Here again you need to lis­ten to your “inner voice”. It should be tak­en into account that from plas­tic, or from tex­to­lite, they have a lot of shades and are quite durable. Again, a han­dle made of such mate­r­i­al will be eas­i­er to wash and not wor­ry about its con­di­tion.

Vari­eties of knives with dif­fer­ent types of han­dles.

The han­dles them­selves are of three types:

1. The mount­ed type is eas­i­er to man­u­fac­ture and affects the weight of the entire knife.
2. Con­sign­ment note, the prin­ci­ple is clear from the name itself, the han­dle is made of two parts. As a result, they are mount­ed on the shank on both sides with riv­ets.
3. The all-met­al type is the most expen­sive to man­u­fac­ture, and the blade is of con­sid­er­able weight.

When choos­ing a han­dle mate­r­i­al made of wood, horn or ani­mal bone, please note that they require the most care­ful care. Oth­er­wise, they can peel off, rub off, exfo­li­ate, etc. And, of course, they do not like to be hit: if you drop it, it will chip (which is rather unpleas­ant).

Foldable or fixed

This ques­tion will def­i­nite­ly arise before you when buy­ing a prod­uct. Again, the future use of the knife plays an impor­tant role. If your choice fell on a fold­ing knife. Then it must nec­es­sar­i­ly cor­re­spond to the 4 unchanged char­ac­ter­is­tics that need to be checked upon pur­chase:

• open the fold­ing blade, and in the open state, try to sway it in dif­fer­ent direc­tions, “back­lash” is unac­cept­able in any direc­tion;
• you need to care­ful­ly check the lock mech­a­nism itself, how it works and how well the blade holds;
• is it con­ve­nient to open / close the knife, ide­al­ly it can be eas­i­ly opened with one hand;
• hav­ing opened the blade, you need to check the skew of the blade, in the plane rel­a­tive to the han­dle.

If the choice is made in favor of fish­ing or hik­ing, then such a knife may well suit the char­ac­ter­is­tics. They can clean fish, butch­er a small bird or ani­mal. It does not take up much space, and, as a rule, comes with a case.

It is worth pay­ing atten­tion to the reli­a­bil­i­ty of the cov­er itself, it must be closed secure­ly, oth­er­wise the loss of your “fight­er” can­not be avoid­ed.

Fold­ing knife NT‑1 steel D2 (mr.Blade).

Please note that we fold, oper­a­tions such as dig­ging or cut­ting are not pos­si­ble: the han­dle will become clogged with dirt, and its light weight will not allow cut­ting small branch­es. For skin­ning larg­er car­cass­es, you will need a knife that is already large in size and the fold­ing ver­sion may not be suit­able for such tests.

In this case, it is bet­ter to pur­chase a hunt­ing blade mod­el. Any uni­ver­sal option. Such a blade is intend­ed to be used both as a cut­ter, and as a hatch­et, and as a hack­saw, dig­ging a small hole with the help of such a knife is not dif­fi­cult. It’s up to you to decide here.

Size selection

Some men say that size does­n’t mat­ter. In this case, it’s quite the oppo­site. Choos­ing a knife with the opti­mal size of both the blade and the han­dle is a rather dif­fi­cult task.

If you have a large beau­ti­ful and mul­ti­func­tion­al cleaver in the kitchen. That is not very con­ve­nient to take it with you. Weight and size play a big role. The blade should not weigh much, and its size should have opti­mal dimen­sions.

Many users have already expe­ri­enced this prob­lem, and almost every­one agrees that the opti­mal blade size fluc­tu­ates around 8–9 cm. And in this case, it doesn’t mat­ter if it’s a fold­ing knife or an all-met­al one. So, when choos­ing a pur­chase, take a clos­er look at this para­me­ter.

What to consider when buying a knife

Any knife is not only a pierc­ing and cut­ting tool. Many sold mod­els (first of all, accord­ing to the length of the blade) can be rec­og­nized as melee weapons. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, not all fish­er­men and hunters under­stand this when they choose the spec­i­men they like. It is not in vain that the author rec­om­mends shop­ping only at spe­cial­ized points of sale. And for this rea­son also.

How to choose the right ther­mal under­wear for fish­ing and hunt­ing — prac­ti­cal advice

To rec­og­nize a knife as a weapon, an expert opin­ion is required. This is clear. Some gov­ern­ment offi­cials, hav­ing seen an excel­lent (orig­i­nal, expen­sive, and so on) mod­el from a fish­er­man or hunter, tak­ing advan­tage of the fact that it is unlike­ly that any­one in nature will waste time and nerves prov­ing the legal­i­ty of wear­ing it, they sim­ply take it away. Where, of course — your­self. And the own­er waves his hand at this, since it is not yet known how every­thing will turn out if you start chal­leng­ing the legal­i­ty of such actions.

There­fore — when buy­ing a knife for fish­ing or hunt­ing, you need to ask the man­ag­er for a copy of the expert opin­ion on this mod­el, more­over, also cer­ti­fied by the seal of the store. He has to give it up. And this doc­u­ment to have with you when going out into nature. Then there will def­i­nite­ly be no prob­lems with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the law regard­ing the wear­ing of a knife. Well, it is bet­ter to keep var­i­ous “home-made prod­ucts” (and there are many such among hunters and fish­er­men) away from pry­ing eyes. Oth­er­wise, there will be so many ques­tions that ade­quate answers may not be found.

In prin­ci­ple, the main cri­te­ria for choos­ing a good knife for hunt­ing or fish­ing are indi­cat­ed. But it is unlike­ly that the arti­cle can be con­sid­ered com­plete with­out giv­ing a few exam­ples. Social media users quite often men­tion the fol­low­ing knives, which in prac­tice have proven their ver­sa­til­i­ty and ease of use in any con­di­tions.

Companion black

Prod­uct (Swe­den). Dis­tinc­tive fea­tures: a strong and sharp blade, high-qual­i­ty fix­a­tion in the sheath (the col­or of which is flu­o­res­cent) and a han­dle made of rub­ber plas­tic. She is one of the main “chips” of the knife, as it is con­ve­nient to use it in any con­di­tions, despite the sea­son and the vagaries of the weath­er. It will nev­er slip out of the palm of a hunter or fish­er­man, no mat­ter what kind of work they do.

With such a knife, you can do a lot — clean the fish, butch­er the car­cass, cut bread and so on. Anoth­er sig­nif­i­cant plus of the tool should be not­ed — the length of the blade. It equals 10.5 cm. What does this mean, besides ease of use? Such a knife is not a melee weapon! This is what many hunters and fish­er­men for­get about, choos­ing a mod­el accord­ing to the prin­ci­ple “more is bet­ter”.

Price — from 830 rubles.

Opinel (No. 08)

Accord­ing to users, this French fold­ing knife is one of the most con­ve­nient.

Belongs to the class of fil­lets. Light weight, well bal­anced, sharply sharp­ened blade that does not need addi­tion­al fine-tun­ing — an excel­lent choice for a fish­er­man or hunter. The length of the blade is 8 cm, there­fore, the own­er will not have prob­lems with the law (relat­ed to reg­is­tra­tion) after acquir­ing such a knife.

The price is 1,445 rubles.

Consequences of application

Using a knife against anoth­er per­son with­out an appro­pri­ate good rea­son is pun­ish­able by law.
Some peo­ple, in an effort to pro­tect their lives, dis­re­gard the require­ments of the law by acquir­ing edged weapons with­out a per­mit. As a rule, such pur­chas­es are made on the black mar­ket. In this case, the detec­tion of weapons by a law enforce­ment offi­cer may entail the fol­low­ing con­se­quences:

1. If the knife was dis­cov­ered dur­ing its trans­porta­tion, then it is sub­ject to con­fis­ca­tion with a cor­re­spond­ing fine.
2. In case of ille­gal use of weapons in self-defense, the appro­pri­ate­ness of its use, the degree of dan­ger, etc. are assessed. As a result, the use of weapons can be rec­og­nized as an aggra­vat­ing cir­cum­stance in court.

Even if the per­son who used the knife in self-defense has the appro­pri­ate per­mis­sion, this does not relieve him of respon­si­bil­i­ty. The fact is that, accord­ing to the law, self-defense mea­sures must cor­re­spond to the lev­el of dan­ger at which they were involved.

If noth­ing threat­ened the health and life of the “vic­tim”, and the attack­er was seri­ous­ly injured, then it is pos­si­ble to con­sid­er the case from a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent side, when the degree of bod­i­ly injury is assessed. In this case, the pro­ceed­ings may have an unpre­dictable out­come, up to the crim­i­nal lia­bil­i­ty of the defend­er.

Overview of the most popular models

Con­sid­er the most pop­u­lar and reli­able knives for self-defense.

BENCHMADE 8600BK BEDLAM

The scim­i­tar-style blade with an upturned tip and ser­rat­ed thumb rest has a black mat­te fin­ish and does not cast glare in clear weath­er
This mod­el is char­ac­ter­ized by auto­mat­ic open­ing, and there­fore allows you to quick­ly pre­pare for self-defense. It is enough just to draw a knife — and he will be com­plete­ly ready for bat­tle. The mere appear­ance of such a weapon can desta­bi­lize the ene­my. Nat­u­ral­ly, car­ry­ing such a knife requires per­mis­sion, since the length of its blade is 15.4 cm. The only draw­back of the mod­el is its price, which is about 16 thou­sand rubles.

KERSHAW CRYO

A very durable knife, the blade of which is made of high-qual­i­ty steel with a tita­ni­um coat­ing. Great for begin­ners. The blade is 3 inch­es long, mak­ing it tru­ly ver­sa­tile. The aver­age cost of a knife is about 2 thou­sand rubles.