- Joined
- Dec 11, 2020
- Messages
- 155
Hello folks,
So I just got my DF Survivalist, and figured I would do a brief review of the knife, as it comes out of the box.Tomorrow I'll be headed off into crown land to test this sucker in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, and will update this thread then. I took this knife to the foothills for a short time today, and the knife did just fine.
(?) will denote something I will want to test more before I make a definitive statement about it. Ideally, once this review is "done" there will be no more (?)s and only (!) which will denote a conclusion I've made. (?) and (!) will be pretty much reserved for the negatives section. Something positive that I like right out of the box is much less likely to be changed to a negative with use than something I dislike out of the box being changed to a positive.
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS:
The knife is phenomenally balanced, its not too forward heavy like a dedicated chopper, and not enough rear weight like you'd expect with a more carving-centric knife. A true dedicated "do it all" survival knife, the balance is exactly where I want it for a knife with this intended design.
The weight is also great, as an overall feature. It's thick, but light for the size, probably due to the shimmed out handles and the full-flat grind. Speaking of FFG, it's not something I'd want on a lot survival knives, but with this amount of thickness and this steel, it probably doesn't matter one freaking bit if it's a sabre or FFG. Sabre would probably be overkill and ruin the weight anyways. I checked the thickness of the metal flat that runs under the mounted handles, and it's about as thick as a paring knife. That is to say, it's quite thin. I was worried about that and if the transition between it and the handle proper were radiused rather than 90 degrees for structural integrity, but after examining it, I'm not worried at all. It is very much overbuilt.
The blade came super sharp right out of the box, and next to expensive ($300+) hand forged and sharpened Japanese kitchen knives, it's the sharpest knife I've gotten out of the box. Surprisingly, a Kabar Jarosz Choppa came close (?). The tip is ungodly pointy. I have never in my life encountered a knife with a tip like this. Some preliminary testing of drilling into an old piece of wood I have lying around showed it could drill like a, well, drill. Impressive.
UPDATE: I took it out today and it cut quite well. I used it to cut down a small pine tree using the method of bending the tree, biting in and pushing, and then relaxing the tree. It did well and cut it down. It is NOT as good a chopper as my Condor Hudsons Bay, but it does seem to handle the finer work better. It's also much lighter.
The sheath is just fine, although it does push against the ranger band over the handle. This is to be expected. I wish these sheathes didn't dull the knives within them. There is some debate as to if the sheath's design can mitigate that, but it is indisputable that the material it is made out of will dull the knife. Way she goes, not that bad to me honestly. I just won't pull it out of the sheath except for when I'm going to use it.
Overall, I am very impressed with this knife. A chunk of 52100 of this size and forged should not be as cheap as it is. I am tempted to buy another to cut off the top part of the cross guard, to see what it is like without that, but I do not want to do that with my knife. Part of the appeal is the cross guard and the very serious make of a knife design that I love, but consider a little goofy, in a fun way. This thing makes me think of so many fun, silly tropes in movies and video games and it just rubs me the right way.
The downsides (so far):
The handle, while very comfy in design, is super abrasive (!). Now, it will NEVER slip out of your hands while you're using it, but it might leave them in shreds. Maybe it's just my hands have gotten softer during COVID (whose haven't?) but it feels like it's exfoliating my hands when I use it. I had like chunks of my dead skin getting rubbed off. Some live stuff too, which hurt. I resolved this by putting a ranger band over the handle, so it's soft and rubbery now. Super nice. Costs about $0 but $15 in frustration while trying to scoot the tube over the handle. If you were using gloves this would never be an issues, assuming it didn't shred your gloves.
UPDATE: The handle was very, very cold today and it was only -5 to -10 celsius. The rubber helped, but gloves were still a requirement. I figure this is why the SRK and Falknievens have the FRN handles. Oh well, don't think I'll be using this in the dead of winter without gloves.
The coating (!)may or may not suck, depending on your opinion is not bad. I actually like it so far. Despite the coating, I was able to get sparks off a ferro rod with this knife, and not an insignificant amount either. I probably wouldn't be able to get a difficult fire started with this knife, but with cotton balls or some other really good tinder (probably even stuff I can find in nature) I think this knife can be a decent fire starting kinda tool. I will test and see tomorrow. God only knows how it would scrape without the coating, it feels very sharp along the spine.
UPDATE: I used the spine of the knife to scrape some bark and needles off a very small pine tree I cut down with the knife. The knife's spine did well, given that it's coated. I would take this knife's spine and coating over an uncoated knife with a more rounded factory spine any day of the week. I may still strip it to make it better with a ferro rod, but that remains to be seen.
The unsharpened swedge (?) may or may not be a bad thing either. I think if it were sharpened, just a little, it would make a monster firesteel scraper. However, it would then destroy any baton. I intend to baton wood tomorrow and see how it fares. If the wood gets jacked up without a sharpened swedge, then I'd say sharpening it would be excessively destructive and not worth it. Until I test it I'm not willing to make definitively positive or negative comments about certain physical characteristics. Time and experience will tell.
UPDATE: I did not get a chance to thoroughly test this knife today to include batonning. I did some work, but a snowstorm was moving in and I had to get outta there. My '06 Altima does not do well in a massive blizzard on backroads. Honestly, a knife isn't even that necessary where I am right now because so many of the poplars and birch trees effectively "die" in the winter you can just snap their branches off and use a bic to burn them lol. Summer is a different story. It did fine in cutting down a small tree and some weird outgrowths. It is "okay" as a chopper, pretty good for it's size, but nowhere near a dedicated tool. To me, the lessons from yesterday and today have begun to inform me that this knife is an exercise in compromise, it excels at nothing, but fails at nothing either. That is certainly desirable for a survival knife. Whereas I've always felt my BK 16 was a meditation in bushcraft alone, or the BK 2 is on brute strength, this knife forgoes specializing and offers a package of weight, durability, versatile utility, price, and cool factor I'm not sure you can get in many other knives, let alone Cold Steels. It also seems invincible to me, or as close to it as you can in a knife this size that isn't L6, S7, or 3V. 52100 has impressed me greatly so far, I did hit some dirt with it but it's fine. I very much like this thing so far.
I still intend on bashing this knife real good out there, but today's weather as well as a personal obligation I forgot about limited my time. I will see about posting pictures. I will continue to update this thread over time. I, as a consumer, enjoy having references about products like this for when I decide to purchase them. Hopefully this is useful to someone one day.
So I just got my DF Survivalist, and figured I would do a brief review of the knife, as it comes out of the box.
(?) will denote something I will want to test more before I make a definitive statement about it. Ideally, once this review is "done" there will be no more (?)s and only (!) which will denote a conclusion I've made. (?) and (!) will be pretty much reserved for the negatives section. Something positive that I like right out of the box is much less likely to be changed to a negative with use than something I dislike out of the box being changed to a positive.
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS:
The knife is phenomenally balanced, its not too forward heavy like a dedicated chopper, and not enough rear weight like you'd expect with a more carving-centric knife. A true dedicated "do it all" survival knife, the balance is exactly where I want it for a knife with this intended design.
The weight is also great, as an overall feature. It's thick, but light for the size, probably due to the shimmed out handles and the full-flat grind. Speaking of FFG, it's not something I'd want on a lot survival knives, but with this amount of thickness and this steel, it probably doesn't matter one freaking bit if it's a sabre or FFG. Sabre would probably be overkill and ruin the weight anyways. I checked the thickness of the metal flat that runs under the mounted handles, and it's about as thick as a paring knife. That is to say, it's quite thin. I was worried about that and if the transition between it and the handle proper were radiused rather than 90 degrees for structural integrity, but after examining it, I'm not worried at all. It is very much overbuilt.
The blade came super sharp right out of the box, and next to expensive ($300+) hand forged and sharpened Japanese kitchen knives, it's the sharpest knife I've gotten out of the box. Surprisingly, a Kabar Jarosz Choppa came close (?). The tip is ungodly pointy. I have never in my life encountered a knife with a tip like this. Some preliminary testing of drilling into an old piece of wood I have lying around showed it could drill like a, well, drill. Impressive.
UPDATE: I took it out today and it cut quite well. I used it to cut down a small pine tree using the method of bending the tree, biting in and pushing, and then relaxing the tree. It did well and cut it down. It is NOT as good a chopper as my Condor Hudsons Bay, but it does seem to handle the finer work better. It's also much lighter.
The sheath is just fine, although it does push against the ranger band over the handle. This is to be expected. I wish these sheathes didn't dull the knives within them. There is some debate as to if the sheath's design can mitigate that, but it is indisputable that the material it is made out of will dull the knife. Way she goes, not that bad to me honestly. I just won't pull it out of the sheath except for when I'm going to use it.
Overall, I am very impressed with this knife. A chunk of 52100 of this size and forged should not be as cheap as it is. I am tempted to buy another to cut off the top part of the cross guard, to see what it is like without that, but I do not want to do that with my knife. Part of the appeal is the cross guard and the very serious make of a knife design that I love, but consider a little goofy, in a fun way. This thing makes me think of so many fun, silly tropes in movies and video games and it just rubs me the right way.
The downsides (so far):
The handle, while very comfy in design, is super abrasive (!). Now, it will NEVER slip out of your hands while you're using it, but it might leave them in shreds. Maybe it's just my hands have gotten softer during COVID (whose haven't?) but it feels like it's exfoliating my hands when I use it. I had like chunks of my dead skin getting rubbed off. Some live stuff too, which hurt. I resolved this by putting a ranger band over the handle, so it's soft and rubbery now. Super nice. Costs about $0 but $15 in frustration while trying to scoot the tube over the handle. If you were using gloves this would never be an issues, assuming it didn't shred your gloves.
UPDATE: The handle was very, very cold today and it was only -5 to -10 celsius. The rubber helped, but gloves were still a requirement. I figure this is why the SRK and Falknievens have the FRN handles. Oh well, don't think I'll be using this in the dead of winter without gloves.
The coating (!)
UPDATE: I used the spine of the knife to scrape some bark and needles off a very small pine tree I cut down with the knife. The knife's spine did well, given that it's coated. I would take this knife's spine and coating over an uncoated knife with a more rounded factory spine any day of the week. I may still strip it to make it better with a ferro rod, but that remains to be seen.
The unsharpened swedge (?) may or may not be a bad thing either. I think if it were sharpened, just a little, it would make a monster firesteel scraper. However, it would then destroy any baton. I intend to baton wood tomorrow and see how it fares. If the wood gets jacked up without a sharpened swedge, then I'd say sharpening it would be excessively destructive and not worth it. Until I test it I'm not willing to make definitively positive or negative comments about certain physical characteristics. Time and experience will tell.
UPDATE: I did not get a chance to thoroughly test this knife today to include batonning. I did some work, but a snowstorm was moving in and I had to get outta there. My '06 Altima does not do well in a massive blizzard on backroads. Honestly, a knife isn't even that necessary where I am right now because so many of the poplars and birch trees effectively "die" in the winter you can just snap their branches off and use a bic to burn them lol. Summer is a different story. It did fine in cutting down a small tree and some weird outgrowths. It is "okay" as a chopper, pretty good for it's size, but nowhere near a dedicated tool. To me, the lessons from yesterday and today have begun to inform me that this knife is an exercise in compromise, it excels at nothing, but fails at nothing either. That is certainly desirable for a survival knife. Whereas I've always felt my BK 16 was a meditation in bushcraft alone, or the BK 2 is on brute strength, this knife forgoes specializing and offers a package of weight, durability, versatile utility, price, and cool factor I'm not sure you can get in many other knives, let alone Cold Steels. It also seems invincible to me, or as close to it as you can in a knife this size that isn't L6, S7, or 3V. 52100 has impressed me greatly so far, I did hit some dirt with it but it's fine. I very much like this thing so far.
I still intend on bashing this knife real good out there, but today's weather as well as a personal obligation I forgot about limited my time. I will see about posting pictures. I will continue to update this thread over time. I, as a consumer, enjoy having references about products like this for when I decide to purchase them. Hopefully this is useful to someone one day.
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