Hunting knives

I have three rapala filleting knives that I use for filleting as well as cutting up deer. They have flexible blades and are pretty soft steel. My go-to hunting knife is a 35 year old Normark - use that for small game, birds, gutting and skinning deer. It's hard steel - takes a while to get an edge on it. A few years ago, I grabbed a couple of $2.97 6" filleting knives from a bin at the checkout at Vaugh BassPro for use in the kitchen. Not as flexible as the rapalas, but really good knives at a giveaway price. I sharpen the filleting knives with a pull-through plastic sharpener which has a couple of steel (carbide???) blades inside. The normark I sharpen on an oil stone.

I've given several nephews hunting knives. Buck fixed blades. These are good knives but the blades are brittle and can break. There's a couple of them been sent back under Buck's lifetime warranty.

I use the Havalon Piranta, the thing is razor sharp I have yet to use anything better. Its extremely light weight and small, it also uses replacement blades so you don't need to sharpen it. I have used standard hunting knives before but were all replaced by the Havalon.

-Rob

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Originally Posted by Waftrudnir

First, the entire steel discussion shows how much the average person knows about knifes: not all that much!
No manufacturer will tell you how they harden and temper. Therefore, you cannot really compare the "ingredients" of the steel and simply make any useful conclusion.

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This is true. A lot of the fuss about steels goes on just because people can buy knives made from the latest super steels, so they start to insist on those steels although they never actually use their knives for much other than taking pictures of the shiny blade to share online. Brand A gets beat up for offering a knife in 154CM for $125 when Brand B offers one in S30V for the same price, and nobody stops to ask if Brand A's is actually the better design.

But at the same time, doesn't matter how well you heat treat your 4116/440C/420HC blade, it won't hold a candle to a competently made D2 blade. Those are simply low grade steels. So although the Grohmann is a great design and is the first knife I reach for, at the same time I wish they'd start using a mid-range steel -- something that offers better edge holding but is still easy to sharpen.