by David E. Petzal

If you’d really like to depress yourself some evening, watch “Doomsday Preppers” on the National Geographic Channel. The show details the plans of normal, well adjusted people to cope with the aftermath of fiscal collapse, nuclear holocaust, the eruption of Yellowstone, solar flares, and so on.

The New York Times noted with outrage that many of these people were accumulating guns and ammunition in order to defend their 1,500 pounds of MREs and dried brown rice, but stockpiling guns is fine with me. My concern is that most of them seem pretty inexpert with guns. One prepper was counting on a Ruger Number One single-shot which, despite its many splendid qualities, is not what you’d pick to blast the mob at your door. Another managed to shoot off several fingers during a practice session. Yet a third, a resident of the Oligarchy of Bloomberg, took lessons in knife fighting because he was unable to get a gun, ignoring the fact that everyone in the Oligarchy of Bloomberg who wants a gun has one, or several, and when the pistol-waving mob comes to this fellow’s apartment I don’t think that he and his knife will last long.

By David E. Petzal

I’ll spare you the usual litany of reasons why the world as we know it is coming unglued. Needless to say, you should be shopping for the occasion, and if you’re looking for a good fixed-blade knife, here are two that are so similar in purpose and construction that I decided to review them together.

The Ranger Puuko is made in Finland, where it was designed as a survival knife by a Finnish officer named J.P. Peltonen. The original Ranger has a 6-inch blade, but people noticed that if you lopped an inch off that, it would make a dandy hunting knife. And so the Ranger Puuko you see here has a 5-inch drop-point blade made of forged tool steel hardened to Rc 58 and coated with Teflon, a 5-inch handle of hardened rubber, and a totally cool leather sheath with a safety liner and an internal rubber keeper that snaps down on the handle and holds it firmly in place.

It’s not a pretty knife, or a finely finished one. It’s meant to be used very hard. The blade is thick and strong, sharpens very easily to a blood-curdling edge, and holds that edge reasonably well. The price for the either the 5-inch-blade Ranger or the 6-inch is $169.50 from kellamknives.com.

The second knife is a brand new one from Cold Steel, and can best be described as a Ka-Bar on steroids (pictured below). It’s called the Leatherneck SF (for “Semper Fi”) and follows the general lines of the Ka-Bar, but with improvements. The 6 ¾-inch blade is made of a steel called SK-5, which is the Japanese equivalent of American 1080, a high-carbon tool steel. It’s hardened to Rc57-58 and came to me with an appallingly sharp edge and kept it extremely well. As with the Ranger, this blade will rust, and so it, too, is coated.

By David E. Petzal

I can’t tell you who makes the most accurate rifles, or which big-game bullet is the best or whose scope is the brightest, but I can stand here on my two flat feet which did not keep me from getting an Infantry MOS and tell you that DiamondBlade knives will keep a sharp edge longer than anything else you can buy. DiamondBlades have been around for 5 years more or less; I’ve used them a ton and talked with others who have, and there is no doubt about it. Any man who would deny this would teach his grandmother to suck eggs.

Now and then, DiamondBlade makes a special model; last year I saw one produced exclusively for the Powder Horn in Bozeman, MT. This year, there’s a new one made for McMillan, and it is a thing of rare beauty in addition to all its other virtues. It’s a drop-point with a 4” blade, a slender, slightly curved blue-black micarta handle, mosaic handle pins, and a black Kydex-lined sheath. It’s the only DiamondBlade model with a hilt (made of 440C steel).

By David E. Petzal

by David E. Petzal

It occurred to me that I’ve given short shrift to some of the best hunting/outdoor knives in the world—those from Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Lappland. In terms of quality, usefulness, and good looks, they have very little competition. There are several sources in the United States, but the two that I use and recommend are Ragweed Forge way the hell off in western New York State, and Kellam Knives Company in Lantana, Florida. Both carry Scandinavian knives, but what they offer is quite different, and the two lines don’t cross over.

Ragweed Forge deals in no fewer than 11 lines of handmade knives, most very inexpensive (you have to look hard to find one over $100). If I may suggest, look hardest at the Norwegian Helle knives and the Swedish Moras. The original wood-handled Mora is a world-class working knife that costs around $35, and there are newer models that sell for less.