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So say you’re stuck in the woods, the temperature’s dropping fast and you need shelter and fire, quickly. There are trees all around but you have neither saw nor axe. All you have is your knife. It’s not even a big Rambo-inspired, serrated-edge survival sword with a picatinny rail, but a twelve-dollar plastic-handled mora with a little four-inch blade. Hey, no problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_ZZj-5A9u0//

I admit, I’m a knife junkie just like the rest of you. Customs, semi-customs, high-end production models, even plain-jane knives speak to us with their seductive blend of form and function and we respond by purchasing them without regard to reason or budget.

But in terms of absolute bang-for-buck, is there anything out there to compare to the lowly mora? These simple, inexpensive wonders aren’t made of the latest super steel, they aren’t a quarter-inch thick and there’s nary a tactical, special ops-inspired doodad on them anywhere. They just work when you need them to. If you shop around you can find them for about the same price as a super-sized extra-value meal. And if you want to make your own, you can buy blade blanks for about the same money as your kid’s happy-get-fatty meal.

If there’s a knife out there with a better price-to-performance ratio than that, I’d like to know what it is.