Southey & JonathanD's Epic Knife Swap

[JonathanD]

I hope that Hellion works better than it looks as I think you was robbed... My Deval is nice & keeps getting better. Your one there looked nicer than mine, so I would hope that Rambo 'Special' forces one can cut train axels in two, pry up manhole hole covers & be run over by tanks.

Still, if it makles you both happy then it's a good thing.

I don't think you can fairly compare the Deval bushy to the Hellion on a bushcraft forum as they are both very different knives. However, I do hope that I can review the Hellion fairly. We are also looking at a mass machine made piece compared to a high end, hand made custom knife. I'm obviously going to be biased toward the Deval as it is my design. But after a few hours of handling the Hellion, my initial opinion is twisting and turning like a big twisty turny thing. Need to get out and do stuff with it.

 

[Retired Member southey]

See what I meant in my pm ages ago regarding having problems writing my thought on the down, which lead to having to do a video, it is a hard knife to hate, even though you think you should, I almost feel that you would need to under go a course in how to use it to its fullest, it is in no way a whittler, but as you all know my views that SURVIVAL is just a basic set of skills to keep you alive in any given situation be it a nick to the finger to fending of hords of aggressors while dog legging your way to the border, it all comes under the umbrella of Bushcraft, but this is a knife swap not a knife comparison, I am sure that Jon will be able to figure THE HELLION out( once past the "Em!!! CHECK THIS OUT!!!!" moment)

 

[Neumo]

I guess it will depend what it feels like when you start hitting big bits of wood with it. Most of the comments I have seen on these big military/survival knives have not been good, like the Lofty Wiseman one & the like. I have not tried too many so dont really know but my view is that that if you want a big chopper then go for a kukri or a parang. I will be interested to hear what you think of it when you have given it a good workout. What I was getting at was that a Deval is not a cheap knife, so I would expect a very good one in return. And let's face it, that Hellion is not a looker...

 

[Robbi]

@ Neumo...they have just swapped knives to review them mate, not as a permenant swap each one will be going back to it's respective owner after the review.

 

[Retired Member southey]

@ Neumo...they have just swapped knives to review them mate, not as a permenant swap each one will be going back to it's respective owner after the review.

Dam right they will! Im not going to be seen off with some bushy knife over the ULTIMATE BLADE OF CRABTHAR!

 

[Neumo]

Neumo...they have just swapped knives to review them mate, not as a permenant swap each one will be going back to it's respective owner after the review

Fair enough, I missed that. In which case play on...

 

[wizard]

Enter a Ka-Bar into the works. It is a machine made knife of mass, mass production and fits somewhere between a Hellion and a Deval perhaps. I am sure every knife has a place somewhere (except maybe a Tom Brown Tracker thingy) and will do some task better than knife X or Y. I think reality is in one's own mind, so if Myke Hawke's knife fits into your life, by all means own one and be content.
I sure have invested time and money into items before and then changed my mind about them one way or another. Just ask my ex-wives, who were in then they were out Stuff wears out and all that. Cheers!

 

[vizsla]

I mate of mime on a recent trip turned up with a gerber machete but with a straight blade and not too long(not that im comparing southeys nife to a machete) my first thougjts were wot the hell are you planning on using that for,as it goes we were constructing a large natural shelter and the blade turned out to be pretty dam good ir had enough weight to chop branches straight in half it could split small branches like an axe and cut well aswell, my point being dont judge a blad till youv tried it,all blades have a purpose it just a case of finding were they excel most. The helion may well be capable of doing the job of a knife axe and saw all in one.imho
cheers ash

 

[billybob0987]

i suspect the hellion might be one of those things you really dont want to like, but end up loving, like something that on paper should be terrible but makes you feel good all the same, kinda like your first car if its a terrible beater, it looks bad, smells bad, runs bad, but some how always manages to get you and your mates to random locations for all kinds of hijinks, if that makes sense

plus, although i dont like the design of it much, cause i tend to prefer simpler blade designs, it looks like the kind of thing that with a fair helping of imagination could prove very multipurpose, one thing i did wonder is what the section of spine infront of the saw teeth is like, cause from the pic it looks like it could be used as a pretty effective draw knife if that bits not sharpened

 

[3bears]

feck, you can tell i've been at the nightshifts on this damn ship....i read 'knife swap' as 'wife swap' lol

 

[JonathanD]

feck, you can tell i've been at the nightshifts on this damn ship....i read 'knife swap' as 'wife swap' lol

Fat chance, I would have to pay someone to take mine.

 

[EmmaD]

He has just loaded his bag and headed to the woods with more knives than the entire Swiss army. Either we will all be subjected to far too many pictures later, or I'll be picking him up from hospital after trying to find his digits in the undergrowth. I honesly cannot think which scenario could be the worse. Depends which digits I suppose.

 

[JonathanD]

Well I hate being predictable, but this is a long one....

It takes an enormous amount of effort to go up to the woods, even though it is 5mins away, you enjoy it and you know it fills your soul. What is that all about? At home, I think, you have distractions, comfort, fridges full of food and bevs, BcUK and other things to do.

But once you are there, you don't care, because you are there.

And so I took the Hellion, the Bayley and my own knife, not to compare, but to create a focal point of known function and to me, knife perfection.

The first thing I was confronted with in the woods was a mass of bramble scrub. Likening it to dry scrub forest, desert scrub, mangrove complex or dense secondary rainforest, I went to chop through it with the Hellion...

OUCH!! Now brambles are very resilient and they spring back when you chop them, so do other things like rose. The Hellion, although big bladed like a parang or golok, just made them bounce back like a spring, without actually cutting them straight off. I was surprised by this, as my own knife was better at doing the job,(despite being a third the blade size) on this fine stuff when gripped at the pommel end, it cut first time, cleanly...

Now I know my knife back to front, and every part of it was designed around my hand and needs. The Hellion wasn't, so in effect I really had no idea how to use it. Mykel Hawke designed it. His hands and experience and needs are different to mine. So I started again from scratch.

 

[JonathanD]

The Hellion is great to handle, and the handle sems to be quite well thought out. You have numerous positions for performing different functions...

You have the standard grip, which obviously performs most tasks needed by a big knife...

You have the secondary grip which is great for more powerful cuts, swinging and chopping...

You can then grip the butt for better swinging and whipping action, but much less control and force...

A good array of grips, and they all work comfortably without producing heat spots or blisters. But overall, the balance on the knife points towards a combat knife rather than a pure wilderness one. Chopping is not its forte by any means. The skull crusher (advertised as something really daft in the sales blurb), points to this, as it useless for anything else...

But back to the balance. It is balanced as a fighting knife, as it is very light, controllable and whippy. The hammer, although useless as that, would be very useful if overwhelmed in a CQB situation. The tanto styled blade and top sharpened edge would also back that up. But then this is labelled as a SURVIVAL knife, and in certain situations, you have to fight to survive. Given Myke Hawkes military background, this should not be a revelation.

Then you have the odd guards on the knife, which to me, looked impractical, uncomfortable and not in keeping with the rest of the design. But on testing, it did allow me to choke up closer to the blade for fine work. As I discovered later though, you are limited in what fine work it will accomplish...

My forefinger rested quite comfortably on the bottom guard due to its width...

And so as the flaming noisy rooks and crows started to drive into the heart of the woodland (no doubt due to me swing a big chopper like a loon and scaring them), and the sun started sinking, I had to get a move on and decided to fell a wrist thick tree or sapling for further testing.

As I climbed to higher ground to find a good tree that wouldn't impact the area with its absence, I found another hawk had been here before...

 

[JonathanD]

Now chopping stuff. Chopping BIG stuff! Esssential in a survival knife for shelter making, and trap making too when it comes to that. This really took some work, and I wasn't happy. The Hellion just was rubbish.

But then, after tiring myself out, I chose to try finess rather than brute chopping force, and had an epiphany. It can actually do the job. Not amazingly well like my parang, but quite well, and more than adequately if you got the chop and swing right. The old SBS motto came to mind ' Not by strength, by guile'. I much prefferred that motto to the new one.

I found that with the design of this knife, when chopping, you had to use a drawing motion, and a slicing motion, whilst hitting, the 'sweet spot'. Shown here....

In short you have to pull your swing as you hit, and it maximises the angled blade shape to your advantage, and cuts three times as deep as a heavy swing with force. In fact it doesn't need much force used this way and worked very very well compared to the performance up until then. The lightness of the blade, and balancing actually is a bad combination for chopping, but this method worked. So the combat effectiveness and wilderness use, actually balanced out quite nicely. I was actually very surprised at how effective it can be. Using this new found action, I cleared quite a few a few wrist thick saplings, and de-branched them within a minute or so...

 

[JonathanD]

And so, with loads of tree bits, I decided to settle down somewhere quiet for a further play. This is my favourite place in the woods... And to quote Kermits little cousin, with some poetic licence...

'Halfway up the slope, is the place where I sit. There isn't any other slope quite like it.'

I love this place, although the browned and dying grass reminds me of the shortness of these warmer months full of warmth, wildlife and summer visitors. That will soon come to an end. It's always a bit sad seeing the bank like that. Soon the big spiders will be spinning their orb webs in the bushes, then they disappear to be replaced by falling leaves...

Sitting in this spot throughout the years, I see Stoats, Weasels, Badger, Fox, Rabbit, Bats and all manner of wildlife. It is quiet, tranquil and wild, despite the closeness of the field. All worries leave me at this place, and I wonder why it takes such an effort for me to come here, as I don't get up as often as I can or should. The sad thing is, once back home, I'll forget this feeling I get here, and it will take me an effort to get off my butt and get back.

There is even a badgers sett a foot from my foot. And very often they come out while I'm whittling away to see what all the flying chippings are all about...

 

[Man of Tanith]

Thanks for taking the time to do this JD and Southey
interesting reading for me
i have no desire for either knife but it is fascinating reading peoples opinions of others preferred tool

(ok i lied i want one of each)

 

[British Red]

I found that with the design of this knife, when chopping, you had to use a drawing motion, and a slicing motion, whilst hitting, what I call the 'sweet spot'. shown here....

I believe you discovered the semi mythical "draw cut" there. Scared the living snot out of me when I did it by accident the first time using a razor sharp Golok. Sliced through a 5cm thick branch at a swipe - didn't think it would do that and nearly overbalanced myself!

 

[wizard]

Nice work Jonathan. Great pics and a good evaluation. I believe the combat survival aspect being the intent all along. It served one very useful task, it got you out into the lovely forest for a day of fun. I did see one pic with less than the normal amount of digits but that may be a trick of the camera and not something Emma will have to search for in the underbrush for reattachment.
Thanks for sharing your time in the forest. I am still waiting patiently for the temperatures here to get below 100F so I can go outdoors to something beyond the mailbox. Cheers!!

 

[JonathanD]

Anyway, back to the Hellion...

I thought making stakes and wooden spears was one of the important things you should be able to do with a survival knife. So I had a go. A few quick swings using my new found drawing/slicing/chopping action worked wonders and was quick and efficient. More than I would have thought achievable half an hour back...

Not exactly the best wood for producing feathersticks. Very green and hard. But the results, produced from the edge nearest the handle... superb. In fact, excellent. The saw edge did get in the way slightly and made for an uncomfortable left hand grip. But you can live with it I suppose.

Now was the time to test THE MOST HATED aspect of survival knives. The sawback. Now I know that saw backs aren't really meant to saw, but create notches. So I had an open mind and set to work on a 4cm thick piece of green wood....

... well, it worked well for the first 8mm, then stopped. No amount of pressure or sawing would get it any deeper...

I tried again. Sod that!

In the first ten seconds of sawing, it achieved all it could. Great for notching wthout effort. No use at all as a saw.

Trying to do really fine work on the edge nearest the guard was also a no go. The blade is too thick and it really could have done with a different grind here. That possibly may make a world of difference to it. With the one it had, I have up. Impossible for me to control to any degree.

There is so much more to this knife and it has surprised me as being well thought out, if a daft ninja looking design. Most features I haven't covered as it doesn't fit the bushcraft remit and falls into combat and real survival against human opposition.

I would love to cover that aspect here, but it would be inappropriate. Save to say that the knife is very well made and surprisingly tactile and ergonomic in function. It is not a bushcraft knife as such, or even a wilderness knife per se. But it is a survival knife.

Mykel Hawke has an amazing amount of military and survival experience and this is exactly the knife I would expect from a mind like that. Yes it looks like a comedy knife designed for the Rambo fruitbaskets, but it isn't when you get it in your hand. And you really do need to handle it to judge it. Going off looks alone is impossible with this blade.

This is a true SURVIVAL knife, that knife you need when you are on the run, frightened and with no other option than to defend and survive. In military circles it is a knife to have in your pack. In bushcraft circles, it is a novelty with some camp use only. It has it's place. And, although mocking every atom of its existence before I touched it. I have to concede, it is a good knife for the purpose it was designed (although, again the sales blurb is politically correct and fails to explain any of this).

I quite like it. And would want one if recent events escalated or I was behind enemy lines or an RAF pilot. But this is not what the forum is about. So for the role of 'shrafting, it is awful. As a pure survival knife, I think it excells.

On that thought, I opened a 58 pat bottle of local made cider and watched the wildlife, and sun set...