Viper Tank / John Arizona Bushman Saguaro

[Jackroadkill]

Hi all,

I know that "What's the best [insert item here]?" threads are ridiculous, so I'll keep it brief. I'm just after anyone's experiences with either of the above knives. I'm mostly interested in things like how hard-wearing, how they sharpen, plus-points / minus-points etc rather than full-blown reviews. I'm certainly not asking which is the best, or suchlike.

I'd like a big-ish, non-Bowie knife that can be used and abused for hacking, slashing etc and quite like the look of both of the above. I've been on YouTube and watched a couple of videos (most of these seem to be about how to take the knife out of the box when it arrives...) but haven't arrived at a conclusion.

Any comments welcome.

Thanks,

Jackroadkill

 

[C_Claycomb]

I haven't so much as handled either, but based on what you say you want the knife for, I would say that neither one will be particularly suitable. Maybe that Saguaro is a great knife in the American Southwest, but the UK does not even vaguely resemble Arizona and the usual ideas about bushcraft and outdoor skills are quite different here.

Minus point, that double grind and short sabre grind. Less good cutting geometry and a spine that will chew up a baton.
Six inch blades aren't really long enough for hacking. Made a couple and tried that, was disappointed. Chopping doesn't start to get efficient till about 8" blade length.
The Tank looks like it has a handle that would stay in your hand if you did try to hack with it, but the Saguaro does not. If I was set on buying one or the other, I would get the Tank, but for what you describe I might well keep looking.

If you are looking for a bigger chopping knife, stuff by ESEE, or Kabar Becker would be my first target, maybe Ontario.

 

[Robson Valley]

I live 500 miles north of the northern tip of that American desert. I would not buy either one of those knives for bushcraft.
The bladesmith admits, right up front and in print, that the spine grind on the Saguaro is for fighting, not bushcraft.
As Chris notes, it isn't bash-worthy for splitting wood. Too much energy goes into crushing the baton fiber.

The cant of the Viper handle will hyper-extend your wrist doing camp chores.
Bad wood carving tool handles look just as cool and are just as useless over a day's work.

A straight tool axis means more energy transferred to the edge from your upper arm and shoulder
and less from the flexure of your wrist, trying to apply strength to the strike.

Don't twiddle around from fingers and wrist.
In your OP, you need to strike from your shoulder strength.

 

[Jackroadkill]

Thanks very much, guys. I must admit that I did wonder about batoning with Saguaro, but the bloke who designed them said something about the reverse of the tip being widened to accommodate a baton - however, I wasn't sure about that and with my not having a huge amount of experience in that area I thought I'd check, and I'm glad I did.

I guess I'll keep looking, then!

 

[C_Claycomb]

The thing that I have noticed, looking at a lot of US designed outdoors knives, is that they often prioritise features which are of little use or are much less important to most people in the UK. For instance, many US knives are designed with skinning and butchering in mind, more people hunt more things and bigger animals in the US and dealing with them is a bigger part of the outdoor experience. Similarly, they have animals which are dangerous, so things like the Spyderco TemperanceII are actually designed to be used as last ditch weapons against large predators (even if this seems questionable scenario, that is the design intent, and it seems a lot less questionable when actually hiking in the US). Others are intended to double for defence against people. Lastly, the huge range of environments, from tundra to bayou, desert to boreal forest, mean that the design criteria for a knife can be stacked in a lot of ways, some of which are a better match for our islands than others.

Best of luck in your search.

 

[sunndog]

ESSE and B&K do some well regarded big heavy hack 'n' slash knives