hey guys this is kevin ostello with fieldcraft survival i'm joined with by austin right here
and we kind of have essentially the product development guy he's like seal team six
but for christopher what christopher he's nice oh we got tim reeve here so uh had a product
development kind of multi-tool machine master like if we've been following him around all day
and he can talk us through any machine you could possibly imagine along with all the history of all
all the knives so we're kind of just going to do a little overview of knives a little history of
knives maybe some of the questions that you might have our take on those questions you know things
that usually come up in the hunting realm like hey when do i get my first knife hey what are
some things that you shouldn't do with a knife like there's a lot of questions like oh my knife
should be able to do x y and z well we're here with again seal team six um so let's just jump
right into it so tim what's the like what's the number one thing that you can say like you get
a question from someone about your knives by the way chris reeve knives if you've never seen them
they are essentially like the cadillac of uh of knives um so you should definitely check out
their website but what what are like what's the number one question that you get about your knives
uh sharpening's probably one like one of the biggest things just how should i sharpen it
how should i go about it right like that's usually number one when i look at kind of 30 years in the
bigger picture right a lot there's a lot of like number one questions probably like very specific
to our knives but when it comes to like broadly it's it's how do i sharpen it how do i maintain it
that's kind of number one you know a lot of folks that own knives come from the you know own cars or
have guns or something like that and maintenance is like a huge part of it how do i maintain the
car how do what do i need to do to make sure it functions continually and that's usually
the biggest problems when we have knives that come back in it's they haven't been maintained
or they've been like kind of pushed too far so i i don't know if that answers but yeah that's
usually what it is kind of like sharpening and maintenance stuff so how would you recommend
sharpening that so i i come with a very like uh non-specific answer it's it's whatever way
works best for you right okay so a lot of people come to me and say hey you know tim reeve like
how do you sharpen like well i actually sharpen a handful of different ways depends on what i'm
doing in the day i like a ceramic rod and a piece of leather that's one of my favorite ways like
this right here is the this is like the spyderco sharp makers triangle stone
i like the brown stones as opposed to the white personally just because it takes i don't have
all day to sharpen my knives right like but the fine stones are great and and really i just i
just kind of go back and forth like this you know so you're slicing from the heel to the tip yeah
minimal pressure like i've heard it's about the same amount of pressure as like shaving yeah light
to medium you know if you're having to do a lot of pro like reprofiling work big chips things like
that get something coarser push harder yeah um i come from a very non-technical sharpening world
now obviously in the back when we send knives out to sharpen that's a whole different ball game of
what we're doing and what we're accomplishing but so i love doing that i'll use i'll use a
ceramic rod and then usually just like a rough part of the suede back on on some leather and
just work it backwards now most knives and specifically our knives have a nice like a
convex edge and that works great with a strap now you can use leather you can use leather with
compounds you can do a lot of different things but just working it backwards and forwards if you
can get something stable you can put two hands on it that's even nicer that's my way to go about it
um and i won't demonstrate this with your knife but i know one of the big no-nos is when you're
stropping you don't want to roll like is that a big no-no i just don't know well no-no i mean like when
you don't all the way to go yeah to go vertical because you're actually going to be defeating the
purpose of stropping right like and i've heard people say like oh lift it up the thickness
of the blade but i mean as long as you're right you're consistent with it right and this is why i
love doing like sharpening stuff with other people because i constantly find out how i like do things
wrong and break the rules like like everyone says i strapped too hard which is probably true um
a lot of and but that kind of brings me back to my the point that i try and make is like
sharpen it for what works for you yeah a dull knife in your pocket just isn't going to work
right well and it it brings the point home too of like it's what's practical like not everybody has
the ability when you're in the field to just oh let me measure what this is what that is get your
ankle gauges out like just like you just can't bring it down yeah i mean you can i've sharpened
knives with river rocks you know what i mean as long as you have a rough edge yeah that's harder
than your blade yeah oh or in some cases softer if you're stropping yep yep you're going to get
your knife sharp you know you just remove those particles yeah and it's it's maintenance right
like it's not like i'm sharpening it to put it on a showroom i'm sharpening it to be sharp enough
to clean an animal uh cut cordage do whatever it is i need to do in the field not to point this
to a different video on youtube uh but i will the the the the meat-eater guys were on with
benchmade or workshop or somebody doing like some couple of sharpening videos and i just liked how
steven nella framed this really cool concept just he's on the mountain doing it like how to
sharpen in the field and it's like the point that he started off with is like this is not like
where you start sharpening it's like where you may keep maintaining sharpening make sure it's
sharp like before you leave the house yeah things like that now you have accents you have problems
in the field so it's nice to be able to like do some heavy lifting but you can't be super
picky about like how fine your edge is when you just got to get something cut right so
that's kind of my little take there yeah totally not another one now guys i'm going to show you
two ways that you can carry a knife and i'm going to show you one incorrect way and i
just i won't say i called someone out for this recently but i might have
many of these folding knives like the this is the sebenza 31 have a pocket clip right and a lot of
people will think that that pocket clip gets worn like this my best friend does that this drives me
absolutely up a wall right don't do this because as you're walking through the woods these have a
tendency to pop off and you can you can lose them and listen i'm i'm guilty of this too occasionally
i'll i'll clip my blade here but just as easily i could step down and i could lose my knife right a
real simple way of carrying your knife is inside the waistband right everyone carries appendix
well you've got this angular crease right where your your thigh meets your pelvic bone
and it's a very common way of carrying your blade but yeah but this is probably one of
the safest ways you can actually sleep with your knife clip to your shorts if you want
like this you'll never be without a blade so you can either carry it here you can carry it
inside your your pocket here right please don't be the person that clips it to the outside or
clips it to their belt to the outside like that because you could easily easily lose it um
what knife tips do you have because i get a bunch oh man um hop on in i guess i would say one of the
most popular questions that i get all the time is what's the best knife to carry on what's the best
type of carry right so like one knife to rule them all right and and unfortunately the answer
that i always have for that is there is no one knife to rule them all they all have a different
i'm gonna find it though yeah one day we'll all find it right but i mean even just me you
know i carry a swiss army knife i have some type of a folder and when i'm in the field
i carry a fixed blade you know so it's you have to have multiple tools to serve multiple purposes so
but i think the age old question is fixed blade verse folder right you know right and there's
a compromise right like like this allows you to carry something very uh practical like you
can it folds in half right that's a compromise but compared to a fixed blade you're going to
and it's it could be the strongest folder in the world you're going to have a weak spot right there
so i mean the compromise is weight the compromise is the how compact i mean in the end an edge is an
edge from a bushcraft perspective from a carving perspective all i need is what the blade that's
showing right there i just need one inch in front of my index finger on my carving hand
i could have a a 20 inch blade but i'm doing the vast majority of my knife in the heel yeah and
that heel right there which some people say like hey plain edge or serrated yeah another question
um it really comes down to to your your purposes um the serrated edge tends to tear through
material very aggressively it rips material whereas the the plain edge is better for fine
fine carving now guys uh something that comes up is how do you hold on to a knife now i bring
this up in every single class that we teach all the all the survival classes the different grips
okay this is what you would call a hammer grip right it's just like you would hold a hammer
this is what's referred to as a saber grip now imagine if this blade were this long right like
really really long and if i were a pirate right holding a long saber if i were to swing that sword
back i would need extra support by doing this it allows me to stop that blade from going back
before i swing it forward so it's called the saber grip a lot of guys carve like that a lot of guys
end up getting splinters through their thumbs like that so i'm a big fan of using the hammer grip but
you can't deny that this is used for fine work up at up at the tip of the blade now if i turn this
knife 90 degrees and i hold it like this this is what's called a foil grip right and this is for if
i were to bring my hands up close i could do fine carving like this i could also turn it 90 degrees
the other way and do fine carving like like a grandpa cutting a slice of apple for their kid
this is the correct grip that you would use if i were cutting line right you always want
to cut back to yourself you don't want to have someone hold the line and push the knife into them
right for you hunters out there this is a very common grip i don't know how many times i've
cleaned animals just like this and i'm really just protecting the tip of that that blade with
my fingertip so i'm going to lead with the knife as opposed to leading with my finger
now there's a reason for that if i lead with steel steel on steel has a very specific sound
so if you happen to find a broad head that's in a deer that healed you'll catch it with the blade as
opposed to with your fingertip okay so we have hammer saber foil we've got this reverse grip
we've got this grip right here there are other grips you can get into with like fixed blade
knives like i could wrap this around my hand like that and if i wrap around my hand tightly i have
an extended grip that allows me to chop with the knife right sometimes you'll have a little bit of
a nub you can put your ring finger through that nub and when you put your ring finger through
that nub same deal i can now chop with a knife taking something that has about a seven inch
blade and making it like a ten inch blade right so you got all different knife grips that you can use
very very rarely will you need this ice pick grip but it is used occasionally like if we're doing
a bushcraft class if i put my knife in a log i can now have the knife in a fixed position and
i can draw material into it right but very rarely will you need that but if you do have to use that
don't forget to cap and this is how you i know you guys are squared away with your knife designs
this doesn't hurt when i cap my thumb over the top some knife companies put a point on it where
you go to use that and next thing you know you end up with a bloody thumb
and that that actually brings up a really good uh point too is is talking about the
way that you gripped it is is using the lanyard because uh and we've talked about this before but
the lanyard serves a lot more purposes than just attaching it right to your
right to your uh right to your knife so you can tie it off to something but using that lanyard
like you said as a loop a fixed point and then also tying it into using it as part of your grip
for chopping uh lanyard is a really important part it's just nice to have spare cordage on it it is
it's multi-purpose if you've been on my classes you guys know that i always carry a swiss army
knife and i carry it in my front pocket with a fire steel inside of a pouch because this whole
you know pouch and and pocket like that i know that i have it on me the slick sides of the
swiss army knife tend to slip out of the pocket easily i've never lost that though when it's it's
in the pocket some people they say oh you know i want to get my kid a knife but i don't want
to get him a fixed blade because it's it's too dangerous and i'm like too dangerous or something
you know because it's fixed yeah you know it doesn't close and people think that a cl
you know folding knife is is safer but it really comes down to the user and when i was a kid
swiss army knife i had the knife like this and one of the tricks obviously is if you use two
hands and you keep it out of the way you're not gonna you're not gonna close on yourself
the other thing is you can get it out of the way and when the tip is pointed away from you use the
back your leg to close it um the minute that you start trying to close it with one hand and like in
these fingers get in the way you're gonna draw blood so i'm a firm believer that a good first
knife for a kid is a fixed blade with a guard on it so you don't end up cutting your index finger
stabbing trees because every kid is going to do it i don't care how much you tell a kid not to do
it it's like don't try to find those channels that are not allowed for you on cable they're going to
go find them somehow right um yeah it's a ride of passage yeah and i remember like in in when i was
a kid my dad said every even toy knives are knives like right you don't treat a toy knife like a like
a toy knife because it'll build bad habits for a real life same thing with guns right like there's
no toy guns they're all real guns but i've seen over the years bad habits of people and one of
the ones that drives me nuts is when someone has a knife like this and they leave it on the edge of a
table with just a little bit of the edge exposed or enough where if it got knocked just a little
bit the edge exposed so if a person walks by they get cut or my favorite and i'm going to close this
because it even just gives me the heebie-jeebies when the knife falls a person will go to grab it
yeah and then they get impaled right or they grab it and imagine this is the blade and they ride the
blade you know so they cut all all their fingers um so if a knife is falling you drop it guys well
guys love putting knives and logs like in the camp they put a knife in a log someone sits on the log
it wiggles free and the knife falls in the in the dirt or better get in the snow and if it snows
more and you go to find that knife now everything is level right so you'll never find your knife a
good rule to follow is if your knife isn't in your hand you should resheath it right don't leave it
in trees don't leave it you know sheath and the animal that you're butchering you're going to
lose it so if it's not in your hand it should be in your sheath just same thing like even this has
given me a little bit of the the agita you know like whatever you want to call it right um other
bad habits can you think of anything that like if if a parent were showing this to a kid thank you
at the shows all the time people put them down and i've seen a lot of knives like go off the front get yanked
whether it's ours or somebody else's that and sometimes i take these off the shows but
one of my favorite tricks if a knife has a sheath i'll take the the cord and i'll put
it behind the belt and then that way it gives me even a secondary level of retention so if i
were to have this thing unsnapped i still have this behind my belt that would prevent it from
coming completely out of the out of the sheath something that drives me nuts before i forget
is how you hand a knife to someone now i've been in a survival class right this is back in
the day where i handed a knife to a student like this and i was like here's your knife
and that student grabbed the knife and yanked it out of my hand and almost did what was called a
tip rip to the palm of my hand well you can't hand a knife to someone like this and i don't like that
blade pointed at me so i've gotten in the habit of holding a knife positioning the edge away from
me and away from the person and if i were to hand it to austin when he would grab it he would
confirm that he has it by saying i have the knife or thank you right and then he would hand it back
to me the same way where i could grab a portion of the handle and now i have it under control because
again you don't want this thing pointed at anyone um and it just drives me nuts when i see people
mishandling mishandling blades so yeah another good habit to build into like your younger hunter
or someone who's not not familiar with filipino knife culture it really is yeah and it's like
fold it you know like close the line right like not to be the obvious one but it's like how many
people have a folding knife and just like pass it open or whatever it's like you just close it yeah
it's really not that difficult to say oh here you go yeah right like you know but i'm still
the guy that will hand it like this and even when i'm handing it i'll control the make sure
to open or something like that yeah um but guys i mean there's a lot to be said about about knives
if you're watching this you're probably a hunter you probably have a hunting knife
any of these knives could be used for hunting but believe it or not you don't need the biggest knife
in the world to to dress an animal something like this impinda right yeah that's impinda
a slip joint can do all the work that you need to and it's not terribly intimidating very well
made knife but that's all you need in in the great outdoors to do 99 of the the work you have to do
so yeah a lot of people ask me like what's the best knife out there it's just like the one in
your pocket yeah you know it's the simplest answer and yeah the one in your pocket and then sharpen
it yeah take care of it it helps uh we should probably tell the viewers where they can find you
yeah uh basically here at chris reave knives all the time uh
but yeah no on on you know we have chrisreave.com we have uh there's like a fan page a facebook
fan page obviously facebook and those kind of places um that's where you can find the company
um yeah if you if you want to get a hold of me call call me during working hours i'll be
here i'll get on the phone i got no problem we got some a lovely crew here that love to talk
knives and take care of people and so i love this kind of stuff you know i love having some actual
useful tips rather than just like you know the obvious ones right well yeah if you want to find
us or if you want to find us you can find fieldcraft survival fieldcraftsurvival.com
fieldcraftsurvival.locals.com that's our locals page uh instagram is @fieldcraftsurvival um
and feel free to shoot us questions i mean we're here to educate right and
you know chris reeve knives has been in business for a long time i've been a fan of there since
2000 1999 somewhere around there um i'm debating which knife to get next i kind of have an idea and
it might be this one with a couple features on it just throwing it out there so if you guys have a
comment which knife you want to see me use put it in the comments below but guys thanks for thanks
for watching and you know check us out we'll be coming back at you next month with more tips