Camp knives run the spectrum from plastic utensils and household butcher knives to neat folders and stout fixed blades made of fine steels. Lot's of attention is paid to expensive and large blades. Somewhere in the middle of these extremes, there are useful, moderately priced, medium sized, fixed blade knife. I tend to like what I use the most and use what I like the most; its a nice, perpetual conundrum once you crack the code.
At camp, my knife use varies from cutting fishing line, removing a splinter, cutting chord to occasionally batoning firewood. The most frequent use of my knife at camp though, is cooking. Except for batoning, I appreciate a medium sized knife with a thin blade with a sharp edge.
There is a balance point where cost and actual use meet. Usually an affordable knife with a 4" or so long blade with decent steel is good enough. One such knife is the Cold Steel Roach Belly.
The Roach Belly is an old design fixed blade knife that comes with a plastic sheath. Centuries of users have refined this simple blade. As a fixed blade knives it is quick to deploy.
The simplicity of a fixed blade knife is a beautiful thing. There are no moving parts. Dropping the knife in sand will not bind it up or make its action gritty. A fixed blade will not unexpectedly close on your fingers; there are no locks to manipulate.
At about $20.00 the Cold Steel Roach Belly is an easy camp companion.
With fixed blade knives the sheath is as important as the knife. Put another way, a fantastic fixed blade knife with no sheath, or with a poorly designed scabbard is nearly useless.
Cold Steel understands what a good sheath means to the user. On your person, the Roach Belly can be rapidly deployed with one hand. There are a few times when I only had one free hand while cooking or fishing. A well sheathed fixed blade knife made the task a seamless effort.
Years ago I broke a pocket knife in a remote location and was left in a lurch. After that, I moved to the fixed blade knife and I began learning about sheaths. Here are a few things I have figured out about sheaths.
1) The sheath determines the height the knife rides as you wear it. If the knife pommel rides too high it can jam into your ribs when sitting in a vehicle. I like the pommel about belt level.
2) A 4" - 5" blade is long enough. Shorter blades have a correspondingly shorter edge. The shorter edge gets worked more and sooner becomes dull.
Knife with blades longer than 5" are less easily put to use for daily task. They can also make sitting in vehicles and chairs difficult.
3) Lastly, the Cold Steel Roach Belly or knife of similar configuration is unlikely to raise eyebrows in public.
Most knife task can be accomplished with a general purpose blade. In these instances a common fixed bladed knife with a thin blade is a joy to use.
Thanks for reading.
MSM
Good article. I find a 3.5" to 4.5" to be about perfect for camp use unless, like you point out, you need to baton some logs. For that more than 6" is preferable. I have a 6" Cold Steel that falls between and I find I use my Mora around camp but wish for 7-8" for batoning.