Thursday 22 July 2010

A.G. Russell WoodsWalker


I find knives indispensable tools, but I seem to have a particular fondness for small knives. Since I often carry these sorts of knives around my neck, I usually refer to them as neck knives.

Small knives are lighter, easier to use for most of the things I ever do with a knife, and they tend to not freak the sheeple out quite so much. :-)

I have a friend whose outdoor knife of choice is a paring knife. Just like you’d find in your kitchen. It’s not at all flashy or expensive, but it does exactly what he needs it to do. Which is pretty much just food prep, clean a fish, cut the odd piece of rope, make a fuzz stick, open a package, etc. He made a leather sheath for it, and it’s served him well on canoe trips for twenty or more years.

I had been intrigued by this A.G. Russell WoodsWalker for a long time, and while buying a birthday present for a friend, I figured I may as well finally get it. For the cost, I couldn’t really go wrong. And I didn’t.
The length of the blade is 6 cm (2.375"), and overall, the knife is 15 cm (6"). The blade is made from AUS-8, hardened to an HRC of 57-59. The handle is wood Rucarta (which I think is just a way of getting around the Micarta trademark. Same thing, different name.) It weighs 34 grams (1.2 oz.). Oh and it’s made in Japan.
Nice size.
The WoodsWalker comes with two sheath options. One is a leather model....
...in a back pocket. Comfortable and unobtrusive.
The other option is a Kydex sheath. This allows for far more in the way of carrying and mounting options...
...including neck carry...
...or mounting it to any piece of MOLLE/PALS compatible gear. The possibilities with this are almost endless. Horizontal, vertical, angled, right side up, up side down. In this example I used para-cord to attach it, but zip ties could also be used. I’m not sure, but I suspect you could also use MOLLE-LOKs or TEK-LOKs to attach it to a pouch or pack or belt or rig.

Terrific little knife. Great value for the money. Sharp and easy to keep that way. A pair of great carry options. It’s pretty much just like my friends paring knife in a slightly slicker package.

I’m a firm believer in the old adage “one is none, two is one.” I usually always have a slightly bigger, sturdier knife that serves as my main user, but a knife of this size gets used a lot. And, if I was ever to lose the other knife, I would be well served with this as my backup.

1 comment:

  1. I keep coming back to the simplicity of small kitchen knives too. But I'm probably going to buy one of these Russell Woodswalkers.

    ReplyDelete