Schrade SCHF37 Frontier 12.4in High Carbon Steel Full Tang Fixed Blade Knife with 7in Drop Point and TPE Handle for Outdoor Survival, Camping and Bushcraft

Great knife for the money. It's been my companion for seven years now, and it is one of my favorite knives ever. The 1095 steel has good edge retention and is relatively easy to sharpen. The powder coating has stood up to quite a beating over the years, and I've never had a spot of rust. It's an incredibly durable knife, being nearly a quarter inch thick at the spine, it's essentially a sharp pry bar. The shape of the handle fits comfortably in the hand, and the large chamfer allows for some extra bite if you need it. The only thing I wish was different about this knife is the serrations on the grip. Unless you tape it, or have some good gloves, you can really feel it in the web of your hand after a while. I've put this thing through mud, blood, walls, and wood whilst camping, hiking, hunting, and construction, and it keeps on going.

I'll give this knife 5 out of 5 stores in the context of its price range. For the price point it is simply very hard to do better and the only thing I can think of that compares are some of the other similar Schrade knives. I will say that I had to return the first knife that i ordered because it wasn't completely straight. While one would hope no company would ever release a product that is flawed/defective, for what you are buying at this pricepoint, you have to be a little realistic. I had read about this possible issue and so was prepared to expect this possibility. I simply returned it and got another one at no charge via Amazon Prime. The second one I receive was perfectly straight and razor sharp.The sheath is pretty uninspiring, but the firesteel they throw in is actually very good. That's worth at least another $5-$10. I haven't used the included sharpening stone so I can't comment on that.A lot of people complaining about the rough coating on the blade being too grippy in wood and rightfully so, but I just took some 1000 grit sand paper and lightly wet sanded it to get rid of the grippy surface. It's still got the coating but it's much smoother now.I may consider grinding down the jimping at some point, but Schrade is also coming out with the SCHF52 soon which is the same awesome knife with some improvements to the coating and handle contour and they fixed the aggressive jimping issue.While the tip isn't as stout as I'd like, but I don't plan on prying anything with it. Always remember that even a nice high quality knife is a poor excuse for a prybar and will usually be the weakest and most expensive prybar you'll ever use. Prying on any sort of strong material with the tip of ANY knife is a terrible idea. It is just fine for stabbing deep into wood or other materials however.

So, I like this knife. I like it a lot. The steel is right, the size is spot on, the sheath is very nice. The sheath has a plastic liner and is ballistic nylon, the belt loop velcro is super hard core hook and loop... it comes with a sharpening block, a ferrocerium rod and striker. These are nice things.It came very sharp. I stropped it when I got it and brought that thing to a literally hair shaving grade sharp. I've read reviews with rolled edges, or fairly dull blades on arrival, that wasn't my knife. Very nice factory edge. The issue is, the first thing I do, because it's a hollow grind, I don't go chop ice blocks, I don't baton with it, I cut some chicken. Breast, to be exact, partially frozen boneless chicken breast. It sliced, but not with ease. That coating on the blade, used to prevent rust, is some grippy, high traction shizzo. Meaning, as the blade penetrates an object, the object wants to grip and rip along the sides of that hollow grind. And the grip, there's my real issue. The pressure required to slice through that chicken required grip at the top of the handle, and the jimping is there. Not under my thumb, not on my palm, but right at the base of my first knuckle. And it ground in painfully. Now, if I were chopping, I'd be using a glove, and my left hand, but I was slicing, I didn't expect to need gloves, and when kitchen cutting, I work orthodox. That jimping is not placed where, for the work I do, i'd want it, and I suspect I'm not the only guy who would think that. Above that choil, that's where I'd place a jimped thumb ramp, if you need one. I don't need jimping, I don't like it, largely because it creates hot spots when i'm working... like this one did, when I was. No bueno. Interesting note, if you grip into that choil, and place your thumb about it on the blade, the jimping falls into the palm, and there, pressed into the meat of my thumb, it's fine, totally painless, but also functionally useless.Whatsmore, that coating is high enough traction that when cleaning the shredded chicken off the blade, it took some work. I had to do circular scrubs with my soapy brush in both directions to get all the chicken bits out of the coating texture. NO BUENO! So once done, I cleaned and dried the blade, then applied a light coating of mineral oil and we'll see how that impacts the next meat cutting task I assign this knife. On the plus side, the traction of the grip was in no way compromised when wet with soapy water, I still had good safe control over the blade. That's major points back in schrade's favor.Now you might ask, why am I doing a kitchen task with this knife, it's clearly not marketed as a kitchen knife. Well, what kind of knife is it, precisely? It's a camp knife, right? So I should be able to handle standard outdoor type duties. Lots of guy have shaved feather sticks with this blade. Lots of guys have batoned with it. No one on youtube has used it to kill or skin game, cuz you really don't do that on video. OK, so I simulated camp duties, which include killing something and prepping it for devouring, with chicken, but rather than do that in my wood pile, I did it in the luxury of my kitchen. Sue me. But, it's a camp knife, and that is a pretty basic duty, cutting meat. Cutting meat is the closest to combat you can reasonably get too, just in case you had to use the knife in a self defense scenario. This knife was tricky to slice meat with. Granted, it was partially frozen, but it was work getting the blade through that meat, it was not quick, it was not light duty. One could easily figure that, were I fighting a person with this, I can slash and cut, but let me tell you, I just recently had a small accident with an 18" Tramontina machete, and a bump sliced right into me. A bump. This was sawing with the blade and tearing from the coating. This is not a knife that, were I forced to defend myself or my family, that I would trust to plunge into a guy's ribs while I bite off his nose. It's not going through his ribs, it's just not. I might be able to twist it and work it into his stomach, but not through bone, no way. Were I slashing, I know this blade would glance off bones, so I cut and the opponent had her arm up, it'll cut some tendons, it'll cut some skin, but it's not cutting to or through the bone. Now, is that an unrealistic standard? Kind of. I did give the blade 4 stars because it is a nice knife. But it's not a great knife, and that's why I docked the star. There's a lot of room, especially in that coating, to reduce traction in it and allow that blade to really cut like it wants to. The weight and the grind WANT to cut, but the coating is just not right, and the grip doesn't provide the best kinetics to power that blade the way it needs to be powered. So let's assume this is a camp knife, if I cut wood with this, it will retain wood shards in the coating texture. That will not just wipe off, so you either get wood splinters in your food later, OR, you blow an unrealistic amount of water cleaning the blade, and risk it rusting. You could not easily move from one task to another because cleaning will be a bitch. Even if you're not killing game with it, let's say I'm slicing a summer sausage, or some cheese off a block. No friggin way could you slice some camp cheese with this shiv, no friggin way. What if you brought some jelly from home, you're planning a picnic with the mrs (or the other mister, I'm not judging), and you bring some boysenberry jam, and oops, you forgot your butter knife. If this knife got buried with you, and was discovered in 1000 years by a generation of quinpedal humans, that boysenberry jam? STILL IN YOUR COATING! And man, I hope that there were no socks in the pouch or bag with the knife when you packed it, because forget about lint. Lint, you'd be better off torching this knife to get the lint out than trying to clean the blade.Now, you could strip this coating off and just blue the blade, or mineral oil it, and brother, you better believe that's what I'll be doing. The scales are attached by three hex bolts, it's easy to remove, please do this. The issue will be whether or not you want to grind that jimping down. I kind of really really want to do that, and I suspect more owners of this blade would like to or have than have been public about that mod. You're welcome Amazon readers.