Knife Skills

Knife Grips:

There are many grips you can use while holding your knife, Assuming you selected a quality knife with a comfortable handle, it will be easy to hold your knife in various ways to accomplish survival tasks easier. When you watch seasoned outdoorsmen use a knife, you'll notice they transition from grip to grip without even thinking abou it. They know how to use a blade, and it looks effortless. While you could probably get away using your basic hammer grip with your knife for most cutting tasks, you'll find the other grips that exist make life much easier.

Hammer:With four fingers wrapped around the handle land the thumb closing the grip on the other side, this grip is extremely strong. The hammer grip will be used for carving both hard and soft woods and removing all sizes of wood shavings. The hammer grip can be utilized with knives of all sizes as long as the handle provides you enough room to hold on to it.

Saber:The saber grip was a grip traditionally used with heavy sabers. From the hammer grip, the thumb is placed on the back of the blade on the unsharpened tang. When a heavy saber is drawn back to the shoulder, the thumb assist prevents the blade from striking the user in the head and helps move it forward. When you apply the saber grip, you put more pressure on the spine and prevent the knife handle from moving around in your hand.The saber grip is also helpful for pushing the blade through material being whittled; however the saber grip can lead to blisters on the thumb. When knife/sword makers rounded the spines of their blades, this was not as much of a problem, but since the squared spine is common today and used for sparking a ferro rod, It is wise to use the saber grip sparingly.

Foil:

The foil grip is similar to the saber grip in the use of the thumb in contact with the blade, however, instead of putting your thumb on the spine of the blade, your rotate the blade 90 degrees in your palm and place your thumb on the flat of the blade, This grip is often used when fine carving wood. It is also the grip used when applying a chest-lever motion to cleanly cut through branches. The foil grip can be used with the edge of the blade facing left or right to the inside or outside of the body.

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