My lizard brain price point always drifts upward whenever I start seriously shopping for anything. Unfortunately, my wallet no longer lives in the same zip code as my brain. I really can't afford the quality I'd like for anything any more.
I've been impressed in the videos as to how much batoning can be done with certain fixed blade knives and how I lack some basic wood processing skills like feathersticking and extracting dry tinder from the center of logs. It seems clear that a fixed blade of a certain size, blade width and full tang is best for batoning and aggressive bushcraft usage, especially if I don't have an axe.
The Mora Bushcraft Black Carbon is the widest and strongest blade in their product line, so that's the only Mora I'd consider for bushcraft/survival type applications. The price is so tempting, but I don't really like the black and tactical look on any knife.
The Fallknivens are unquestionably a leading quality contender for these applications. Some, however, are actually made in Japan. The price of the S1 is probably too much for me. I can get Hoop's blade, the F1, for about $130. But the Benchmade is half an inch longer, even less money with my discount, and I like the aesthetics of the Benchmade a lot better. The Fallkniven, meant for Scandivian climate survival, probably has a better handle for cold weather and non-slippery grip, but I don't do any cold weather camping and don't really like the looks of black thermoplastic handles.
The 162 Bushcrafter is only Benchmade's second foray into that market, the first being a failure, in 2012. The 162 was initially snubbed by online "bushcraft experts", mainly because it was stainless steel instead of carbon and it had a very different grip. The named designer is Shane Sibert, and the Benchmade 162 is modeled very closely after his $425+ custom knife called the
Sibert Cascadia Bushcrafter. The Benchmade 162 is now getting a lot more recognition and was named Field & Stream's best fixed blade knife of 2013. There are now a lot of online reviews for it, this being one by a seeming actual bushcraft instructor, who recommends the Benchmade 162 Bushcrafter as his favorite with the Mora Bushcraft Black Carbon as an inexpensive backup:
The grind on the Benchmade is unusual. It's a tapering flat saber grind that ends with very sharp secondary edge. Hence, it's stronger and has better edge retention than a Scandi grind, which tapers more sharply and completely flatly with no secondary edge. And the S30V "super steel" is a much, much higher quality steel than the carbon or stainless steels used in Moras.
Mike, does your last question about stainless steel corrosion "codes" belong in this thread or your PFD blade thread? My feeling is that any SS is sufficiently anti-corrosive for PFD usage, just as I think any SS would be sufficient for a fixed blade on my belt in a canoe. Various SS's have many different properties, including corrosion tendency, Rockwell hardness, edge retention, ease of sharpening,
bend and torsion strength, grain size, etc. You can find tables of these things. If absolute corrosion resistance is the only Holy Grail to the exclusion of every other SS attribute, then I would look at the SS in the Spyderco Salt Series and in the Benchmade H2O Griptilian, which I identified in your PFD thread.
