The Knife Junkie Podcast is the place for knife newbies and knife junkies to learn about knives and knife collecting. Twice per week Bob DeMarco talks knives. Email Bob at theknifejunkie@gmail.com; visit https://theknifejunkie.com.
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Here is the full transcript of The Knife Junkie Podcast, Episode 657, "Ten Great Combat Knives".

Bob DeMarco: Coming up, the Gentleman Junkie giveaway knife for February 2026. We're going to take a look at the Nessmuk in the First Tool, and then let's take a look at ten great combat knives. I'm Bob DeMarco. This is The Knife Junkie Podcast.

Announcer: Welcome to The Knife Junkie Podcast, your weekly dose of knife news and information about knives and knife collecting. Here's your host, Bob "The Knife Junkie" DeMarco.

Bob DeMarco: Welcome back to the show. One of my favorite comments from this past week was from my good buddy Dave of OG Blade Reviews. He says, "Hey Bob, great assemblage of folders and EDC. Got my Mayhem—talking about the Cold Steel—in yesterday and SnaggleTooth eagerly waiting to be added. Love the combo and thanks for recommending". Of course, Dave, my pleasure.

Only issue was freeing up that Cold Steel thumb stud, which was heavily Loctited. Up and running now though, says Dave. And I had the same issue with mine, but sometimes those toughest nuts to crack are the tastiest.

Second was from my good buddy Victor of Staten Island Edges. He says, "Hey Bob, what's up buddy? Hope you and the family are well. Great video as always. I especially like the little tip of the hat for the legendary unassuming and most practical Case Trapper. Good job, paisan". Thank you, Victor, or shall I say ditto? I appreciate it greatly. Victor has a great collection and a lot of that is Case knives. He's got some really high-end modern folders and then a bunch of sweet Case knives. And I love that, it's a great juxtaposition.

All right, coming up, let's get to now the Pocket Check.

Announcer: What's in his pocket? Let's find out. Here's The Knife Junkie with his pocket check of knives.

Bob DeMarco: In my front right pocket today, as has been the case for the last week or so, I have the Off-Grid Knives Polaris XL. I have been absolutely adoring this knife. It's a big boy, that's a four-and-a-quarter inch clip point blade. Really nice low point. That point is lower than the centerline of the blade, which really makes it a highly utilitarian point for pull cuts and that kind of thing, utility kind of cutting.

But you still get that centerline sort of orientation when holding it. So just an all-around great blade design. I love a great clip point. This one has a lot of straight, a little bit of belly, and a low point. So a clip point with sort of Warncliff-y qualities. That's right, I used the adjective "Warncliff-y".

This has titanium bolsters, a titanium lockside with sculpted pocket clip, and beautiful Red Dawn shred carbon fiber. Just an awesome knife. Jimping as the day is long, so you're going to have plenty of grip-shon there when holding that.

Next, this one has not really left the pocket much since I got it. One of my favorite on-record recently from Jack Wolf Knives, this is the Tracy LaRock-designed Timber Jack. Tracy LaRock is a custom slip joint maker and knife maker, and so they did this collaboration together. But this is not a part of the JWK collab series. Not sure why, but a lot of diversification over there at Jack Wolf Knives. This is part of the Steel Series and the Lightweight Series. In this case, this is a lightweight 154CM contoured G10 with nice cross-hatching in there.

And then the cool contrast of that bright, bright green. Yeah, that is a little nick you see in the blade. I did something to it. This knife engenders confidence. You want to horse through material, you can. It gives you a full four-finger grip, but I think I hit a staple or something on the way through.

All right, next up, one that I have only started carrying recently because I finally figured out a way to carry it. And that's with this UltiClip. But I had today the Bald Man Knife & Tool Serpico. This one is the Serpico. And I have one other knife by Brent Smith and I love that one, it's the Thicker Clipper Tanto, but this one really is by far my favorite of his knives.

Look at that downward-angled blade, that deep belly, the recurve there. This is just a real pretty intense cutter. And with that downward-angled blade, you do have a centerline point there that lines up with the screws on the handle. This is called Toasted Natural Micarta. I love what he did there. He sculpted the handle and then dropped it in the toaster basically, and got the peaks nice and dark.

Such a beautiful blade. That brute de forge look there is actually a hammer that Brent has with a bunch of texture on the hammer poll surface. And he just pounds these things out when they're super hot. Give them that sort of rough forge look. To me, it looks like a jungle knife, something that you would find in the Philippines.

Last up, my emotional support knife today, my ESK was the beautiful TOPS Wild Pig Hunter. This was a gift from my wife years ago, an awesome gift. I think I pointed her in the direction of this, but it doesn't matter. The fact is she got it for me and I've always loved this knife. But the fact that it was a gift from my wife makes it even more valuable to me.

I had just recently heard of someone using this as a batoning knife and saying it was great. I have no doubt about that because it's very sturdy down the center with that ridge. I could see this popping open logs. However, I would not use it for that. To me, that's just for wild pig hunting, period. The only thing I use that for.

So that's what I had on me today, my ESK was the Wild Pig Hunter from TOPS Knives. One of their classics, one of their most beloved knives. I had the Serpico from Bald Man Knife & Tool, that beautiful deep recurve. And I had it set up in the waistband at about 3 o'clock with my UltiClip. That's the way I'm carrying it now. I had the beautiful Tracy LaRock-designed Timber Jack from Jack Wolf Knives. And I had the new Off-Grid Knives Polaris XL from their premium—I mean their elite lineup. Vanax steel, did I mention that? People go goo-goo ga-ga over Vanax steel. I like it because it's the first knife I have in Vanax, but I have yet to explore its many nooks and crannies. Hopefully, there are no nooks and crannies.

All right, next up, 3 Dog Knife. I want to talk about this company 3 Dog Knife. My good buddy Mike from Northern Knives up in Anchorage, Alaska, they're the biggest knife store up there and I think west of the Mississippi. Pretty big place. They also have their own custom knife shop called 3 Dog Knife. And they have extended an amazing offer to us. We've given away a number of these 3 Dog Knife knives for Gentleman Junkie giveaways. They're beautiful, they're outdoor-oriented fixed blade knives and a number of them are Tantos. And I always thought a Tanto would make a great outdoor knife, as an indoorsman myself, I always thought Tantos would excel at outdoors tasks.

But that was really sort of corroborated by Mike over at 3 Dog Knife and Northern Knives, as well as say Trevor Burger, the designer of this knife. Now 3 Dog Knife, they have a number of different outdoors knives, but this one is designed by Forged in Fire winner Trevor Burger, an Alaska knife maker, and he makes stuff for outdoors. Anyway, you go over there, go to thenifejunkie.com/3dogknife and buy one of these awesome outdoors knives. You'll love the Riot, I know you will. You'll get 25% off when you use 'knifejunkie' at checkout. So a great deal coming to us from 3 Dog Knife. Look at the beautiful sheath, Dee Johnston, an Alaska sheath maker making their sheaths. Beautiful, beautiful stuff. This one I have not carried, this one is mine. I've carried their multiple animal knife, their MAK knife, just out in my back 40 square feet and have really enjoyed it. It's a great knife, that one's an M390. This one's 52100. Lots of great outdoor knives at 3 Dog Knife.

All right, next up, let me wet the whistle with some coffee here. I want to talk about a beautiful giveaway knife we have this month from Knives by Nuge. Thank you for finding this for me. Tom of Knives by Nuge, Tom Nugent, dug this up for me. I asked him to send me a knife, I wanted to get a knife, buy a knife so that I could give it to one of y'all Gentleman Junkies. And I have been so into the Knives by Nuge knives. You know I have this one, except it's wrapped with jute cord and I wear it as a neck knife. Well, this is the Wicket, this one is textured. So it's got a Micarta handle, textured with those beautiful copper tubes and a full flat grind. Mine has a Scandi grind and is a little less thick in hand. This is a perfect thickness here for a small three-finger knife like this. Beautiful with its ambidextrous sheath and DCC style clip.

Tom has really perfected this style of sheath, and we're going to be giving this away to one lucky Gentleman Junkie this month. So we do giveaways pretty much every week on Thursday Night Knives, but the third Thursday of the month is reserved for our YouTube members and our Gentleman Junkies from Patreon. And we give away an extra special knife on that night. Something custom usually, something handmade often times. So join us there on thenifejunkie.com/patreon.

And before I leave the whole Patreon topic, let me just show you these awesome comics that Jim just came up with. He does them every Friday, they're called the Friday Funnies. And here you see a sort of a version of me there and a bunch of sort of funny knife-oriented humor here. So I know we'll all love this, nothing better than a single-frame comic and then you add knives to it. "You wanted something that sparkles". This particular one hits extra hard. Don't screw up on Valentine's Day, guys. Don't screw up. Take it from a guy who's now screwed up twice.

All right, so go check us out on Patreon. thenifejunkie.com/patreon. Again, that's thenifejunkie.com/patreon. Want to sell your custom knives online? With Launch Cart, you can easily create your own e-commerce store. No coding required. Launch Cart is designed for knife makers like you, with built-in tools to showcase your craftsmanship, manage orders, and grow your business. It's fast, flexible, and even includes low-cost payment processing to help you keep more of your profits. Start your online knife store today at thenifejunkie.com/launch and turn your passion into a business.

You're listening to The Knife Junkie Podcast, and now here's The Knife Junkie with the Knife Life News.

Bob DeMarco: All right, first up in Knife Life News, WE Knives. WE Knife Co., man, they're always releasing something new. So is Sencut, so is Civivi. WE Knife Co. has a new one, this is a handsome and very modern-looking knife called the Nivron. Nivron, I have not looked up what Nivron is. Usually, their weird names actually mean something. That is a beautiful, super clean, futuristic clip point design. That's a 3.8-inch blade, so a nice big clip point blade with a flipper and a weirdly compound ground blade. Weirdly meaning the compound grind is in the flats, not even in the edge bevel itself. So interesting there.

Beautiful double-finished blade and then a gorgeous kind of faceted, smooth titanium handle. Sculpted, that is not an actual bolster, that's just a slightly elevated portion of that titanium scale that's been polished differently from the rest so it looks like a faux bolster. Very, very nice looking. You've got that sculpted Ti pocket clip for one side, and that's the right side, meaning the correct side. And 4.36 ounces. This will be available soon, MSRP is $447. I imagine once it's ready to go they will have a more, you know, rounded out number instead of $447.

All right, next up from Boker, this is their Modern Club Knife. Now Boker is very famous for a lot of things, one of them is their slip joint knives. Well, they have now come out with this Club Knife, which is a sort of historic Jack-type pocket knife mixed with modern EDC trappings. So this is a 2.87-inch spear point blade of Nitro-V steel with a flipper. Not front flipper, the normal finger flipper there, you can see descending below the bolster. It's got a Ti frame, so that's all one cutout piece of titanium with Micarta covers nestled in there. But this one is a liner lock on the inside, so a little more complex than a slip joint knife. Liner lock there, you've got a reversible pocket clip. This one is 2.36 ounces. I think it's pretty nice looking. I don't know, I'm on the fence about it. I like the way Jack Wolf Knives modernizes their slip joint style knives. This one is nice, it's getting there, a little awkward. And that clip looks like they took it off the Civivi shelf. But that's just my little bit of editorializing. 2.36 ounces, available March 15th of 2026 for $115 MSRP.

Next up is from TOPS. Are you sick of the El Chete yet? They have another El Chete. This is becoming their Elementum. This is the Lil Chete. So they have the Mini Chete that's 5.5, and then they have like a Micro Chete that's like a pocket knife, and now this is the Lil Chete. So it's the smallest down from the original big boy. This has a 7.8-inch 1095 blade, you can see it's a big sturdy chopping sheep's foot with a slightly aggressive point. Quarter-inch thick, Cerakoted knife with the Micarta scales there, 50/50 choil and a full tang. Kydex sheath with a leather drop loop. 29.1 ounces. 29.1, I love that. 29.1 ounces, available now, $265. The way I see it is if you're going to get a Chete at all, whether it's the Micro, the Mini, the Lil, or the regular El Chete, go for the El Chete. Why not just go for the big one? It's a quarter-inch thick, a little bit longer, a little bit heavier presumably, but you'll get everything out of it that was originally intended. Either get the full size or the super micro, that's what I say. You either live in the woods or you live in the city, and here I live in the suburbs.

All right, next up, RoseCraft Blades. They have a new one called the Barren Fork Jack. And this is the first time they've had any 14C28N in their lineup, anything other than D2. Barren Fork is probably a river or creek, they name their knives after rivers and creeks. This one's another beautiful clip point, that seems to be Andy Armstrong's strong point, clip point blades. This one's beautiful, this is based on a knife from the 19th-century United Kingdom, Joseph Allen & Son slip joint. So this is based on that. I think that's really cool. Andy Armstrong, if you're a tourist or looking from afar, he designs a lot of single-bladed clip point Jacks. And you might think this guy's kind of obsessed. But really, he's basing these slip joints on old patterns, often times from England. And I think that's pretty cool. He's obviously got a nut for these UK 19th-century knives, I think it's cool. 2.9-inch clip point, 14C28N, again a little bit more stain-resistant than your D2. And I think it—well, I don't know, you tell me in the comments why you're happy it's 14C and not D2. Steel liners and bolsters, Micarta covers, available now, $62. Check it out, maybe Scab will do a cutting test with that one, that's a nice-looking knife there.

All right, still to come, we've got—we're going to take a look at some daggers in the State of the Collection. We're going to look at some great combat knives. But before we get to that, let us take a look at the Nessmuk.

Announcer: You're listening to The Knife Junkie Podcast. Here's some cool knife history with The Knife Junkie's The First Tool.

Bob DeMarco: In the late 1800s, when the American frontier was still wild and vast, a small wiry man stepped into the woods of Pennsylvania with a very big idea. His name was George Washington Sears, but the world knew him as Nessmuk. Sears was no towering mountain man, he weighed barely over 100 pounds, yet he out-traveled, out-camped, and out-thrived men twice his size. And he did it with lighter gear, especially lighter blades.

In 1884, he published Woodcraft, a book that quietly reshaped American camping culture. In it, he argued something radical for the time: You didn't need a giant Bowie knife to survive in the woods, you needed the right knife. And remember, this is 20 years after the end of the American Civil War, camping culture was now starting to peak.

His solution was what we now call the Nessmuk knife, a short fixed blade with a distinctive humpback spine and a wide belly. The blade was usually about 4 inches long, thin behind the edge, and slightly curved at the tip. That sweeping belly made skinning and slicing effortless. The thinner grind meant better cutting performance with less effort. And the compact size kept weight down. Perfect for a man who believed ounces are pounds and pounds are pain. I know a lot of you out there can relate.

Nessmuk didn't stop at that one blade. He carried what enthusiasts now call the "Nessmuk Trio": a small fixed blade, a lightweight double-bit axe, and a folding knife. Who carries a double-bit axe? Together, they handled everything from splitting kindling to cleaning trout. At a time when oversized knives symbolized frontier toughness, Nessmuk quietly proved that efficiency mattered more than intimidation. His approach foreshadowed modern bushcraft thinking by nearly a century. Today, custom knife makers and major brands alike still produce Nessmuk-style knives. Collectors love history, outdoorsmen love performance, and every time a rounded blade glides through wood or game, it carries a whisper from the 19th-century woods. A small man, a small knife, a big shift in thinking. Because sometimes the first tool isn't the biggest blade on your belt, it's the one that works smartest in your head.

If you like this sort of poetic waxing about knives and knife designs and traditional knives, modern knives, join us every Thursday night for Thursday Night Knives, 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, right here on YouTube. You will love it, it's a big old conversation around the fire pit or around the coffee table, whatever you like, and we just talk knives. That way your wives, your daughters, your uninterested friends, they don't have to hear it. I'll hear it, and I love it.

All right, now let's get to the State of the Collection. Why pay full price for gas and food? With the Upside app, you don't have to. Just open Upside, find nearby offers, and earn cash back when you buy gas or eat out. Pay like normal and get real money back in the app. No coupons, no hassle. Just easy savings on things you already buy. Download Upside today and start putting money back in your pocket. Learn more at thenifejunkie.com/saveongas.

Okay, we're going to talk about ten great combat knives today, but before we get there, I want to show off three daggers, four daggers like in Inglourious Basterds. I want to show you three daggers that are definitely combat knives, but they are not included in this lineup that we're going to do here. Because when I talk about combat knives, I'm talking about something that can flex between fighting and what they're usually used for: opening crates and MREs and digging around in the sand, whatever combat knives are doing, usually they're not fighting.

But I wanted to highlight three different daggers to show off a real fighting knife. This is—though it's called the Combat Stiletto—to me, you're not going to do too much with it in the field besides fight, and this is the Randall-made #2-7 Combat Stiletto. So it's a 7-inch double-edge blade, beautiful belly on both of those edges and a very subtle hollow grind to both. So it slices and it slashes, but it also is a great thrusting knife. This one has the Randall-made knives Commando style handle, so it's that symmetrical wasp-waisted handle there with an aluminum butt cap and bolt and a brass guard here, double quillion guard.

This was one of those lucky knives. Okay, I lived in Manhattan in New York back in the day, for me back in the day, and I always thought you get one good apartment while you live there, you luck into one great deal. And I did, and it was when my wife and I first started living together and we had a great big old place. That was our lucky strike. This was my lucky strike for knives because I always wanted a #2 Combat Stiletto from Randall-made knives. I always wanted it with the Commando style handle with stacked leather. This is exactly the Randall #2 I wanted, and it just so happened that The Knife Center had this at the time I wanted it. So check in with The Knife Center every now and then, you can score a sweet Randall-made knife like I did here. And by the way, their sheaths are just as nice as the knives. I know over the years they've used different sheath makers, this one is just incredible.

I want to show you two other daggers before we move on to combat knives in earnest. Next up is the Ek-44. Now this one is a modern version of the Ek made by KA-BAR Knives. John Ek was a knife maker who made commando daggers and some clip point knives for specialized combatants during World War II and Vietnam. And they're very beloved knives, and KA-BAR took up—picked up the torch and kept carrying it and I guess bought the rights to the Ek knife and now produces them in this. And this one was given to me by my good buddy Paul, he is a Gentleman Junkie here. Paul, you know who you are, thank you so much for this and he's given me some other really sweet gear and knives, but man this is—I love this knife. I've always loved the Ek knives and I think that this is an incredible design. I'd love to get some historical examples of it.

All right, now before we move from daggers onto combat knives, single-edge fighting and utility knives, one more dagger to show you. And this is one of the prizes of my collection, this is the Bill Harsey-designed Spartan Dagger in a beautiful Chattanooga Leatherworks sheath. Chattanooga Leatherworks is a part of the RMJ family, so the tomahawks and the knives and the sheaths, they're all down there in that part of the world and they all work together. So I love this thing, this is a Bill Harsey design. He's one of my very favorite knife designers out there, a former lumberjack from a lumberjack family. You'll see his maker's mark there next to the Spartan Blades hoplite helmet and crossed arrow, you'll see a giant fir tree. Bill Harsey Jr. comes from a family of lumberjacks as I mentioned, so fir tree is his maker's mark.

This thing is really the modern interpretation of the Fairbairn-Sykes if you ask me. It's got a really nicely ergonomic handle that takes the ergonomics of the Fairbairn-Sykes and pushes them all the way to where they need to be. Nice double guard here, 6-inch hollow ground double-edge blade. Just an outstanding dagger for all the daggery—all your daggery needs on the battlefield or in the back room. I don't know, daggers seem like assassins' knives, so wanted to show those off because they are incredible, but they are distinct from these knives here.

And before I get to these knives I'm about to show you, I want to show you a really cool design that Jim just came up with that you can get on even a teddy bear now. I mean, come on people, teddy bear, you got a water bottle, tote bag, hats, t-shirts, aprons, whatever. "Another knife? No honey, this one's different". Have we all had this conversation? "No honey, this is a Spyderco, and that's different from a Cold Steel, honey. Don't you get it? Every household needs each". So that's what this is really doing, this is explaining in a cute sort of way, "No honey, this is not the same knife, this is a different knife and it's necessary". Say it with a teddy bear.

Okay, let's get to some combat knives. First up, one that I think was born for combat and that has been rebranded more for outdoorsy and hunting, but as far as I'm concerned, it's still a great combat knife. This is the T.Kell Knives Outrider. And I say it was born of combat because this is the Sapper with a few less treatments. So the Sapper was a knife, is a knife made by T.Kell Knives, co-designed by Imry Morgenstern, who's an IDF soldier who specializes in ordnance disposal. So he's the guy that they send first searching around in the sand for land mines, and he would use his knife. He designed this knife for that purpose.

So the rounded pommel here is to fit in the butt of the hand, and on the original Sapper, there's a line that extends all the way to the tip that allows you to see where the tip is when the tip is submerged under the sand. You can extrapolate where it is and you can tell where you're poking, which is a big deal when you're searching for mines, apparently. But this is also just a great utility, do-everything knife. It's got a centerline point, so great for thrusting from all angles if you have to fight with it. A recurve, so great for slashing if you have to fight with it, but also great for chopping and all sorts of camp tasks with that recurve. So this one really is a do-everything knife.

It's got a nice guard if you have to do some of that grim stuff with the point, but it also has a choil to reach up into for close-in work if you're using this for what it's mostly likely going to be used for. And for combat, what I'm told, it's not fighting, it's more deployment stuff. Like I said, opening crates, opening MREs, cutting cord and all that stuff. Beautiful, beautiful sheath, pancake-style Kydex sheath with a retention screw here. So if you're jumping out of an airplane and you don't want this thing to come out no matter what, you slide this up, you screw it down, it tightens up that sheath and that blade is not coming out. I do not leave it like that, just in case, you know, my lifestyle, I might have to draw this knife at any moment.

Next up, I wanted to throw in a tip of the hat to the meta-combat knives, the knives that sort of inspired knives like the KA-BAR, which we'll obviously be seeing later on. And this is that knife right here. This is the Bark River Knives Boone 2. This is modern-made in Escanaba, Michigan, but it is a retread of a very old style of camping knife design. American and a very signature American pre-World War II outdoorsman knife with that clip point and the stacked leather handle, and in this case, aluminum pommel and guard. This is 3V steel, by the way. This was the kind of hunting knife and do-everything outdoors knife that a lot of young Americans were bringing with them on their deployments during World War II.

There were some knives that were being issued early on, but there was a major struggle with what design to settle on. I mean, they started with the 1918, which had too much brass and those brass knuckles were not effective for a do-everything combat knife, they were only good for like smashing faces and stabbing, killing. But they needed their knives to do a lot more than that, and so a lot of them had these hunting knives with them and these are the kind of knives that inspired the KA-BARs that came after them.

This one, like I said, modern, this is Bark River Knives, 3V steel, super nice convex grind on this and a beautiful leather sheath. I have been somewhat rough and rugged with this one, for me anyway, and I have batoned this through wood. I know you're thinking that's kind of silly, that's a rat-tang knife, and it's true. The only thing that it did was dislodge those spacers there, so I had to re-glue the spacers. So not really intended for that, but can handle it if need be. Beautiful, beautiful leather sheath.

Next up, this one is from TOPS. Now before I showed you the Wild Pig Hunter, a knife that I love, a knife that's close to my heart and a great combat knife no doubt, but this one just edges it out just slightly. And this is the Prather War Bowie. One of my favorite all-time designs from TOPS Knives. I know that this is a very popular knife for them, after it was retired it was brought back due to popular demand. I think mine is a pre-retirement, pre-re-release, and doesn't matter, one way or the other it's the same knife. It's 1095 blade steel with that black traction coating, a really long and swoopy sort of clip, which I always wished was sharpened, but you know, I'm not subtle in a lot of things.

You got this coffin-shaped handle, which is nice, and then the blade itself is the guard. So a nice wide blade creating nice big holes and capable of doing a lot of sort of shearing-type cutting, but also wide enough that if on a thrust your hand comes forward, it's not coming onto the blade because the blade itself is the guard. This one is sold with one of those kind of cheesy off-the-shelf TOPS nylon sheaths. I made a Kydex sheath for mine, and I've made a lot of Kydex and some of it sucks, some of it's great. I seem to have very little in the middle, but this one is one of those great sheaths I made I think, I'm very thankful that it's for this awesome knife, the TOPS Prather War Bowie.

Apparently, Mr. Prather, Jeff Prather, is problematic. I'm not sure exactly how, but there's a cool video of him using his Prather War Bowie and deploying it, so it's worth checking out. You might have to clutch your pearls as you watch.

All right, next up, this is from Very Good Knife Company. This is called the First Strike. And though I have no evidence that this has ever been used in combat, it seems like a great combat knife. This comes in—well, you can get it in many different configurations. Meaning, well, this comes in a full flat ground version, this is a saber ground hollow, so you might find that full flat grind is better for you. It's ground more like a Cold Steel Trail Master or Recon Scout, but it has that really nice clip point shape, and I've also seen this done with a double edge, with a fully sharpened swedge and a shorter handle. So he can go larger or smaller on these with different grinds, but they're just amazing and Jacob—I'm sorry, Jacob Aswad of Very Good Knife Company is an incredible knife maker, he makes each one of these by hand and he cranks them out, man. He really, really cranks them out.

This is one of the most comfortable handles I've ever held in my hand, and you can easily grip it all day long in sort of a tough sort of fist hammer grip, or it's long enough that with my hand I can hold it in a saber grip, you know, when I'm fighting with it, which happens all the time. 80CRV2, Jacob Aswad and Very Good Knife Company make incredible knives. This one just happens to be my favorite, but they make a lot of really, really cool knives. If you're a hunter or an outdoorsman or someone who carries an everyday fixed blade knife, you might be interested in checking them out. Awesome, awesome stuff and reasonably priced. This one I got at Blade Show 2025.

All right, next up, this is a recent acquisition and a grown-up version of one I already have. This is the Cal Richardson, Calvin Richardson-designed Work Tuff Gear Steadfast L, L standing for Large. That's a 7-and-a-half inch blade. I have the 5-and-a-half inch, which is a great field knife, but does not have the same sort of combat feel as this. It has that same clip point blade, albeit shorter naturally, and so differently shaped but same sort of setup. There is no jimping on the thumb ramp of the original Steadfast, the 5-and-a-half inch.

Everything about this one really just dials in the design from the 5-and-a-half. I'm so glad they came out with this one. It's perfectly proportioned handle-to-blade. It's very, very sharp nearly convex grind, and tough K329 steel. Really, really great knife. And I love the handle, the ergonomics of it feel great, the fluting on the contoured G10 is so nice and everything about this knife is superior. I love it, and it fits great in that taco-style sheath.

Now often times Work Tuff Gear sheaths are too big, they just take up too much square footage, if you will. This one is better, better. I still see ways they could slim it down, still not making it a taco-style sheath. Just reduces the amount of lashing options you have. Lastly, before I let this one go, the dangler, this sheath is great. I got this over Christmas break and so was—had this dangling from my belt pretty much every day while I was home and around the house, and huge fan of this knife. Great combat knife.

All right, next up is a classic, this is the SOG, in this case, the MACV-SOG Super Bowie from SOG Knives. So it's got that emblematic double-peaked MACV-SOG Bowie-style blade, I'm a huge fan of that just aesthetically. Just really captures my imagination, I love the way that looks. This one is a quarter-inch thick, nice and thick AUS-8A steel, a deeply hollow ground on both the bevel and the swedge, super sharp. This thing has been used for nothing but carried for confidence many times.

And it's got that cool shark tooth tip, so SOG will do this thing where they just basically sharpen the swedge at the very, very tip and it aids in penetration. It also aids in back cutting if that's something you're going to do with this knife. Beautiful stacked leather handle, that's something we're seeing in a lot of combat knives in this list anyway, I'm a sucker for stacked leather. You have an aluminum pommel and an aluminum double guard. Very comfortable with those finger grooves, this thing just melts into the hand. That's a 7-inch blade, so a large version of the MACV-SOG.

I still want to get the original 6-inch bladed version one of these days I will, but in the meantime, this'll have to do. Beautiful old leather sheath. I got my brother a modern version of the 6-inch, the knife I was just saying I want. I got him a version of it, showed it off here on the show about a year ago, and it has a leather sheath but the leather is just not as nice, and I'm thinking it's not going to age as beautifully as mine has. Hopefully, it does.

All right, next up, this is a classic and a modern put together. This is the Randall-made Knives #16-7 SP #1. So it's the model 16, you can tell that from the handle with all of the finger grooves, the 14 also has the finger grooves, but the number 16 is classically a dive knife. They removed the drop point sawback dive blade from it and added the number 1 fighting blade. So that's why this is the 16-7, 7 refers to the blade length, and SP number 1 means special number 1 blade.

So it's got the number 1 style blade. All right, so when Randall-made Knives first became big during World War II and were being made and sent over there, the model 1 was the knife and that was the blade. Beautiful clip point blade with a straight clip sharpened up to here as are most Randall knives, even the dedicated hunting knives have sharpened swedges which I just think is cool personally.

This one with that beautiful brass guard has, you know, it tarnishes and I have to polish it every once in a while, but just a classic. I can't imagine wanting much more out of a combat knife than this. This is 440 steel, so you might snicker at that, but you know what? It did fine for people—for men of much stouter spirit than you, my friend, and myself, of course.

In the hands of a soldier during World War II, 440 was just fine. This is a channel sort of construction, so it's got a full tang but the tang does not follow the contours of the fingers and they fit in a well here and they are epoxied in and then your mechanical connection is right there with that tube. So just a bred fighting knife, you know, fight first utility second, and just a great knife. Also an amazing sheath as I mentioned earlier, they make just gorgeous sheaths here at Randall-made Knives, this one has the pouch with the sharpening stone.

All right, next up, took me a while to get to it, but the classic USMC KA-BAR. Now this one, my brother gave to me in the early '90s, must have been '91 or '92 and at the time KA-BAR Knives, this was a re-release of their World War II design. So when the Department of War put out a—not a recommendation—a—well, they put out a purchase request basically for a combat knife that could be used across the services and they put all the requirements of the knife, what the knife had to be able to do and they put those requirements out there and companies like KA-BAR and Camillus and others bid on the job.

This is what KA-BAR came up with. So this is their first KA-BAR USMC fighting utility knife and it's got that clip point design with that sharpened swedge, that swedge is very sharp, so makes a great fighting knife, turn it upside down use it like a hawkbill blade but also stout and sturdy enough to open crates and MREs and everything else you need to cut in combat. This one has a thin tang that is held on by a cap with a screw—or a pin I should say—that goes through—in I should say—there's the head of the pin, holds the cap on and the stacked leather handle. Beautiful sheath here from this 1991 re-issue, you got the staples and the stitching, so time-accurate, period-accurate, I should say. That is the KA-BAR, the USMC KA-BAR. And you can get that knife for in its different colors and variations for the different branches of the military, you can even get it in blue and gray for Space Force. I would like to get a Space Force KA-BAR.

All right, penultimate in this list here is the SRK. This is the Cold Steel Survival Rescue Knife, SRK. Now I have a lot of different Cold Steel knives, they would all make great—many of them would make great combat knives, but I had to go with this one because it's the least—it's the least overdone. The Trail Master or the Recon Scout would be great, I don't own the Recon Scout but the Trail Master would be great, but it's a little big is what I'm hearing. If you're a combat Marine or soldier and you've got magazines and weapons and all sorts of gear on you, the last thing you need is a giant Bowie knife flopping around.

So the SRK has a lot of that—of the qualities of the Trail Master but just smaller. It's got that clip point blade, it's got a zero ground swedge, so a great thruster. You can even use this in a pinch as a back—you know, as a fighting knife. A great 6-inch blade, this one is in Carbon V steel, this one was made in the USA which is cool, this is an old one, this is from 2005. The handle is Kray-Ex, nice and big, it's grippy, it's soft, it will absorb shock but it also is nicely contoured, a great sheath. Everything about this knife is awesome, and this is why I'm told it is issued to Navy SEALs during their BUDS training. And you know, I haven't had that corroborated in person, but I do know that's what people say.

So if you are a Navy SEAL and you're listening to this by chance, let us know if you were issued one of these or what you were issued as a knife during BUDS training and all that. Look at that swedge, nice and sharp, I do love that, your baton won't love it but hey, you know, a knife has to fit a lot of different purposes, batoning could be one of them. This knife I originally bought for my wife when she moved to London for a year, the year was 2006, this was right before we got married and she was opening up an office for the company she worked for over there and I wanted her to have a bug-out bag. So I made her a bug-out bag, sent it to her in the mail, and this was the knife for that bug-out bag.

That bug-out bag still exists, but you know, when you live in a house they're a little more essential when you live in the city, you want to be able to grab something and go if you're being evacuated. That's when I started making bug-out bags right after 9/11, I lived in New York so we got big into bug-out bags then. Now we still have them but they're integrated into the car and other places and the house itself is a big bug-out bag, so if I have to, I can grab stuff and run with the way we're set up now.

All right, last one here is from Spartan Blades and it is the Kukri. Show you this, Spartan Blades makes a lot of really great combat knives. I don't have them all, wish I did, but this one would be right at home it seems on the battlefield. Because, well, for a number of reasons. First of all, it's ergonomic, it feels great in the hand, it's got a nice 7-and-a-half inch blade, it's got a recurve, a deep kukri recurve and yet the point remains somewhat midline. So you have the orientation of a more straight knife with that tip to the handle but you still get that incredible chopping and shearing power with that recurve, also slashing, heaven forbid you need to slash this at anyone.

If you needed to slash this at a rope it'd be great for cutting, let's put it that way. You've got a really nice contoured handle, this is Bill Harsey all day long with that handle, it looks like the Gerber Rock handle, it's a very Harsey-an shape. You've got a quarter-inch thick piece of 1095 Cro-Van steel and then nicely blackly coated not only to protect the steel from corrosion but also to dampen the shine when you're doing night ops. You got this in your hand, night ops, right?

So that's it, that is my list of current favorite combat knives. Some of them may differ from what you see as a combat knife, but let me know. To me, it's got to be single-edged because it's got to do more than just fight, and a lot of people who just fight with knives also don't like the double edge. So I just figured this should be single-edged combat knives, but I'd give a little to the dagger people.

All right, well, thanks for watching. Be sure to join us on Thursday Night Knives, every Thursday night at 10 PM Eastern Standard Time, watch the shorts, watch the videos, leave a comment and join. Remember when we get to 50,000 subscribers, the great and powerful Dirk Pinkerton will be making us a custom fixed blade knife that I will be giving away on a Thursday during Thursday Night Knives after we hit 50K. So we got about 4,000 to go, 4,000 and a bit of change, so please tell your friends, tell everyone who might want a Dirk Pinkerton to sign up.

All right, for Jim working his magic behind the switcher, I'm Bob DeMarco saying until next time, don't take dull for an answer. Thanks for listening to The Knife Junkie Podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate and review at https://www.reviewthepodcast.com. For show notes for today's episode, additional resources and to listen to past episodes, visit our website, https://www.theknifejunkie.com. You can also watch our latest videos on YouTube at thenifejunkie.com/youtube.