A Comprehensive Look At RAT Cutlery’s New RC-5 Survival, Escape and Evasion Knife.
Note: As mentioned in our alert yesterday, we wanted to get the information out on the RC-5 quickly because of the anticipation for this new RAT Cutlery product. So, this review is based on what we could glean in the first 36 hours. We will be working more with the RC-5 and post up additional findings and observations in about one week.
There are certain magazines that some of us hold onto over the years, whether it’s American Handgunner, Wilderness Way, or, in my case, The American Survival Guide. It’s an interesting thing to open up a magazine and read the musings of a writer already well established in the industry and revered by the audience. The likes of those in the gun world were Jeff Cooper, Skeeter Skelton, Elmer Keith, and Jim Wilson. It’s a different experience, and more satisfying in some ways, to "grow up" with a writer as they are first starting out in a particular field. I’m glad I hung onto those old ASG issues so I could go back and nail down the first time I ran across the name Jeff Randall.
Jeff wrote an article for June, 1997 American Survival Guide called "Personal Protection Pets" and it was about having pets around to help alert family members to threats or to protect members in more dire circumstances. I don’t know if this was his first article, but it’s the first one I read by him, and I believe I’ve got most of them going back to the early 90’s.
The first thing we did was take it out of the box, look it over to see what jumped out at us, and then started snapping some pictures before we use it in the field tomorrow. Have you ever taken that next step down a staircase that you thought was there but wasn’t, and had that kind of jolt from the unexpected resistance from the floor? That was kind of the feeling i got when I picked up the RC-5. After I slid it of the box onto a couch, I was struck by how attractive the combination of colors in the knife and the sheath were. But, when I reached down to pick it up, I guess I was expecting a lighter weight product. It was like reaching down to pick up a brick and finding it had the weight of a cinder block.
First, it needs to be considered for whom the knife was actually deisgned. It could be for military personnel out in the field that have to use the knife to open heavy gear and bust bands on containers. Or, it could be for the downed pilot that needs a strong tool to pry open a door or hatch in an emergency. Either way, the extra thickness of the RC-5 adds to its overall strength and reliability. The owner would feel more comfortable pushing the limits of a knife this thick versus a thinner model. There are every days tasks that military and emergency people encounter that I can’t begin to count where the RC-5 would be a perfect model to take on the job.
Even with the extra thickness of the steel, the RC-5 has a saber grind to it, starting .75 inches under the spine. This grind helps reduce the girth of the lower half of the blade but still retains some thickness overall to ensure strength. In essence, you’re getting a balance of two worlds (almost) with a compromise in the overall design profile of the knife. You get durability and slicing capacity in the same knife. Speaking of compromise, this is a perfect time to bring up the blade length. There’s a lot of debate running in the various circles about the perfect blade length for a field knife or a survival knife. Usually, about 85% of the answers run somewhere between 4 to 7 inches. The user needs length to help with mass and momentum for chopping chores, but there’s also the portability factor along with other gear that needs to be counted as well. So, the RC-5 brings you basically into the middle ground again giving you a knife with sufficient weight (due to both length and thickness) for chopping chores, but it still has a short enough blade to not be unwieldy for smaller tasks that require more surgical precision. And, though not a flat grind blade, you still have the ability to take advantage of the handiness of the RC-5’s shorter length for finer work around the campsite.
Another addition to the features list is for the primitive traditionalist. The left grip slab has a divot in it for work with the bow and drill method of fire-starting. I’ll admit to not having any practical knowledge on how to make a fire that way, but I’m sure there’s plenty of folks that can take advantage of this benefit. Overall, the handle is nicely contoured for natural hand positioning. As I mentioned, it feels rock-solid in my hand. At the top of the grip is a deeper groove for the forefinger to help get a strong purchase on the knife, and to act somewhat as a guard for the first finger as well. The whole package, including the handle design, profile, and execution are superbly done, and I don’t think there are any knives in its class that feel or sit any better in the hand.
On the front of the sheath is a medium sized pocket where you can store whatever survival gear you like. You can add fire-starters, a compass, a sharpening stone, or whatever else you can think to fit inside of it. It has an elastic compression strap around the middle of the pocket to snug everything inside up against the body of the sheath so the contents don’t move around or fall out if the quick-snap buckle is not secured properly. This type of pocket has become more common in the past few years, and Eagle Industries does just as god a job of implementing the design as any other manufacturer that I have seen. So, after we’ve taken a look at all the different cosmetic and functional apsects of the knife and sheath design, where does that leave us? Well, we’re at the point where we hit the field with it and see if it performs as good as it looks, and as well as intended.
Day 2
There’s nothing like hitting the woods with a new knife to try out–especially when you’ve got high expectations. There’s a little more skip in your step, and there’s a bit more focus on trying to figure out what would make good real-world tests for the new product. Luckily, here in West Virginia, there’s plenty of woods about, and we’ve got our fair share here on our land. It takes all of about ten minutes to get to a spot where you can’t see or hear civilization and it is indistinguishable from any northwestern wilderness. That’s a bonus for me since I can cut to my heart’s content with nary a soul to be found in the way. So, sitting there in the woods, I thought about what uses a knife designed for survival, escape, and evasion would be used for, and I set about some of those tasks.
One of the primary considerations out in the wilderness is shelter–especially when you’re in an inclement environment. So, having a strong, flexible frame is the first step. That requires locating and cutting down saplings of just the right diameter to hold up under some stress, but not too large to overwork the builder. Think of terms of the thickness of a wooden handle on a shovel or a hoe (for those of you in Rio Linda, that’s not a gaudily-dressed female working street corners) and you’ll know what I was looking for. Once I located a copse of saplings, I had no problems chopping through eight of them in about 8-10 minutes with the RAT RC-5. I took another five to even out the lengths a bit, and I was ready to build a frame for a number of different types of shelters. There was enough dead wood, pine boughs and other debris from a recent windstorm to use for the roof of the shelter. So, that was easy enough to accomplish. Even with that, there are other tasks that you might want to do that requires some light chopping as well.
One such task is also a second consideration for your impromptu campsite–starting a fire. For that, I gathered all the kindling and tinder that I needed to get a blaze going, but it takes some bigger stuff to get a longer-lasting fire rolling. So, I found a slightly thicker tree and chopped it down. Once felled, I took off about three feet from that tree to make a baton for splitting wood with the RC-5. As I went through this chopping process and the first one mentioned above, I did notice some fatigue that came into my hand quickly. This happened because I had my hand backed up to the very end to get more momentum (as mentioned earlier), and trying to hold the handle there without any other support does tire the hand out quickly. But, that’s easily remedied by the lanyard being wrapped around the hand. The lanyard allows for secure chopping when holding very little of the handle, and it takes stress off the hand muscles allowing for an easier process. Keep in mind that this is a 5.25 inch blade, and that’s not the ideal length for chopping. But, with the lanyard in place during the chopping chores, the knife did its part in fine fashion!
Once the baton was finished, I took it over to the wood pile to see how the RC-5 would do splitting wood. As mentioned, there are some good and bad points to a knife that tries to balance its performance in different areas. The .25 inch thick blade gave me extreme confidence in the strength of the knife, so I had no problem beating on it with the baton to split the wood and it held up to all the abuse I could muster. However, the thickness of the blade and it’s short length works against you a bit once the spine is down flush with the top of the wood. First, as I mentioned earlier, the grind starts about halfway down the side of the blade, so once the thicker portion of the blade is into the wood, the edge of the blade has open space around it–because it’s thicker near the top. At this point, you’re no longer cutting into the wood to split it, you’re basically using brute force to drive the thickness of the blade through the wood. On top of that, with a 5.25 inch blade, you’ll run into occasions (with thicker wood) where only a little bit of the end is sticking out the other side. So, you’ll have to be precise with your baton strikes to make sure you’re hitting the exposed end of the blade. That’s where your leverage for splitting the wood is anyway, so you can’t be slopppy with your technique. Otherwise, you’ll spend a lot of time swinging the baton to no effect, and that’s just wasted energy.
So, is this the best blade for splitting wood? No, it’s not. Can you still split wood for a fire? Yes, you can. The benefit of a knife like this is that it can do multiple tasks, instead of being a specialty piece. You could make a blade profile that would glide through the grain of the wood more easily, but then you give up some of the knife’s strength and durability required for the other uses I mentioned earlier. I just point these things out so the user can practice and be proficient with their gear, so they’ll know how to handle different situations in the field. Sure, an 8 inch long blade would have plenty of reach through the wood and give you plenty of striking area on the other side for the baton. But, then you run into issues with portability. And, as most of us know, the easier it is to pack or carry gear, the more likely we’ll have it on us when it’s needed.
So, we’ve got shelter materials, and everything put together for a fire. What else is needed? Well, improvised tools and weapons may come in handy. One of the first things that come to mind and is one of the oldest weapons in human history is the spear. And, of course, we have all made these as kids, and we try not to look foolish when making one as an adult. But, there is something primal in making your own weapon from natural materials. The spear can give you more reach on an opponent, and it can be used for hunting game as well. But, take a step back from the full length spear and consider what can be done with shorter versions. You can make stakes for a deadfall trap, or you could make short spears to be use in sprung spear traps for game or protection. Also, you can make an improvised "knife", or better yet, you can make a double-ended knife out of a short piece of wood that could be used in defensive situations. Whatever you choose, the RAT RC-5 is up to the task. Using the cutting edge nearest the handle, I was able to swiftly pare down the end of a shaft to make quite a strong spear. I used the left-over length of tree used to make the baton, and I had the point finished in under three minutes. Fire-hardening it would be the final step to make it stronger and more durable. Just a few minutes spent, and I’ve multiplied my huting and defensive options significantly.
As far as the edge goes, as I mentioned, I had no problems quickly shaving down the point of the spear. In fact, as you can see in the picture, I got nice thin slices with the blade during that process. That said, the edge wasn’t what folks like to call "hair-popping" sharp. But, with a blade and grind of this type, I don’t think that’s what you really want. In circumstances where chopping and prying are a serious possiblity, you don’t want an edge that’s so fragile that it’ll break or give way during your work. But, while using the RC-5 to try and make a Figure 4 trap (I’m not showing the photo to avoid endless heckling from friends), I did think about something that I might try this coming week as I spend more time with the RC-5. I do not claim to be a sharpening guru, and don’t spend time on the sharpening forums (yes, there are forums on knife sharpening), but I gave consideration to "differentially sharpening" the first 1.5 to 2 inches of the cutting edge closest to the handle. By that, I mean to give the first bit of cutting edge a little different profile and make it sharper for the finer, more delicate work such as carving.
I don’t list this as a fault on the RC-5. This is not something that can be done practically on a production line and still keep prices where people expect them. Also, the edge is quite serviceable as it is right out of the box. When you do a review or decide on a product, you have to take into account what context was in mind when the manufacturer made it and put it on dealer shelves. And, as we’ve discussed throughout this article, there are a number of choices that have to be made with respect to particular design aspects–especially for tools that will be used in a variety of ways. There’s a very good and sound reason for this. There is no knife or tool that’s the best at everything. So, RAT Cutlery, like other manufacturers of similar products, have to decide exactly what attributes they have to compromise on to get the best balance of features and performance out of a given model.
Aside from all of the particulars relating to performance and specifications, there’s something also to be said for aesthetics and how something "feels". The RAT Cutlery RC-5 feels powerful, strong, and even sleek–despite its heft. It handles nicely and feels well balanced in the hand. For a do-it-all type of knife, I can’t tell you that this is the best knife for you. Only you can decide that. But, for me, it’s right at the top of the list. I would, however, strongly encourage you to pick one up and check it out for yourself. I’m betting you won’t put it back down!
Visit: www.ratcutlery.com