Come look around our tactical knife reviews and guides for a sturdy utility blade to carry for emergencies, or a quick-access neck knife for protection. It’s rough when any knife fails on you, but it’s a lot worse when they fail in life or death situations. We do our best to test and review tactical knives for their ability to be deployed quickly, cut reliably, and stand up to the rigors of an emergency.
Many of our writers have backgrounds in law enforcement, military, and martial arts, and are well acquainted with what elements of a knife make it vital in critical situations. We also really like playing with knives and have developed a sense of what makes knives dangerous over many years of stupid mistakes made during hazy dares and overconfident demonstrations. So we like to think we have the full spectrum of expertise in this area.
An Unapologetically Overbuilt Hard-Use Flipper That is Right at Home on a Job Site or a Campsite. The Off-Grid Viper V2 makes no attempt at disguising itself as a lightweight gentleman’s folder. It is big, and thick and it has the lines of a fighter jet. Words like, subdued or sophisticated don’t usually find themselves …
Camping with Mike Wallace’s Pennsylvania Church Knife. The Perfect Hard Use Gentleman’s Folder to Spruce Things Up Outdoors The Strategy feels like a Cold Steel knife that bought a nice suit and switched to drinking whiskey instead of beer. But the secret of this knife is that it’s not actually an EDC; it’s a camping …
Another Military Fixed Blade Design Evolved for the Campground Zero Tolerance dropped into Shot Show 2023 with this thing and the rest of us had to put on water wings to wade through the drool. It’s the slightly more camp knife-oriented version of the ZT-9 Bayonet designed by Mike Strider. It’s a little smaller and …
This Flashy Flipper Lives Up to Its Looks This thing is a lot to look at. By all rights I should be calling it a gimmicky toy of a thing, made more for the agitated hand than for any particular job, and maybe there would be a little truth to that. But I’ll be damned …
Joe Flowers Brings the Dagger to the Bush The Wreckhart is an oddly satisfying amalgamation of knife design philosophy. I’m not sure it’s the most effective amalgamation, but it’s fun, and ultimately useful. This knife is meant to be the result of a hypothetical meeting between Horace Kephart (the professional camper who wrote Camping and …
Any discussion of the Ek Commando knives has to begin with a long line of stiletto inspired knives. Like the Fairbairn-Sykes, the Marine Raider knives, and the V42, the Ek Commando was double-edged and built for stabbing. These knives were designed for special operations units that, optimally, worked with the element of surprise and the …
An Award-winning Tactical Fixed-blade Design That Turned Out To Be An Unexpectedly Good Utility/EDC Knife As Well One-and-a-half decades of experience with knives has left me with one, overriding article of faith: that your blades will, sooner or later, reveal themselves to be falling into one of three main categories. First, there are those few …
A Well Designed Pocket Bowie That May Be Civivi’s Next Classic EDC. Some folder designs seem built around a rather desperate premise: the company needs something new. Others, like this build from Civivi, strike me as instant classics–designs that will likely define a long line of successors. There’s nothing half-baked or desperate about Civivi’s Sinisys. …
Antonio Rodriguez Hits The Knife Design Scene With a War Zone Ready Flipper That is as Fun as it is Versatile. Columbia River Knife and Tool has a new addition to their Forged by War line: the Taco Viper. For this odd snake, CRKT turned to knife designer Antonio Rodriguez, a veteran of the 82nd …
This Discontinued Tactical Classic is Worth Owning if You Can Track One Down. Let’s talk fighting knives. It is a sensitive topic, to be sure, but there’s no way to sugarcoat the intended purpose that defines Massad Ayoob’s contribution to the Spyderco lineup. The Massad Ayoob is a knife that is purpose-built as a tool …
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