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Welcome back to knifehog.com, I'm Anne Royall. Today we'll be reviewing one of the most popular
knives to hit the market in decades, the Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival Knife. Made by Gerber
in collaboration with the star of Man vs. Wild, the Ultimate Survival Knife aims to
capitalize on the popularity of Bear Grylls. Does it? Let's find out.
On paper, the Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival Knife has a lot of capability. It's a fixed
blade knife with a full tang. There is a hammer pommel with an attached whistle on the lanyard,
a fire starter and a sheath with an attached sharpening stone. You're getting a lot of
extras with this knife, but how does the knife perform? Well, as the name suggests, this
is supposed to be a tough survival knife that can handle the kinds of jobs you need to perform
while surviving in the wild. In reality, the construction, particularly the handle, is
so poor that it's almost useless for buttoning or hammering unless you want it to fall apart.
The Ultimate Survival Knife was manufactured in China and the quality is that of a cheap
mass produced discount knife, which is what this is.
It can function as a throw away backup knife but under no circumstances would I want to
have to rely on this Bear Grylls blade in a survival situation. Gerber doesn't like
to let out the type of steel that it uses in its blade construction and I suspect that's
because they like to push junk steel on you and claim it as high quality.
The high carbon stainless steel that they use on the Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival Knife
is poor quality. Out of the box, the edge was dull and even after sharpening it loses
its edge quickly. The knife is partially serrated, I prefer a plain edge. But there is nothing
really wrong with the blade design. The blade is 4.8" long so you have plenty of knife to
work with and the knife weighs 11.2 oz. There will be plenty of force behind your cuts.
The Ultimate Survival Knife has a drop-point design with a swedge on the top. It's designed
to handle a host of different tasks in the field and if it was just a question of the
blade, it would be adequate. I need to touch on all the other features
of the Bear Grylls Survival Knife briefly. First, there is the whistle attached to the
lanyard: It stinks and you can barely hear it from fifty yards away. The fire starter
works pretty well, but I wish the rod was longer. The sheath is ugly as sin but it works.
My main problem with the sheath is that it feels bulky and isn't comfortable to wear.
The built in knife sharpener was a nice idea, but in reality I think it makes the sheath
too cumbersome so I could have done without it. I think they tried to do too much with
the knife while trying to keep it affordable and the result is a knife that isn't great
at any one thing but is bad at all of them. The Bear Grylls Ultimate Survival Knife is
a piece of junk that Gerber cranked out quickly and has been able to sell because of the celebrity
name slapped on it. If you are seriously interested in a survival knife, don't be fooled. There
are much better knives available at the same price.
I have serious doubts that Bear Grylls or anyone else would survive longer than twenty
minutes in the wild if they had to rely on this knife. It breaks, it's cheaply made and
that's the bottom line. We here at Knifehog give this knife 1 out of 5 stars. If you'd
really like to press your luck and give this knife a shot, I'm sure you could find one
on the market for about $40. For all things sharp, buy now at Knifehog.com