Regardless of your budget, you need a
good survival knife as part of your bug out bag. If you’re like most preppers,
you want the best knife you can get for your money – but you also have to
consider balancing out how much you can spend on any single item when you’re on
a tight budget.
You may want a cheap (inexpensive) edc
knife, but that doesn’t mean you need a cheap (quality) knife.
Most high-quality knives easily run
$150 and up, with custom options going above and beyond even $500. While that’s
nice if you can afford it, chances are you need a few knives around, one for
your main bag, another for your get home bag. And they need to perform if the
need arises.
Quality
When looking at quality edc knives at an affordable price, we wanted good knives, made by
manufacturers with a reputation for great knives. This isn’t the place to find
cheap knockoffs; we wanted options you could use in the field and be proud of.
Size
We wanted to look at knives that were
right in the middle on size. There are much smaller knives (less blade
material, less production cost), but they often lacked the minimum amount of
blade necessary for a “general use” survival knife. Each of these every day
carry knives feature a blade 4.1″ to 5.2″ in length which is a great size for a
medium knife. While bigger knives were available in the same price range,
comparing survival knives to machetes just isn’t a proper apples to apple
comparison.
Affordability
The knives that made the list are all
under $50 on Amazon, which should be affordable for any prepper or budding
survivalist. While there are a lot of good knives in the $50-100 range, we stuck
to a firm $50 limit for this list as we wanted 3 knives that were all within
about $17 of each other.
The least expensive of the 3 knives,
the Mora Bushcraft is a great first survival edc knife for a beginning prepper,
or the perfect backup knife when paired with a more expensive primary knife.
This Mora knife is shorter and has a thinner blade than other comparable knives.
Not to say this knife isn’t of high quality – there are few stories of people
managing to break a Mora.
Its 4.3" blade made of
high-quality stainless steel and 0.10" (2.5 mm) thick. The knife features
plastic made high-friction grip handle and with a belt clip sheath. The
Morakniv Bushcraft full length 9.1" weight only 5.0 oz as well as comes
with limited lifetime manufacturer’s warranty.
The only major complaint about this
particular knife is the rounded spine, which doesn’t seem to take well to use with
Ferro rod fire starters. I take that complaint minimally, as most starters come
with their own striker, and I’d prefer NOT to use my blade if I don’t have to.
The Schrade SCHF10 comes in with our
biggest blade at 5.2″ and is all around a good, meaty knife that performs well.
The micarta handles is molded well to provide great grip, even in wet
conditions. Also, it has a lanyard hole. The 1/4″ thick blade makes for a solid
knife that can take a beating but is still fairly well balanced and capable of
accurate cuts as well as more bruising tasks. It has all the features you’d
expect in a good edc knife under 50 dollars.
To protect this 10.5" knife
Schrade provides a heavy duty Nylon sheath with an additional pouch for a
sharpener, Ferro rod, tactical flashlight or other accessories. Most
importantly the manufacturer offers a limited lifetime warranty for this
Schrade SCHF10-BRK Fixed Blade Survival knife.
The negatives are this knife’s alleged
sharpness from the factory. Having not tested other Schrade knives, we don’t
know if that’s just a shipping standard with the company or just a bad run.
That said, you should always sharpen your new knife prior to use anyway – so we
think it’s a stupid complaint.
The SOG SEAL Pup knife is another great
every day carry knife with a proven history of use by Special Forces operators.
It has a 4.75” AUS-8 stainless steel made quality thick blade which is
partially serrated and powder coated. You would be surprised to know that this
inexpensive knife’s blade made of SOG’s patented cryogenic heat treatment
method.
The ergonomic finger grooves handle of
this knife made out of Glass-reinforced nylon. There is a lanyard hole bottom
of the handle. This SOG SEAL Pup Survival EDC Knife comes with MOLLE-COMPATIBLE
SHEATH and limited lifetime warranty. The full tang knife has 9” overall length
weight with sheath 5.4 ounces.
My only issue with this knife is only
because the model looked at under $50 had the partially serrated edge blade.
For about $10 more on Amazon, you can move up in the knife to a slightly longer
blade that is a plain flat blade without serration. I would buy the better
model if I had the extra $10, but this list was only looking at the sub-$50
models.
Conclusion
You can’t go wrong with any of the
knives mentioned here. They are all high-quality knives under $50 from manufacturers with a
reputation for great knives that will perform. If you’re looking for a
secondary knife for your bag or a good, inexpensive knife for a secondary bag –
these are the best of the group.
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