Outdoor Life Prepare for Anything Survival Manual (45 page)

Who doesn’t want to be the guy with the biggest knife—one so intimidating it makes everyone else flee in terror? But choosing the right knife for self-defense can be tricky. If you’re dead set on a blade, consider these two criteria.

HANDLE
As important as the blade is where you hold onto it. Choose a handle a little longer than your grip so you can strike with the handle as well as the blade. Go for a handle with a pommel (a knob on the hilt) for this purpose. Make sure the grip doesn’t get slippery when it gets wet. You’ll also have a firmer grip with an oval handle rather than a round one. Look for a hilt guard to help protect your hand from your opponent’s blade.

BLADE
Look for a double-edged blade to give you greater versatility and a longer edge. Be sure the point doesn’t taper too sharply, so that the tip doesn’t break if you strike something hard. And consider the finish—if concealment is a concern, then go with something matte, but a bright, polished blade is more intimidating. Keep in mind that fixed blades beat folding blades for strength and speed.

The biggest, baddest knife won’t help you at all if you don’t know how to wield it. That knowledge starts with a solid base, or fighting stance. The key to this is to maintain your balance. Keep your feet shoulder width apart, weight evenly distributed between the legs, and knees slightly bent. Try to turn your body sideways to your opponent, which makes you a smaller target.

Too many people focus too intently on the knife hand. The real game-changer comes from your free hand. In an extreme survival situation, you may need to think of this hand as expendable; keep it close to your torso as a shield for vital organs. You can also use it as a distraction, throwing things at your opponent or grabbing his blade. This hand also will help you keep your balance if you’re moving over unstable terrain. Don’t forget, there’s no such thing as a clean technique here. Cut and cut often. And if you see an opportunity to land a punch with your free hand, make it count.

You have four choices when it comes to gripping your knife for combat, but only one of them is really ideal. If you’re caught unawares or fighting a novice, it can be useful to understand the reasons that some grips are not so great—especially since you may have seen (or used) them in the past, or might be up against someone who “learned” to fight from the movies. See the chart below to learn the right way to hold onto your blade, how to make the wrong ways work for you if you must, and how to use your opponent’s grip against him.

GRIP

Often relegated to the balloon-popping world of a sideshow act or a pivotal scene in an action flick, knife throwing does have a legitimate place in your real-world self-defense skills. And while you don’t usually want to throw away your weapon, there are times when you might need to fight at a distance or skewer a small game animal, both of which can be accomplished with the art of knife throwing.

UNDERHANDED OR OVERHANDED
Only experience will tell you whether you are naturally better at underhanded or overhanded knife throwing. Both can work, and both should be practiced, but it makes sense to know where your strengths lie. Select a well-balanced knife or, better yet, a set of throwing knives. Spend a few hours practicing to develop your aiming and throwing skills, and then keep going until you become proficient. Every knife throws differently, and range has a great bearing on your throwing as well. Close range may only require a light flick of the knife, while longer range will be more like a baseball throw.

OVERHANDED TECHNIQUE
Grip a normal knife by the blade, with the knife’s spine (the square edge) against your hand. Hold the knife up, with the knife handle up by your ear. Take aim at your target, and bring your arm down as if you were swinging a hammer to drive a nail. The timing of the knife release is critical, and after a few minutes, you’ll start to get the hang of it. Pay close attention to the distance from your target, and get a feel for throwing at different distances. If you are using a throwing knife, you will want to learn to throw by both the handle and the blade.

UNDERHANDED TECHNIQUE
This can allow you to attempt something of a surprise attack, as the knife is often hard to spot when held in this low position. Grip the blade similarly to the overhanded technique, this time holding the knife down by your knee, with the handle pointed toward the ground. Move your arm quickly upward, and release just before your arm lines up with the target.

Putting a keen edge on your knife is almost as important as carrying the knife in the first place. A dull knife won’t cut very much and is more likely to cause injury to its owner. Good equipment is an important part of the task, but with the right technique you can literally sharpen a knife on a rock.

STEP 1
Survey the damage to see just how dull your knife really is. Look for nicks in the edge, and try cutting a piece of paper to test the edge. Deep nicks and no paper cutting mean you’re going to have a lot of sharpening ahead of you.

STEP 2
Determine the edge angle of your knife. Depending on the make and model, the actual edge may have a different angle than the sides of the knife blade.

STEP 3
File away any nicks with a bastard file or a coarse sharpening stone, while maintaining the proper edge angle (most knives have a bevel angle of roughly 20 to 23 degrees). If there are no nicks, go down each side of the edge twice with a coarse stone.

STEP 4
Sharpen with a medium-grit sharpening stone, twice on each side, and finish by doing the same with a fine stone. Grind the edge using little circles and count as you go, making the same number of strokes on each side of the blade.

STEP 5
Finally, to remove burrs and polish the edge, strop the blade against a leather belt or a smooth log. Draw the spine of the knife forward, dragging the sharp edge against the stropping surface. Strop each side several times, then test for sharpness.