Field testing the Skrama bush knife

A few posts ago, I gave you my initial impressions of the Skrama knife from Varusteleka. Cutting tomatoes and paper is all well and good, but it’s not a useful indicator of what an outdoorsman’s blade can do, so I drove out to the country the first weekend of December to do some real winter woods testing of the Skrama.

The temperature was about -3°C/26.5°F that Sunday. Not exactly a frigid North Pole winter day, but below freezing nonetheless. The scenery around the property invited me to photograph it, so I’ll show you some of my surroundings first.

Once I had found a good spot to do the testing, I put down my pack and took out…unleashed, if you will…the Skrama. 😉 I decided to test its chopping abilities first and located a live hardwood sapling and dead pine sapling for the tests. The live hardwood sapling fell after six easy blows. The dead pine sapling took a few more swings, on account of its being seasoned and hard. I liked how the blade cut deep without using excessive force. I found that I naturally choked all the way down on the handle for this heavier chopping and preferred to chop with the middle of the blade. At no point while chopping was there any uncomfortable vibrating of the handle which can occur with some large knives.

After chopping down the saplings, I dragged them to an open spot on a small hill to continue my testing there. I wanted to turn the pine into firewood, so I sectioned it into manageable pieces with the bush knife. Three or four chops around the circumference and a swift kick were all that was needed to break off each piece. The thinner pieces broke off without a kick.

The next step in my firewood prep was splitting, but instead of using just another section of the pine to split with, I thought I’d use the Skrama to make a baton out of part of the hardwood sapling. After chopping off a section, I choked up on the handle to just below the blade and used light, controlled blows to carve out a handle. The great balance of the knife made it easy to be very accurate while doing this light chopping.

Then I whittled the handle down a bit further to smooth it out. The Skrama is obviously not a carving knife, but it’ll do the trick for “camp implement” carving.

Now that my baton was ready, I could commence splitting. I was very pleased with how readily the blade went through the wood, and the knotty section at the bottom barely slowed it down. I liked that I didn’t have to be afraid to beat on the knife while batoning, something you have to be careful about with less-robust knives.

The final step in one-stick fire prep (for me), is to make shavings/feather sticks, so that’s what I did. As you can see, the Skrama got the job done well enough. Again, fine work is not something I’d want to do all day with this knife, but to be honest it’s not really built for that anyway. It’s good to know that it can do it, though!

Out of curiosity, I experimented with this blade as a drawknife of sorts for removing bark from the hardwood sapling. It excelled at the task.

Being a large-bladed knife with a long handle, the Skrama is just begging to be used for slash cutting/machete work, at least in my mind. I dispatched a few hardwood seedlings in the area with one easy swipe each. I know which tool I’ll be using next year to clear the willow seedlings and saplings from the fields on the other part of the property!

My final test of the day was going to be some finer carving using the tip of the blade. I came up with an idea for a cooking rig and started working on it when a photo blogger’s nightmare came true: My camera died. Not just the battery, but the camera itself. When I turned it on, the telescopic lens would not come out. Well, that was that for picture taking. I made an “arrow nock” in the end of a large forked stick, and the tip of the Skrama pretty easily handled the finer work for this end notch.

Before putting the knife away for the day, I quickly checked to see how the edge had held up. It was still surprisingly sharp, though I might touch it up a bit if I want to cut any more tomatoes with it. 😀 I think this shows that Varusteleka/Laurin Metalli did a very good job with the heat treat and sharpening of the knife.

Conclusion

The Skrama is a great chopper of both seasoned and green wood, splits and slash-cuts impressively and can do finer work as well, though I’d probably want to pair it with a much smaller knife if I have a lot of smaller work to be done. The handle does allow for a variety of different grips and holds, which aids in the knife’s versatility. One thing I was surprised about while using the knife was that there was little need to “get to know” the knife, in other words, to work with it for a while to figure out how to use it best. This shows the thought and effort that went into its design. Because of the Skrama’s solid construction and materials, I was not afraid to use it roughly, toss it in the snow etc., and there was no danger of it slipping out of my hand thanks to the handle’s material and texture. By the way, this knife is full tang (the metal ring on the bottom of the handle is an extension of the tang).

In my opinion, the Skrama lives up to its claims as being a rugged, multipurpose wilderness blade, and then some. I would not hesitate to recommend this knife to someone looking for a solid tool for a variety of uses and situations.

While collecting info on the Skrama, I went back to Varusteleka’s website and saw that the leather sheath they designed and make for the knife is now available and that the knife itself is currently on sale for €55.25 ($75 USD) until this coming Sunday, December 15th.