No help on the company, I’ve never run across them.

But, when it comes to your knife, you gotta learn to use a decent sharpening method if you’ll be using it while camping. Even good knives can end up duller than dammit doing camp work, and a damascus knife isn’t usually top pick for steel in situations that require high toughness. Like, if you’re only doing light work like cutting up food, gutting fish, maybe trimming some twigs for fire starting, anything will do. But for much else, you’ll want a stone like the worksharp field sharpener, and a little practice before you actually rely on a knife for real work.

Now, avoid pull through sharpeners unless you enjoy bad edges and damaging the tool you paid good money for. Shouldn’t use powered sharpeners either, they take way more effort to set up to not damage a knife than they’re worth unless you’re buying something water cooled.

Otherwise, keep it dry when not in use, keep it lightly oiled with mineral oil in the moving parts, and on the blade when stored. Damascus tends to be more rust prone than even regular carbon steel sometimes, better safe than sorry with oiling the blade.

Don’t hanmer things with a knife. Don’t stab a lot of harder things, no matter how tempting it is to just jam the point into a log sp you can grab it easy while working. Ideally, don’t let any part of your body cross the plane of the blade during use, opening, or closing (though that’s more knife safety, which you probably already are familiar with. If not, holla and I’ll give that basics of that).

Tbh though? I’d pick up a cheap Mora for the bulk of the heavy work, and save the one you’re talking about for light duty. A morakniv companion is about twenty bucks on the low end, new, and under 30 usd anywhere that isn’t a ripoff. Tough as hell, maybe a tad difficult to sharpen until you get used to the grind, but holds an edge through a day of medium duty work with no issues. Folding knives, even the best of them, tend to make compromises in terms of utility at camp so they can be folding. Won’t matter much if you won’t be doing a lot of wood work though, so it isn’t necessary to have a fixed blade for camping, I just prefer it overall.

Plus, even in strict places, a mora type of knife tends to be so obviously for utility that any but the most asshole of officials won’t bother you about it, even with the stricter of Canada’s laws I’ve read about. But that’s whatever, not really a major factor in picking a primary camping knife.

If you need to buy from outside Canada I would recommend sticking with a known good retailer like

https://www.knifecenter.com or

https://www.bladehq.com

I have only small anecdotal evidence that these are good places in Canada to buy from:

https://www.bladescanada.com/

https://cuttingedgecutleryco.com/

https://www.knifestorecanada.ca/

I do know you should avoid House of Knives in Canada at all costs.

maybe these knives are illegal in Canada

Where in Canada are you? Because there’s different rules per province/territory. I’m from BC and the laws are written in a super vague manner. There’s some bits that are quite clear, no switch blades, no gravity knives etc. Then bits that are like “must be of a reasonable length” that are written so regardless of how big the knife actually is, if you pissed off the officer, or they’re in a bad mood and wanna fuck with someone, or they fancy your knife and don’t want to pay for one of their own, they can take it or arrest you or w.e…

I can’t offer any advice on the company, but I can tell you the mistakes I’ve made.

#1 is not understanding how I carry knives. I have several beautiful, expensive knives which I never use, because it turns out I prefer to carry small knives. For example, I havea both a UTX-85 and a UTX-70, and the 70 gets far more pocket time. I really only carry the 85 around the house. My favorite knife may be my ZT0350 - it feels great, it’s a smooth flipper (assisted, so duh), and the steel is fantastic… but it’s a relative monster in my pocket, so it lives in a drawer. Then I have a cheapish higonakami knock-off that I carry almost everywhere, because it disappears in my pocket, and should anything stupid happen with cops, no-one is going to feel threatened or offended by its tiny blade, basic operation, and it doesn’t even lock!

You can’t go wrong with a Benchmade (although, you’re taking about a knock-off?). One of my favorite knifes, ever, it used to be my EDC (until the UTX70). I have lost multiple Griptillions to the TSA simply because of muscle memory. I’ve gifted Griptillions. I have two, right now, in my drawer. I love that they come in a variety of qualities, with different steels. They’re just good, well-made knives, and are the perfect size for me.

I think quality matters a lot, so if you can at all afford it, if I were you I’d skip the knock-off and go directly for the Benchmade brand. There’s a lot that goes into a flipper beyond the steel - the quality of the bearings, the grips, the locking mechanism - that all affect how much you’ll enjoy the knife.

But most importantly, IMO, for a first knife, understand what you’re going to be willing to carry in your pocket. A nice beefy blade is a great thing, but does you no good if it just sits in a drawer because it’s too much bulk for your pocket. Seriously. Some knives are like carrying a second wallet. If you’re the kind of person who doesn’t mind having their pockets bulging with stuff, then go for it. Or if you carry a purse, heck yeah: get the biggest your local laws allow. Otherwise, get one you know you’ll carry and use: experience will greatly affect your choice of your second knife.

You’ve gotten a lot of good advice, but let me throw in a few random suggestions…

I use Tuf-Glide on all my knives. You can spray it on or wipe it on with with a cloth. The stuff dries and bonds with the surface layer of the metal. It’s a great lubricant, but it also prevents rust and provides some physical protection.

There is nothing inherently wrong with pull-through sharpeners, but avoid any sharpener that uses carbide as the abrasive. There are some excellent and easy-to-use sharpeners with ceramic and diamond rods. My field sharpener is the AccuSharp Diamond Pro. It’s easy to use, compact, and produces a surprisingly good edge. I’ve given the to all my friends and they’ve stopped bringing me all their knives to sharpen. :-)

There is some decent damascus out there, but most of what you get in lower-end knives is really terrible. Materials science keeps uping the game of knife steels, but 440C was considered one of the best maybe thirty years ago. It is still a solid performer with a good balance of edge holding, toughness, rust resistance, and ease of sharpening.

Don’t use your knife for things it wasn’t designed to do. Get yourself a small cheap prybar to pair with it. Something like 3" prybar will save your blade and do a better job of prying anyway. I prefer mine a little longer than that, so here’s a 3.8" prybar.

Have fun!

You could always get one of those prepaid debit cards and load it with as close to the total purchase price as possible. Then if some sketchy site rips you off or sells your credit card data to the Russians, or whatever, the most you can possibly be out is the piddling sum you had on that card.

The advice I’ll give you for a camp knife that others have not already covered is to keep it clean. That’s not to say wipe it off after every single cut, but when you’re done using it or you get home from the woods or whatever, remember to grab a paper towel and some WD-40 or whatever your libation of choice is and get all the tree sap and other crud off of the blade. Despite them all being called “stainless,” no stainless steel is truly rust proof and being exposed to moisture and especially acidic organic crap can corrode, discolor, or eventually pit your blade. This is especially important if the thing is going to live at the bottom of your backpack the rest of the time and never see the light of day otherwise.

Part and parcel of owning a knife is to git gud at sharpening, which is an inevitable task you’ll eventually have to undertake. It may surprise you to learn that I’m not one of those leather-ivy-cap-and-beard-wax motherfuckers who absolutely insists that every single knife must be sharpened freehand on an exotic oilstone and if you don’t make the lifelong investment to learn to do the same perfectly everything you do is automatically invalid. Rather the opposite. I pretty much always use some kind of guided sharpening jig even if it is just a wedge block on a stone because A) I have a lot of knives to cover and who has the time, and B) I generally can’t be arsed anyway.

For the purpose of an inexpensive and highly versatile little sharpening doohickey that’s easy for a newbie to figure out without fucking things up too badly, I always recommend the Work Sharp Field Sharpener, one of which lives in my laptop bag full time. It’s 20 degree wedges result in a 40 degree overall edge angle which I think is pretty close to optimal for a knife made of not terribly fancy steel that will be used for utilitarian purposes.

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