Best camping knives

The best value in camp cutlery. Sharp out of the box, easy to resharpen, and cheap enough to keep one in every bag.

This is the knife to buy if you have not thought about it much, and the one plenty of people who have thought about it a great deal still carry. The Scandi grind is the reason: a single bevel that you can sharpen flat on a stone without any skill, which matters because a sharp cheap knife is safer and more useful than a blunt expensive one.

It does all four real camp jobs -- food prep, cutting cord, opening packaging, and splitting small kindling with a baton -- and it refuses to pretend to be a survival knife. The tang is partial, so it is not the tool for prying or heavy chopping. For the money there is nothing close, and the carbon steel version takes a keener edge if you accept wiping it dry.

A wooden-handled folder that has been the same design for over a century. Excellent at food, light on everything else.

If your camping is drive-in sites and the knife's job is cheese, bread, vegetables and string, this is arguably the better buy. The blade is thin, which is why it cuts food so well -- thick "survival" blades wedge in a tomato. It is also the knife you will actually have on you, because it disappears in a pocket.

The limits are honest and well known. The beechwood handle swells with water and the pivot can get stiff; a drop of oil and keeping it out of the washing-up bowl solves most of it. And it is a folder, so there is a pivot between you and the blade -- no prying, no baton work. Pair it with a small saw rather than asking it to process wood.

The multi-tool that earns its place: scissors, a saw, a bottle opener and a screwdriver you will actually use.

Buy this for the things that are not the knife. At a campsite the scissors cut packaging, tape, bandages and fishing line; the little saw processes a surprising amount of thumb-thick wood; the bottle opener and screwdriver get used at every trailhead. That cluster is why a Swiss Army knife is still the right second blade.

What it is not is a good primary knife. The main blade is short, it does not lock on most models, and the smooth handle gets slippery with wet hands or fat from cooking. The sensible setup for most people is this plus one of the two picks above -- and it is worth noting the 30-function versions add almost nothing but bulk. Our <a href="/camp/best-camping-gear-for-beginners">beginner camping gear</a> guide makes the same point.

Very light for its blade length, locks solidly, and opens one-handed. The pick if the knife lives in your pocket year round.

This is the pick for the person whose camping knife is also their everyday knife. The weight is the headline: under two ounces for a blade long enough to be useful means there is no reason to leave it behind, and a knife you have on you beats a better knife in a drawer.

Be clear about the tradeoffs. You are paying a lot, the handle is deliberately light rather than rigid, and the premium steel that holds an edge for months is the same steel that resists your pocket stone when it finally goes dull. If a knife spends eleven months a year in a gear bin, buy the Morakniv instead and spend the difference on a saw.

Half the time you reach for a knife at camp, the actual job is a repair. Tape solves what cutting cannot.

Included for the same reason the last pick in our other roundups often is not the headline product: because the honest list of camp emergencies is dominated by things tearing, not by things needing cutting. A knife plus a few patches covers far more real failures than a bigger knife does.

Keep the patches with the knife so they are in the same pocket of the same bag. Our <a href="/camp/camping-checklist">camping checklist</a> puts the pair together in the repair line, and the <a href="/trail/best-first-aid-kits">first aid kits</a> roundup covers the human equivalent.