Last year for Christmas, my wife surprised me with the Bear Grylls Ultimate Knife, along with the matching Bear Grylls Machete, and the Bear Grylls Fire Starter Kit. Now, I know what you guys are thinking. Why the Bear Grylls (BG from here forth) survival set? Here’s the story. Throughout the year, every time my wife and I were at a sporting goods store, she would see me wandering over to the knife section to check out their selection of knives. And it seemed like most of the time, she would catch me staring at the BG Ultimate Knife. She would tell me to just go ahead and buy it, but after reading all of the negative reviews on the internet, I would always hold back. Well, she thought it would make a funny joke to get me the entire BG Survival Series.
Bear Grylls Ultimate Knife Overview
Upon receiving the knife, I tore open the blister-packed knife and finally, I was holding the actual knife in my hands. To my surprise, once I got past all the Bear Grylls logos that are everywhere, it’s wasn’t a bad knife. The grip, weight, and general vibe of the knife felt pretty good.
The first thing I noticed was the weight of the knife. At 14.7oz, the knife, complete with it’s loaded sheath, was relatively lightweight. When wore on the belt, it’s unnoticeable. Overall, the sheathed knife didn’t look too disco (aside from the signature logos). The gray and black plastic/nylon sheath with the safety orange accents gives it a nice look and makes it easier to spot during low light hours.
The knife itself has an overall length of 10″ with a 4.8″ high carbon stainless steel drop point combo blade. The blade is sharp out of the package and ready for use. The blade has some type of dark brown/blackish coating on it, I’m guessing to prevent rust.
Looking at the spine of the blade, it appears to be approximately 3/16″ thick. At almost a 1/4″, it’s certainly not a thin blade. It’s thick enough to handle everything I dished out, yet thin enough to be practical for more lighter duties (more on this later).
Moving further down the spine and just before the handle is a flat ground down area designed to be used as a scraping surface for the built-in ferro rod (more on this later). I really liked this scraper area because it allows you to strike a ferro rod without having to use your blade or scrape through epoxy coating like on my ESEE Laserstrike.
I know lots of people like the idea of lashing their survival knives to poles to make spears. I’m not big on that idea, but for those that want to, Gerber/Bear Grylls added two tie-down holes to the handle of the knife. Having said that, if the situation ever came where I had an opportunity to turn my knife into a spear, I’d probably be the first one to lash that puppy right onto a stick.
The handle is made from textured rubber with nice ergonomics which provides comfortable grip, even when striking 2×4’s with the knife. I haven’t handled the knife with wet/greasy hands, so I can’t confirm or deny whether the grips prevent slippage, but based on the feel of the handle, I’d say it would do at least a decent job when things get slippery. One thing about the rubber handle. From my experience, rubber handles tend to wear out sooner than later. I don’t know if the BG Ultimate Knife will show the same problems, but only time will tell and I’ll deal with that when it happens. One last note: did they really need to put that huge “BG” on the handle, too?
On the very back of the handle is the infamous pommel. I say infamous because someone on the internet posted a picture of this knife with the pommel broken off, stating the pommel “went flying off into the bush” while he was batoning the blade. Since then, many others have given the BG Ultimate knife a negative reviews based on this one incident of the pommel breaking off. Well, I guess Gerber found his article and redesigned their knife. I’ve hammered 4″ nails through 2×4’s with mine and batoned through more than 25 pieces of 2×4 and tree branches without the pommel breaking off. Perhaps he had a defective copy of the knife. The plastic where the pommel sits appears to be cracked and one could easily believe the cracked handle is what caused the pommel to fly off and not the force of his batoning.
The pommel is made of stainless steel and has a checkered surface designed for hammering. As mentioned above, I tested the pommel by hammering several 4″ nails into 2×4’s without a problem. One day before writing this article, Adam and I took a trip to the desert where I had plenty of opportunities to test this knife, including some serious batoning. No failures yet.
Moving to the other end of the knife at the bottom of the sheath is a small built-in ferro rod (firesteel) as seen in the closeup below. The ferro rod is secure in it’s holster and takes a bit of a pull to release it. Note the texture on the handle of the ferro rod giving a slightly more gripping surface. A nice touch.
As you can tell by the photo above, the ferro rod is used. Before shooting these pictures, I used the ferro rod to start a fire in my fire pit. It’s small and harder to work with than my larger ferro rod, but nevertheless, it works and beats making fire by friction.
See the “Bear” signature on the velcro strap just above the ferro rod? Release that strap and the plastic sheath will partially fall away from the nylon backing to reveal the diamond sharpener. It looks like a flat piece of metal with a medium grit coating of some sort to be used as a sharpener. During field testing, I did use it to sharpen the knife. Although the results aren’t as fine as a sharpening done on my Arkansas stone, the blade does come out sharp enough to handle any task other than making a clean slice through paper or shaving (neither of which I normally do with a field knife).
One thing I found interesting was the approximate 20 degree angle the sharpener is placed at. I would think that without some sort of guide, the built in angle would not really help the average person with the sharpening. Now I know there is some knife sharpening guru out there saying “Oh come on, that’s easy. Don’t you get it?” Sir, I don’t get it and if you could, please let me know how to properly use it in the comments section.
Some other neat features of the Bear Grylls Ultimate knife is the “Alpine Survival” signalling instructions sewn into the back of the nylon portion of the sheath. This is just in case you do get lost and are found by search and rescue and need to communicate with them. Or search and rescue is actively looking for someone and you are not in trouble and need to wave them off. Whatever your hand/arm signal requirements may be, this little label on the back of your Bear Grylls Ultimate knife will show you how to communicate to search & rescue members.
Another small, but useful feature is the tiny emergency whistle Gerber supplies with every knife. It’s really small and comes attached to the handle, but I repositioned it to the bottom of the sheath since it’s in the way more often than I use it. Also notice the small nylon strip that at bottom. This strip has a companion strip along the top of the sheath, allowing for mounting via a molle setup.
Overall, I am pleased with the Bear Grylls Ultimate knife. Yes, it does have a whole lot of branding logos all over the knife and sheath and a report of the pommel flying off the knife. But in my short experience, this knife has proven it’s worth, especially considering it’s sub $50 price tag. I recently took it out on a desert trip and beat this knife silly, but in the end, the knife came home in one piece and still sharp (after alittle resharpening on the included stone). So if you are in the market for a good field knife but don’t want to spend a ton of money, consider the Bear Grylls Ultimate knife. It’s a capable knife ready to handle most field tasks.
UPDATE (12Jan2018):
A few days after receiving this knife, I had a chance to get out to the desert. The Bear Grylls Ultimate Knife was put to the test, taking a serious beating and coming out just fine. I batoned and chopped my way through a lot of wood, sliced steaks, and opened packages and yet, the knife was fine.
As mentioned earlier, a lot of concern had been voiced on the internet regarding the hammer pommel breaking off during chopping. If this really was the case, Gerber has certainly fixed that problem. Folks, I really hammered the crap out of this knife, but it’s still working fine. Here’s a couple of pictures of the knife from the desert trip. The knife looks a bit worked, but a few strokes on the sharpening stone brought the knife back to sharp cutting tool.
One last things. Incase you’re wondering, the belt loop is big enough for a 2″ belt. Infact, the belt loop is about 2 – 3/16″ so you have alittle room to play with. If you’re 2″ belt is a rigger’s belt, then it might get alittle tight.
Final thoughts? I’m surprised to say that I really like this knife. It feels good in the hand, handled everything I’ve thrown at it, and is easy to resharpen. Now what do I not like about it? Too many logos and the combination blade. I like my knives to have just straight edges, no serration. I know it makes the knife look more functional, but in service it’s quite the opposite. You lose valuable cutting real estate and serrations are almost impossible to sharpen back to original sharpness. Other than that, I really like this knife. I think I’ll hold onto it for awhile.
