The Best Survival Knife I’ve Ever Owned

It pretty much goes without saying that the most important thing you can have in a survival kit is a tool that helps you make other tools, and that’s why there’s nothing more important in your survival kit than a knife. There is also an old adage that says the best knife is the one you have, since of course, if you don’t have your knife, you don’t have a knife. While the subject of which knife is best for when you want to have a knife when you need a knife has been debated ever since the second knife was invented, and will continue to be debated so long as there are two or more people on the planet, I’m going to tell you something here that may come as a surprise to you. I am something of a knife collector. I love knives. I’ve owned and used all sorts of knives, but the one knife that I use more than any other knife I’ve ever owned is my Victorinox Swiss Army Rambler model.



(on my screen, this was to scale, more or less…not so much in the Dashboard, though. View it at 33%.)

In today’s society, security concerns have overwhelmed the better judgement of too many people, to the point where the practice of carrying a pocket knife, once a hallmark of adulthood, is enough to draw suspicion to oneself, or strike fear into the hearts of stalwart office workers. The proliferation of metal detectors in all sorts of government buildings, not to mention of course, in air travel, dictate that if one intends to carry a knife on a daily basis, one must be constantly prepared to shed that knife and leave it behind. Now, I don’t know about you, but it seems to me that the two most likely places one might find oneself in need of an emergency tool are in government buildings that have been subjected to a terrorist attack, or an airplane crash. Many people don’t realise that your chances of surviving an airliner crash are actually fairly good. I have even been in situations where people have reacted with fear when I have pull out a modest pocket knife in order to open a package.

Now, the airline security people are very, very good at what they do, despite the fact that you occasionally hear stories of things which made it through. If you don’t believe me, just check out the auction that the Transportation Security Agency periodically holds to rid themselves of excess confiscated sharp objects and tools! However, in just about every other place in the world that isn’t a high security area, such as corrections facilities and similar levels of security, you can generally pass unnoticed with any number of metallic objects, especially if you are, like me, a woman, and thus have a handbag in which you customarily carry all sorts of things that goes through x-ray machines en masse.

I’ve always been interested in being prepared for emergencies, and if there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that in general, people don’t like to carry a lot of stuff around with them. So, most people will only carry things if they will be unobtrusive to them. The Victorinox Rambler is among the smallest knives that the company offers. It falls into the same class as the ubiquitous Classic model, measuring only 2.3” long, with a body about a half of an inch wide. The only real difference is that the Rambler is slightly thicker, because it adds one additional component that is very useful in many situations.

The Rambler is like a combination of two other models, the Classic, and the Rally. Where the Classic model has:

a small knife blade
a flat screwdriver/nail file
a pair of scissors
a pair of tweezers
a toothpick

The Rally has:

a small knife blade
a flat screwdriver/nail file
a bottle opener/Phillips driver
a pair of tweezers
a toothpick

The Rambler is made by simply taking a Classic, and grafting on the bottle opener/Phillips driver from the Rally, giving us:

a small knife blade
a flat screwdriver/nail file
a bottle opener/Phillips driver
a pair of scissors
a pair of tweezers
a toothpick

There are also some larger variants in this class of knives, and I have owned some of them. The Manager replaces the tweezers with a tiny pen (which will run out of ink when you least expect it). The Midnite Manager goes a step further and replaces the toothpick with a small LED light, and the MiniChamp and Midnite MiniChamp add a whole bunch of utterly arcane tools that most people will never in a hundred years even identify, let alone use. The Rambler is the best compromise of utility, size, and price.

Being only 2.3” long, with a non-locking blade, the knife is not the most robust thing in the world. However, Victorinox uses very good steel, and gives their blades a good factory edge, so you will surprised what you can do with it, especially if you touch up the honing. One thing is for sure, it’s probably not going to make anybody take a step back at the office the next time a package needs opening.

The most useful tool in my life, though, has always been the scissors. These tiny scissors are simply the best fingernail cutters I’ve ever used, and they hold their edge for a very long time. In fact, because of the quality of the steel, the only time any of my Victorinox knives have ever needed their scissors sharpened is when I inadvertently damaged them by using them for an inappropriate task, like wire cutting. Of course, I’m sure you will never do this. They are even tough enough to go through my toenails, although it hurts my fingers a bit to squeeze them so hard on such a tiny surface.

There are only two improvements that I would like to see. The nail file is pretty much completely useless. Don’t get me wrong, it’s better than nothing, but no one who cares about the quality of their manicure or pedicure should let this file anywhere near their nails expect in the direst emergency. As for the tweezers, while I have used them to good effect removing the occasional splinter, because of their design, they are ill-suited to tweezing hairs. Best to stick with the best you can get, the Tweezerman Slant for that job. I would much rather have a toothpick than a pen, so the Manager is out, as well. The pen is functional, but it’s so tiny that if you rely on it for a backup, you will run it out in good order, and probably forget to replace it. Toothpicks, on the other, are never around when you need one! Besides, I carry a Fisher Bullet Space Pen for my emergency pen. It writes upside down, under water, in the freezing cold, and it’s only about the size of half an eye pencil, but when the cap is posted, it’s a competent writing instrument.

Sadly, the Rambler is not as widely available as the Classic, so if you want to get one, you’ll likely have to order it online. I keep two of them. One goes in my handbag for Every Day Carry, or EDC, and the other goes in my regular survival pack.

If you have read any of my previous writings on survival, then you will know that I carry a small, but functional survival kit in my handbag every day, and that survival kit for the most part is carried in the same pouch that holds my every day makeup. Many makeup packages are made from metallics of one sort or another, and because my Rambler and Space Pen (along with a flashlight and mini Bic lighter, the two other most important parts of my EDC survival kit) live in my makeup bag, I can very confidently drop my handbag on a tray to go through a metal detector, and never be bothered. I do this, in fact, at least once a week, since my life currently involves going into court buildings for business purposes regularly. I would *not* do this with an airport, as the consequences of my Rambler being confiscated may be too much of a hassle to deal with at my destination. Best to put it in the checked luggage and just hope I don’t find myself in the wilderness surrounded by a much of twisted metal. 

Speaking of checked luggage, I know the travel pro received wisdom dictate not checking baggage, but if you’re into preparedness, I’m betting you’re bringing along things they don’t want you to have on board. Also, rest assured that my bigger knives do NOT come into government buildings with me. The consequences of that are worse than mere confiscation in some jurisdictions. I miss the old days, when you could check your knife at the gate and have it put into the pilot’s lockbox, or when you could just hand your knife to the security guard at the court building and ask him to hold it for you until you left. The last time I tried *that* was going into traffic court about 20 years ago, and I almost got arrested for my troubles. Fortunately, the court guard let me take it back to my car and lock it up.

I almost lost my prized Gerber Strike Force firestarter that way. Back when Strike Forces were really hard to come by, I’d forgotten I’d left it in my carry-on on a day when I got not-so-randomly selected for the 5-star treatment while waiting to board a business flight out of Detroit. Fortunately, I’d remembered to pack the new First Production Run Benchmade 190 Drop Point Hunter knife I’d just acquired at an outfitters north of Detroit in the checked baggage! When the security guard pulled out my Strike Force, an all black box that doesn’t have an obvious opening and has the words “STRIKE FORCE” prominently moulded into the sides, and asked me what it was, I hesitated before answering, because I wasn’t sure how much in trouble I was going to be. A second later, the guard figured out how to open it, looked at it, and said “oh, it’s fire starter…neat,” closed it, and put it back in my case. I think he liked me, because he struck up a conversation with me about sailing, having recognised the Wichard stainless steel hardware I use for a keychain, and this was before the ban on lighters.

In any case, the Rambler gives me a good assortment of very useful tools, a knife blade, a great pair of scissors that I use every single day, a bottle opener (I don’t buy twist-off beer, thank you very much), two screwdrivers, and a toothpick, in a very small, easily concealable package that I always have with me, even if I’m only carrying an evening clutch bag. While it’s a shame that I have to also carry a better nail file and tweezers, I’m a girl, so this is not a great hardship for me. The Rambler’s knife blade is the knife I usually reach for first in any non-cooking application, because it’s right there with me all the time, *and* it saves my larger knives from getting their blades unnecessarily dulled or gunked up by packaging tape. I don’t have to worry about handing over to another person if they need something that cuts. I don’t have to constantly worry about getting “caught” with it, because it’s so small, it either completely unnoticed in the jumble of my handbag and makeup case as it makes it way through the scanner, or it’s not perceived as a threat. Gentlemen might not have as much luck.

In an actual survival situation, you’d be surprised how many times a larger implement will not give you the precision you really can only get from a small blade. Don’t think of the Rambler as a compromise, think of it as one tool in your survival toolbox that does some jobs better than anything else.

10 months ago  Notes (3)
  1. gcvsa posted this