Customer Reviews

Rothco Black Survival Knife

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(18)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

For the price, I was a little nerveous this knife would turn out to be the size of an ink pen or fall apart as it came out of the sheath; neither was true. The 5 3/4 inch blade appears sturdy (although the steel type is not marked). A hex nut inside the handle can be used to tighten the blade if it becomes loose. The black plastic handle is firm and doesn't cave when you squeeze it. If you're planning to be lost in the woods for a week, obviously it would be preferable to have a more sophisticated (and expensive) survival knife with you. But this basic knife with compass and fishing kit is certainly better than having no knife at all; and at the cost you can afford to keep one in multiple locations. It is what it is for the price.

Okay so if your like me you probably payed $11.35. Knowing that i didn't really expect this to be a good knife, and I'm sorry to say its not. But I got what i payed for. The Compass is liquid filled and screws off the reveal the reservoir for various survival items, (Survival saw, fishing line, sinker, hook, and two rings that allow you to use the survival saw). Now The survival saw is barely a saw at all. I find it to be much more like a snare, but still it would be a very small snare for a very small animal. As you work your way up to the knifes "grip", it is plastic, and even at that it is not high quality plastic. i dropped the knife from a height of 3 feet by accident and part of the spiraling for where the compass screws in snapped off. And now, the blade. This blade, I imagine is made of stainless steel that is ideal of a knife that is a piece of junk. The blade does not hold an edge to save your life (literally) and it comes out of the box duller than a hammer. Now there has been speculation that this knife comes with a "flint". This is untrue, it is a sharpening stone. Again you get what you pay for. Other things include the fact that every 4 or 5 times you use the knife you must first sharpen it and the re-tighten the blade because it gets wobble-y. Now let me clarify that i do not put this knife through extreme use in any stretch of the imagination. The hardest thing this knife has done is take bark off of a stick to make a spear. Although it seems to be a very good throwing knife due to the fact its ten buck. I hope this review helped sorry if i burst your bubble on this. Although I do recommend Marine Tanto Survival Knife. [...]

happy hunting

sometimes cheap things are really expensive... what i mean is, lighting a cigarette with a $5 note is very expensive.. why would you do that?? get a $50.00 gold plated lighter and you can light packet after packet.

the saw is a piece of rough wire.

the fishing line would be rated for 1lb at the most and the hooks are very light as well...

the compass is inaccurate and the handle is brittle.

the sharpening stone is so small its a joke, and as for the "leather" pouch, well mine is vinyl but still probably the most expensive part of the item.

do i recommend it... of course, for your 10 yr old son to run around the backyard pretending to be rambo, hours of entertainment, he will think your the best, and the thing is such a piece of crap he wont be able to hurt anything with it..

When I bought this, I knew I was taking a chance but I was pleasantly surprised. To be fair, my expectations were fairly low. Here's my pros and cons.

PROS:

I do believe that having this knife could help save someone's life. Would you need other items? Of course, but if the weather was not too cold and it didn't rain and you had a decent jacket with you, it would be totally possible to survive a few days with this. You have the basic supplies for fishing (hook, line) and even if you didn't have water nearby with plenty of fish, you aren't going to starve for a few days. We did scale a fish with the serrated blade and it did a fine job. So if you can catch fish, you can also scale them.

The knife comes with a sharpening tool and you WILL need to use this. The point of the knife is definitely sharp enough to be used for defense, especially if an attacker didn't expect it. The saw works well enough (we tested it outside. So does the compass.

The heft or weight of this knife was decent, too. For $8.19, it compact and useful.

The carrying case is both convenient and comes with an attached rope if you needed to hang it from your belt or perhaps somewhere in a tent or elsewhere Now the downsides.....

CONS:

The photo on the package shows matches and so does the product photo. To be fair, the product description notes Amazon clearly says that matches are NOT included. However, having both the package and item photo which includes matches is misleading. The package itself even noted that matches were included. They were not. So they are NOT included but easy enough to add.

The handle of this is plastic. I don't know how well that would hold up with heavy use. But for $8.19, I'd use this as a supplement to other tools. Like I wrote before, I didn't expect much and this was heavier and the blade far more solid than I anticipated.

The blade needs to be sharpened after each use.

Nice sharp knife seems very durable and useful for when I go camping. The only reason I did note rate full stars is because the knife only came with a fishing line and hook in the compartment, it did not have the matches and other various items shown in the picture

This is a very good knife for the price. It feels very solid. It comes with a leather case, fishing set, working compass, and flint. Very worth buying.

Should have paid more attention to the reviews! Bought one many years ago in Oklahoma cost not more than this product it was crafted extremely sturdy, sturdy and sturdy! Other than the blade this product is cheaply made it has plastic handle really nothing more than a toy in appearance. The picture looks great the blade length is great BUT extremely cheap made sheath.
As I ALWAYS HEARD YOU GET WHAT YOU PAY FOR! I know the one I own was AMERICAN made and with no labeling anywhere on box or product I would say this product is not! I enjoy my original so much I purchased three of this product as gifts assuming (ASS/U/ME)! This product is not worth YOUR time and effort even if it were free! PERIOD!

I purchased this knife out of sheer nostalgia & the availability free shipping. This knife was a POS in the 80's and it remains the same today. If you'd like to see an original commercial for this knife search YouTube for "the survivor commercial".

This was my first "survival" knife when I was 12, purchased as a result of the aforementioned commercial, a lot of begging to my parents on my part and a two week front of my allowance.

At that time (the awesome 80's) there were two qualities of this knife made, one with the plastic handle (junk) and one with an aluminium handle (upper echelon junk). This one is of the "junk" variety. The sheath is made of vinyl, not leather or "pleather". The sharpening stone & handle contents are equally useless, although the compass does point to magnetic north.

So... It's not the highest quality knife. It has a light duty plastic handle and the compass gets stuck on its way north. But this was just what I wanted to buy as a gag gift for a not-outdoorsy type. I remembered getting these sorts of knives as a child, and having them break or be lost or forgotten within the week. They haven't changed a bit.

Pros:
Goofy
Sentimental
Not terribly sharp - so it's appropriate for responsible adults and mature kids. (Only parents can say for sure if it's too sharp for their kid, but man, this thing is dull)
Adaptable - A skilled craftsperson could probably remove the blade and the doodads in side and craft a new handle out of wood, bone or antler.

Cons:
No waterproof matches.
Compass points North-ish.
Pretty flimsy in current state.
Not Sharp - if you want it to be, you gotta work for it.

Summary: Exactly what I wanted, one of those cheapo toys from my childhood. If I really wanted to get a knife, I'd go in person, to a store, to evaluate it.

For this price,I was expecting a regular knife, this is more like a toy blade, the plastic is cheap and the blade is not the greatest either, you find better quality in gas stations knives.