Bark River Knives Bushcrafter 3V 'Full-Height Grind'

If you're a regular visitor to knife-related Internet forums, or if you hang out with knife people on Facebook, you probably have a hard time avoiding the word "bushcraft." Although the word has become something of a fad, the actual practice of bushcraft is serious business.

Beyond the buzzword, bushcraft is the collection of skills required to live in wild places. It encompasses building fires and shelters, gathering and processing food, improvising comforts and necessities from natural and found materials.

Yes, in a sense, bushcraft is survival -- but it's also hiking, navigation, camping, hunting, trapping, cooking, engineering, carpentry and much, much more.

Performing all those tasks goes better with the proper tools, of course -- specifically, a proper knife. And any knife that presumes to call itself "bushcrafter" had better be pretty special.

The Bushcrafter from Bark River definitely deserves the name -- in fact, it's one of designer Mike Stewart's top-three favorite knives. It's 8.63 inches overall, with a blade length of 3.88 inches, and it weighs just 6.63 ounces. By design, it's the right tool for the bushcraft job.

Here at KnivesShipFree we got to thinking, and we hatched an idea. We thought this knife could be just a little bit better, so we worked with Bark River Knives to create a special edition of the Bushcrafter.

The result of our collaboration, which is available exclusively through KnivesShipFree, features a full-height grind. The modified spear-point blade, crafted from Crucible CPM 3V tool steel, is expertly heat-treated to 60 RC for the best possible combination of toughness and edge-holding on a knife of this size.

In the wilderness, the full-height-grind Bushcrafter 3V really performs -- it's an ideal companion for wilderness living, camping and survival, with better cutting and slicing ability than the standard Bushcrafter. It'll easily handle everything from shaving fuzz sticks to batoning kindling, and yet adapts easily to game-dressing chores and camp kitchen.

The knife's design may be the star of the show, but the CPM 3V tool steel deserves praise as well. It's the perfect choice for this application -- edge-retention is great, but it still allows for easy touch-ups in the field.

Derrick has particularly impressed with the knife.

"Our close working relationship with Bark River has produced some great knives over the years," he said. "The full-height Bushcrafter 3V may be the most useful knife we've ever done together."

Mike Stewart agrees.

"The Bushcrafter is the right design and just the right size to accomplish almost any task in the outdoors," he said. "It's one of my favorite knives, and this special edition really raises the bar."

To complement the attractive blade profile -- and because it's a Bark River knife -- the full-height Bushcrafter 3V is offered in a variety of handle materials, of course. It also comes with a high-quality leather "Bushcraft A" sheath and, as you'd expect, is covered by Bark River Knives' unconditional Lifetime Warranty.