We brought along the Kershaw Camp 10 knife model 1077 for a weekend trip to beautiful Lake Claiborne in north Louisiana. The Camp 10 knife was tested at how well it could make kindling out of a stump of red oak wood. As many of you know, red oak his hard as can be, and it can pose quite a challenge during chopping if your equipment isn’t up to snuff!

First let’s introduce the Kershaw Camp 10. The knife comes with a low profile sheath that fits snugly. There is a nylon loop that can be snapped/unsnapped to hold the knife in the sheath. The blade of the Camp 10 is 10 inches long, putting the overall length of the knife at 16 inches. The blade does not stop as it travels through the handle thus making the Kershaw Camp 10 full tang all the way to the end. The carbon steel construction of the blade is manufactured to a higher hardness than typical carbon steel. This blade is made out of a material called 64Mn which is the typical steel that you see chisels are made of. Needless to say this baby was born to chop on wood!

The handle of the knife was contoured to fit nicely on your palm. The whole thing was wrapped with a rubber overmold that may help a little with fatigue during constant use.

Kershaw Camp 10 Knife model 1077

After taking a good look at the knife we decided to make some kindling for a fire we planned to make later in the evening. We couldn’t have picked a more stubborn piece of wood. The one we chose was red oak, hard as a concrete! But hey, if the knife can get through red oak it can get through pretty much anything.

Capitalize on the ability of the Kershaw Camp 10 to rip wood

At first when I started chopping on the wood I wasn’t too impressed. Yea it was cutting okay, but I didn’t feel like I had much control of the swing. It wasn’t until I got the knife stuck in the wood a few times did I start noticing how to really use this knife and conserve energy. What you do is chop hard and get the knife stuck purposely. Then, use the knife’s prying strength to essentially rip large chunks of wood off. Since the Kershaw Camp 10 is full tang with a beefy 1/4 inch of spine on the back, it is not going to bend when prying off chunks of wood. So remember this when you use your Camp 10 at the campsite. Bury it deep in the wood, then use the knife to rip off chunks of wood. This will give you a maximum amount of work accomplished versus energy spent.

After accumulating enough kindling to start our fire we decided to try out the Kershaw Camp 10’s ability to notch the red oak. To be short, it did a pretty good job of notching, but of course nothing like you would expect something meant for notching like a hatchet. But for a 10 inch kukri blade knife, this sweety held its own. It wasn’t until during the notching of the wood using two-handed swings did we notice the condition of the blade. No damage at all. No flat spots, no bending. When we got back to the shop and looked up the blade material that’s when we found out that it was made of a special hardness of carbon steel called 64Mn. When you use the Camp 10 you will without a doubt notice that the steel is much higher quality than a typical machete.

Here is the video that we filmed during the test of the Kershaw Camp 10. Hope you enjoy it, and we hope you enjoy your Camp 10!

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