Kershaw Camp 10: Hands On

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Sam Cade

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Sep 9, 2005
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Location
Rural Kentucky, surrounded by Amish
For several years Kershaw Knives/KAI offered a medium sized chopping knife the model 1079 Outcast.

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Made of D2 steel (a controversial choice for a chopper) and possessed of a spindly skeletonized tang, the Outcast was plagued by numerous catastrophic failures (I broke 2) and edge maintenance issues throughout its production life.

Recently Kershaw introduced the 1077 "Camp 10" to replace the Outcast in their catalog. Company literature would have us believe that the Camp 10 is, in effect, a product improved Outcast.

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The D2 steel is gone, replaced by 65mn. The intarwebs tell that that 65mn is the Chinese equivalent of SAE 1065 a middle of the road, tough carbon steel. I can't see that as anything but an improvement given the poor performance the Outcast displayed.

For a Chinese built knife handled in rubber and plastic the Camp 10 is fairly handsome.

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It is large knife, with a big belly, but don't mistake it for a khukuri. If I had to drop it into a typology of choppers I'd call this thing a short bolo.

Blade thickness is a nominal 1/5th of an inch.

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It is a very weight forward knife, but it is NOT a particularly heavy knife despite the broad blade and substantial spine thickness. The high saber grind removes quite a bit of blade stock and I am very interested to see what is concealed under the grip since tang failures killed both of my Outcasts.
 

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I'll be looking forward to your review. Interestingly enough, Sam Owens and I talked about it earlier in the week! I told him it had too much curve to the blade. :cool:
 
Moving on to ergonomics...

The grip is angled in such a matter to facilitate a good handshake grip and is of moderate dimensions.
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Unfortunately the grip is over-molded with a very aggressively textured and overly soft rubber compound.

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Doesn't look good for heavy use barehanded, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt and work it hard tomorrow.

I'm willing to suffer for my readers :evil:

I wear a size medium glove by way of scale. Should be enough room for even the biggest mitted users.

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..and now we come to another annoyance.
The spine side quillion precludes placing the thumb on the spine.
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I hate that.
 

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Boy that spine side quillion sure is annoying. I wonder why they did that....



Oh...

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Yes...behold, the most ill designed sheath ev-ar.

No retention other than the nylon strip-and-snap. The sheath is ABS and is unfitted to the blade, leaving it to rattle about.

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Just terrible. Not only is the snap itself easily brushed off but a firm yank will cause the strap to slip over the restraining quillions.

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Release the snap, draw the blade, cut off the strap. :banghead:

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Just dumb.
 

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Gotta love the geniuses that could just as easily put the snap on the other side so the strap falls away from the edge.

Hate the top quillons as well on most things. Needless and detrimental in a chopper and just about any working knife.
 
The early outcast was serialized and marked KAI , no China marks so I presume not. The plunge line is different than the one you pictured. Mine has held up well to chopping brush 5+ years. Sounds like Kershaw got cheap and cloned the outcast in china and screwed the pooch (and buyers).
 
Sounds like Kershaw got cheap and cloned the outcast in china and screwed the pooch (and buyers).

To the best of my knowledge All of the Outcasts were of Chinese manufacture but there were variations in how they were marked through the production life of the knife.

The Camp 10 isn't exactly sporting a Made In China Billboard.

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Quick workout with the Camp 10.

POB and Sweet Spots marked. Edge was very polished, thickish and just shy of shaving sharp.

Note how far back the sweet spot is. I'd call that sub-optimal usage of blade length.

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First person, off through the woods. The wife runs this particular trail a couple times a week so I have to keep it relatively clear.

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We are going to be good stewards and kill this small maple tree. It has a bad split in the top and is far too close to its neighbor.
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Maple is tough stuff so it took a couple minutes to knock the tree down.
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I went ahead and chopped up an armload of logs.

The Camp 10 doesn't bite very deeply. No doubt the shearing action of the belly is helping it here but the thick edge is holding it back.

It has no tendency to bind and removes chips fairly well with a twist on the second chop of the "V" cut.

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Safety tip. Toes behind the log.

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..and the grip starts raising a blister. My hands are fairly tough but the grip on this thing is just murder. In addition it is fairly thin and flat with no real positive stop on the pommel. While I never felt that I was going to lose the knife, retention was less than optimal and dependent on applying more grip strength than should be necessary.
Forcing an overly tight grip increases fatigue and accelerates wear on the users hands.
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Loading up my logs and making my way back to the shop, I notice that my sunflowers have begun to bloom.
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Batoning through 8 short logs was no problem.

The blade is thick enough that it busts them nice and clean.

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The blade wants to move into the curve as it is batoned through. I hate those quillions.

This, times 8.
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Hardly any wear on the blade coating once I finished. That is surprising.

No rolling of the edge, some very small chips knocked out of the blade from overstrikes into the rocky ground. Only a marginal loss of sharpness.
No complaints.
 

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Ok, grip removal was easy.

It was held on by 2, T-20 Torx threaded inserts.

Unscrew them and the grip will tap right off, it is just a friction fit, no adhesive.

I used a croquet mallet because, y'know, I'm a classy guy. ;)
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No surprises here:
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The tang is full thickness, so .2".
Given my druthers, I'd delete the northernmost, unnecessary oblong lanyard hole.

In any case, this is a drastic improvement over the skelentonized tuning fork that was on the Outcast.
 

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So what is next for this project? A new and improved custom fit handle to help improve usability?

Probably, but that is fairly low priority. I've got quite a few things in the queue ahead of it.


So...this Camp 10. It isn't a bad knife. I think it is a better knife than the Outcast but it has some silly design flaws that greatly compromise its utility. The kind of design flaws that lead me to believe that KAI could really benefit from some additional outside testing.

The sheath is dumb.

The over-molded rubber grip is dumb. Chopping knives that see (or could see) heavy usage should not have soft, aggressively textured surfaces where they interface with the human hand.


As a tool, this $40 knife (Wow, what a DEAL :uhoh:) will be out performed by a $7 machete of similar length in nearly every camp task save digging a cathole.
 
...and that includes chopping hardwood. The thinner, lighter 12" IMACASA 152 bites much deeper and will throw bigger chips if well controlled. More wood removed with less effort provided you don't let it bind up.





As 1st world knife consumers, I think that we could greatly benefit from rationalizing our knife purchases based on utility instead of...well... this:

http://kershaw.kaiusaltd.com/knives/knife/camp-101
Not just for zombies anymore

While it would be a lot of fun for our marketing department to sell the Camp 10 as the ultimate zombie-whacking tool, the truth is, it actually has a lot of other uses that you just might find to be of a more immediate nature than zombie defense. Not that we’re ignoring to the coming Zombiepocalypse, mind you. We just think that the Camp 10 makes a pretty awesome camp knife and that it does a great job of whacking campsite or other outdoor chores down to size in very short order.

From clearing brush to making kindling, the Camp 10 is the ideal outdoor and survival tool. Cut, chop, slash, hack, split, scrape—just about any task you ask of it, the Camp 10 can handle. The full-tang Camp 10 is made of carbon tool steel for toughness and wear resistance. A basic black powdercoat protects the steel and makes maintenance easier.

You’ll like the secure, contoured grip of the Camp 10, too. The handle has a built-in hand guard and is drilled in both front and rear so you can attach a lanyard either place—or both—for carrying versatility. Of course, if a zombie does get up close and personal with you, then yeah, you’ll be pretty glad to have a Camp 10 in hand, too.
 
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Am I the only one who wondered what Sam looks like? Things you can't unsee! :)
 
Nice hat tho...

Thanks, it is a Kangol.


( BTW. What's the cigar ? )

You aren't the first person to ask that. ;)
I just snatched it up from the porch smokin' table where I had forgotten about it a few days earlier.

After unsuccessfully digging through my garbage looking for a ring, I had to and resort to visualization techniques to try and recall, I think it is a large gauge Romeo. A "Bully" most likely.
 
I don't see a problem with the sweet spot being where it is. That's about right for a blade of that shape (just behind the widest part of the blade). OTOH, a continuous grind with a convex edge would probably improve overall chopping and splitting performance for a blade that thick.

One of the reasons for the forward lanyard hole is from lessons learned in ABS cutting competitions. The forward lanyard hole allows for securing the lanyard to the hand to minimize flying blades. Old style was to just have a lanyard at the butt and smiths and cutters that had the blade slip had a live blade on the end of a too long line! Therefore the ABS went to the forward hole for greater control.
 
I do believe that the sweet spot should be better closer to the point. I think this would have happened automatically if Kershaw hadn't dropped the spine angle.
 
I don't see a problem with the sweet spot being where it is. That's about right for a blade of that shape (just behind the widest part of the blade).

As it is, the knife chops fairly well, but by placing the sweet spot so close to the hand it doesn't make the most efficacious use of the blade length or weight.

Or to rephrase it, The Kershaw Camp 10 blade shape and grind is intrinsically inefficient.
 
Ohhhh, I'll agree it is too short and you loose the leverage benefit for a good chopper. No question there in my mind. I'm not sure if we're not expecting too much of it when what we want is to stretch it out another 4 inches.
 
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