A shot of the RSK (Doug Ritter Survival Knife) :
The RSK was designed by Doug Ritter of Equipped to Survive and manufactured by the Benchmade Knife Company. It is one of Benchmade's axis lock folders, made out of S30V hardened to 58/60 HRC with a FRN grip and stainless steel liners.
The high flat grind on this one tapers to a very thin and acute edge, 0.009-0.010" thick and 12.8 (7) degrees per side. The tip is also fine tapered, through 1.04" at an angle of 3.3 degrees with a point width of 0.80" at the start of the taper.
This RSK was used, it was a replacement for another RSK which suffered chipping under light use, this one also had problems and during a discussion the user offered to have it inspected. This isn't then intended to be a comprehensive review of the knife, it was just a few days work with the knife after some trials on sharpening.
The point on the RSK is fairly slim, with a 50 lbs push it still sank 210 (10) pages into a phone book and with a hard vertical stab achieved 516 (24) pages. The performance on the hard stab was reduced from optimal due to the aggression on the handle and lack of security of the shape. The combination causes hot spots readily in heavy thrusts.
The K2 cut hardwoods well, pointing a section of birch flooring in 12 (2) slices. Cutting television cable, the RSK took 31-35 lbs and damaged the edge to a depth of 0.1 - 0.2 millimeters due to the core twisting during the cut.
After the stock testing the blade was used in a variety of ways to get a feel for its scope of work, round out the stock testing profile and examine aspects of long term use.
The RSK works very well as a small paring knife, easily peeling potatos, able to take the peels off in 1-2 pieces readily. It cuts very well due to the thin and acute edge and can still turn easily enough and efficiently carves out the eyes :
Cutting carrots, it didn't do as well, in general taking three times as much force as an optimal ground knife such as the South Fork, however the lack of sharpness was a significant influence here which was lowering the performance.
The RSK has little chopping ability even in a rear grip as it is so light. The designer, Doug Ritter has advocated using it with a baton for chopping and splitting The lock looks very secure, however an arc-lock from SOG which is similar to the Axis was unable to handle heavy batoning and exploded while a Cold Steel voyager could take much heavier impacts.
The RSK was used alongside a Paramilitary on some wood work, removing birch bark, cutting thick and thin shavings, doing some light chopping, and boring holes in the birch and a few soft woods. The knives were very similar on cutting performance and chopping, the only significant difference was that the more slender tip on the Paramiliary made it more efficient for boring holes once the depth was signifiant.
The very thin edge on the RSK allowed the initial setting of the edge with a 200 grit silicon carbide stone very quickly. However the RSK did not respond well to finer abrasives. Three times it was reset with the 200 silicon carbide stone and then brought up to a fine finish ending with a fine waterstone (4000 and natural chinese), then a hard black arkansas, and finally a 1200 grit DMT. In each case the edge just fractured and would not take the finer abrasives.
The worse case was on the arkansas stone where the edge was actually significantly damaged by the hone and would reflect light and show visisble damage by eye. It was essentially blunted by the hone, reduced in sharpness from the fine honing. This damage would propogate readily in use and after just a few slices into birch hardwood the edge on the RSK would be further deformed and more damage visible by eye.
As a consistency check another S30V blade was honed on the same arkansas stone, a South Fork from Phil Wilson and it took a fine shaving edge quickly.
The handle on the RSK is fairly abrasive in many areas but well contoured and this isn't limited in the nature of functional grips. It compared well to a Paramilary and at several activities it was found to be more ergonomic to the in general "flatter" profile of the Paramilitary. The grip is very secure due to the checkering and ridges assuming the user can withstand the abrasion and hold a tight grip, a glove addresses these concerns.
The RSK designed by Doug Ritter has a fine cutting profile, generally solid grip characteristics and is lightweight and ease to carry with the Zytel handle. It has also been promoted by the designer for very heavy work including batoning to split and fell thick woods. However it could not readily be evaluated due to the steel being problematic which has been reported frequently with this steel.
Comments can be sent to cliffstamp[REMOVE]@cutleryscience.com or by posting in the following thread :
Most of the pictures in the above are in the PhotoBucket album.
More information on the RSK can be obtained at
Doug Ritter's RSK webpage.
| Last updated : | 01 : 10 : 2006 |
| Originally written: | 01 : 05 : 2006 |