What is the purpose of the grooves on the backside of a survival knife?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “knife jimping“
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Written by: Margaret
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What is the purpose of the grooves on the backside of a survival knife?
You can check the answer of the people under the question at Quora “knife jimping“
About Margaret
And I’m jumping in to say the sawtooth grooves on the spines of most “survival” knives are only slightly better than useless.
Most of them aren’t cut or set as saw blades and to use them what you would be doing is just wearing away the wood or whatever you’re “sawing.”
The sole exceptions that I know of are some of the military rescue/escape blades of the Viet Nam era. They were equipped with aluminum fuselage wall ripper teeth on the spines. (Ain’t going to work on a pressurized cockpit or fuselage but helicopter skins could probably be ripped just fine. I’m told that they could also be used to rip through plastic canopies but I’d have to say that it is just something I saw in a forum once and have no corroborative support for that.
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The groove is actually called a fuller and its intent is to give the blade strength while reducing the weight somewhat.
Grooves generally performs the two functions:
1. It stiffens the blade
2. It lightens the blade
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Depends on who made the knife.
I have a USAF survival knife with some saw teeth on the back. It is fine for ripping aluminum but useless on wood.
I also have a US army helicopter pilot’s knife with similar teeth, but these can be used on wood fieldcraft projects.
As an interesting aside, I inherited a kitchen knife that was made back during the depression. An ancestor of mine repurposed an old bandsaw blade from a saw mill. He filed down the teeth on the back side of the blade enough to take most of the points off.
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These grooves are known as “jimping” or “gimping” and are intended to provide additional grip and control when using the knife with the thumb along the spine.
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Its is jimping.
Its there to allow you to choke up on a knife for certain cuts that may require precision while maintaining grip.
Personally I’ve never used it and tend to believe its more decorative than utility.
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Just jumping in to say that the three answers so far, all completely different, are all correct. ‘Grooves on the backside of a knife’ could easily be referring to fullers, jimping, or serrations/sawblade. My own first thought was jimping, but the shallow groove of a fuller is usually located near the spine, and serrations are really just sharp grooves. I think it’s likely you’re referring to jimping, though; serrations are pretty obvious in function, and a fuller is more on the flat rather than ‘backside’ of a blade.
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