Mora is highly respected for the quality of knives that they produce. Light My Fire is equally regarded for their Swedish FireSteel fire starting products. These two great companies collaborated and have been producing the Swedish FireKnife. As the name implies, this fixed blade knife incorporates a Light my Fire Scout fire starting steel in the handle. For me, this is a very logical combination of tools. Process your tinder with the knife blade and light it up with the FireSteel in the handle. What could be more convenient?
Mora produces the knife portion of the Swedish FireKnife, and uses Sandvik 12C27 stainless steel for the blade. Mora is well known for using high quality steel in their knives. The spine of the blade has nice sharp corners for striking sparks on the FireSteel. It uses a clip style point for easy piercing and good controllability of the tip, and is sharpened with a Scandinavian grind. Most consider this grind to be the easiest for inexperienced people to sharpen, and it is a very strong edge. The tip of the knife uses a somewhat modified Scandi grind with the middle portion of the blade thinned somewhat. This aides with slicing at the tip and allows the blade to pass through materials a bit easier. The whole blade has a brushed finish and looks great.
The handle of the knife is shaped to fit the hand and uses a high friction rubber-coated plastic. It feels great in my hand is easy to hold onto. The FireSteel is inserted into a cavity at the end of the handle. The FireSteel locks in place with less than ¼ of a turn and is held securely.
As mentioned before, the Light My Fire Scout FireSteel is used in this knife. You should get about 3,000 strikes with this steel and replacements can be purchased. The FireSteel works well when wet, and produces a super hot 5,400 degree Fahrenheit spark. A lanyard is attached to the handle of the FireSteel . I suppose you could loop that around your wrist if your hands are super cold and there is the possibility for dropping things.
The plastic sheath provided is very much like many others made by Mora. It and the knife match in one of five colors. Orange, red, cyan, green and black are available. The knife is held securely in place with friction, but is easily removable. A drain hole is provided at the tip. A fixed belt clip is provided to attach the sheath to a variety of objects. The clip held the sheath securely on both my belt and pants pockets.
While the overall length of the knife is 8.5 inches, only about 3.9 inches of that length consists of the blade. The weight of the Swedish Fire Knife is 3.4 ounces.
Choosing a knife to carry while backpacking is a matter of personal preference. I would carry this knife on shorter trips when I don‘t expect to have to do heavy work with the knife. This knife does feel sturdy enough especially given its light weight, but I would not start striking it with a baton to split firewood. This could also be a great backup knife to carry with a heavier bushcraft knife with a full length tang.
MSRP for the Swedish Fire Knife is $39.99. I bought mine over the web on clearance for a bit less than $24. Check out industrialrev.com for more great products by Light My Fire and Mora as well as other well known brands.
– Mark