Camillus Titanium Fixed Blade Knife Guide

The Camillus Titanium Coating is Great Added Feature for These Fixed Blade Hunting, Camping and Survival Knives

I remain partially skeptical of everything Camillus says about they’re titanium coatings, but I will admit it seems particularly suited for hunting and survival. Whether or not it actually makes their knives harder, it definitely holds up well under heavy use without wearing off, and my own personal experience has shown that it’s pretty resilient to the elements.

If you’re curious about what exactly what the Camillus titanium coating is, I go into it in more detail in our Camillus titanium folding knife guide. But basically it’s titanium cooked into the blade steel. So these aren’t “titanium knives”. They’re just things like Aus-8 and 440 with titanium added on top to make them a little hardier.

We’ve put together a fairly representative sample of the designs they make with their titanium coating. I’ve put them in survival and hunting categories, but there are a few that could be considered urban tactical. There aren’t a lot though, and I don’t like those kinds of knives anyway. I might add tactical as its own category in this guide down the road, though, as Camillus comes out with more knives.

• Survival
  • Les Stroud Survivorman SK Mountain Ultimate Survival Knife – Read More…
  • Mountaineer – Read More…
  • 18538 – 9.75 bamboo handle – Read More…
  • Soar – Read More…
• Hunting/Skinning
  • Animal – Read More…
  • HT-7 – Read More…
  • ST6 – Read More…
  • TigerSharp 8.25” – Read More…
  • Tyrant – Read More…

Survival

In most cases, a survival design can be used just as well for skinning and hunting. I only separated the designs into those two categories because some of the Camillus fixed-blade designs are very specialized for hunting and skinning. Their survival stuff tends to be more versatile, with softer steels.

Les Stroud Survivorman SK Mountain Ultimate Survival Knife

Overall Length:	10.0″
Blade Length:	4.75″
Blade Steel:	440
Blade Coating:	Carbonitride titanium
Blade Style:	Drop point
Blade Grind:	Hollow
Handle Material:	Rubber
Sheath:	Ballistic nylon
Model#;	19093

This is one of the designs that helped breathe some life back into Camillus. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it had more to do with Les Stroud than the actual product itself. Not that the knife isn’t a nice design on the whole. But it’s kind of a middle of the road budget piece with a lot of gimmicky stuff build around it.

Before I get too far up my high horse, this is, by most accounts a useful knife. You can use the ferrot rod to start fires, the blade has a sturdy shape, and the paracord that usually comes with it is actually nice to pack around in something that just hangs off your belt. It’s just that Camillus tried to pack too much into this. The flashlight isn’t that bright, and the signal mirror, while better than nothing, is really not something I’d want to rely on in an emergency. he knife itself is pretty decent, though.

Click here to check out the in depth review of this knife at More Than Just Surviving.

Mountaineer

Overall Length:	9.0″
Blade Length:	4.0″
Blade Steel:	AUS-8
Blade Coating:	Carbonitride titanium
Blade Style:	Drop point
Blade Grind:	Hollow
Handle Material:	Rubber w/ burlwood inserts
Sheath:	Ballistic nylon
Model#;	19084

This might actually serve better as a hunting knife than a survival knife, but the name and the partial serrations lead to think Camillus means for this knife to go up a cliff side with you and cut some rope as you need. I’m a big fan of the rubber handle. That’s a great way to create and easy grip that doesn’t degrade quite so much as the handle gets wet or dirty.

Although, that grip might get interrupted slightly by the stylish wood inserts. It creates an interesting problem. The burlwood reduces the comfort and grippiness but without it the Mountaineer would be pretty ugly, and essentially be a Mora with serrations and shoddy steel. In the end you have a decent looking knife, with some rugged usefulness.

18538 – 9.75 bamboo handle

Overall Length:	9.25″
Blade Length:	4.5″
Blade Steel:	AUS-8
Blade Coating:	Carbonitride titanium
Blade Style:	Drop point
Blade Grind:	Hollow
Handle Material:	Bamboo
Sheath:	Ballistic nylon
Model#;	18537

Not to be confused with the Camillus 9.75 Bamboo Handle fixed blade knife, which doesn’t have an official spot on this blog because I don’t like the way it looks as much. This is a great example of one of the big problems with some Camillus knives. They don’t have real names. Now, I really like the shape of the 9.25” knife.

The handle is a lot more ergonomic, the blade is higher and has a drop point, and there’s just more curve to work with overall. But if I told a friend that this is a good knife worth buying and said “you should get the Camillus 9.25-inch bamboo handle fixed blade knife, but not the 9.75-inch bamboo handle fixed blade knife” he would end up staring at these two things trying to remember if I said the cool 9.25 knife or the 9.75 one that looks like it’s wearing clown pants.

Fortunately, I don’t have any friends and only recommend knives to people who don’t really want my opinion, but are politely listening anyway because I haven’t cut my hair in a while and look like I just came back from a hillbilly murder shack in the woods. Still though, Camillus should really give this knife a real name, because it’s sweet.

Soar

Overall Length:	9.5″
Blade Length:	4.25″
Blade Steel:	440
Blade Coating:	Titanium bonded
Blade Style:	Drop point
Blade Grind:	Flat
Handle Material:	G-10
Sheath:	Nylon
Model#;	19216

This is a good overall rugged knife. It’s hard to go wrong with a slab of metal between G-10 scales, even if that steel is 440. Camillus has done well to create a secure grip on this knife by putting a thumb ramp into the jimping. They may have gone too far with the finger indents on the front of the handle, but that could just be my personal pet peeve talking.

The bit of handgaurd and that steel butt poking out with the lanyard hole drilled in do give this knife some real tactical potential. I could see getting myself unstuck from a car with the soar, for example. It certainly wouldn’t be my first choice for bushcraft, or any job I had to slowly with some fine tuned work. But it was clearly designed long use and high impact, so even if it doesn’t help you do a job well, it will at least survive the job.

Hunting/Skinning

These knives tend to be made of higher grade materials. I’m not sure why, except that maybe hunters are more willing to pay a little more for knives that are stronger and less prone to the elements. Either way, their skinning knives are definitely nicer on the whole, but some of them wouldn’t exactly make an easy transition into EDC use.

Animal

Overall Length:	7.75″
Blade Length:	3.5″
Blade Steel:	440
Blade Coating:	Carbonitride Titanium
Blade Style:	Drop point
Blade Grind:	Hollow
Handle Material:	GFN
Sheath:	Nylon
Model#;	19122

This is a pretty aggressive design that is absolutely not optimized for comfort, but it’s tough and lightweight. The jimping will probably dig into your thumb pretty hard and the GFN scales aren’t exactly a pillowy cushion with the way they leave a good chunk of the tang sticking out to dig into your hand.

But this amalgamation of cheap materials and barebones designing does make this a very low cost hunting knife, usually running under $30, that you can stain, chip, or drop without losing much in terms of knife investment. The steel is a much softer than I would prefer, but that’s not a terrible thing since the blade ends in such a severe tip. It would have been nice to see 440A at least, but it’s still a big, tough chunk of steel, and in the end, you do get what you pay for.

HT-7

Overall Length:	7.0″
Blade Length:	3.5″
Blade Steel:	420
Blade Coating:	Titanium bonded
Blade Style:	Drop point
Blade Grind:	Hollow
Handle Material:	Micarta
Sheath:	Nylon
Model#;	19218

This design makes a fantastic skinning knife. The short blade has a big belly gives you a good length of curve to skin with, and they’ve actually designed the handle and jimping in a way that sticks out on either end so you’ve got something gripping into your hand whether you’re holding the knife blade up or down. The choil gives you plenty of room for choking up too, again, something that could give you a good thump ramp if you’re holding the knife backwards.

Again, Camillus kind of drops off with the steel. They put plain 420 steel on a design that could have been a fantastic knife. Instead, it’s just a good budget design.

ST6

Overall Length:	9.0″
Blade Length:	4.0″
Blade Steel:	AUS-8
Blade Coating:	Carbonitride titanium
Blade Style:	Drop point
Blade Grind:	Hollow
Handle Material:	Rubber w/ steel bolsters
Sheath:	Nylon
Model#;	19085

Camillus clearly had skinning in mind with this knife. They’ve put a pretty generous recurve in the blade and shape of the handle plays well with standard and reverse grips. Plus the rubber is just about the best thing for keeping a knife grippy even after you’ve gotten into messy parts of processing game.

The steel bolsters are a nice touch too, but the lanyard hole is an odd addition, along with the jimping on the butt (is it still called jimping when it’s there?). Odd holes aside, this is a solid skinning knife, taking advantage of a great steel that is vastly underutilized by Camillus.

TigerSharp 8.25”

Overall Length:	7.5″
Blade Length:	3.0″
Blade Steel:	420J2
Blade Coating:	Titanium bonded
Blade Style:	Drop point
Blade Grind:	Flat
Handle Material:	Rubber w/ ABS inserts
Sheath:	Nylon
Model#;	18560

The Tigersharp line is all about simple designs and disposable materials. That doesn’t mean bad materials, though. In fact Tigersharps have nicer handles and steel than most of the regular knives Camillus makes. There are a few different versions of both the folding and fixed blade Tigersharps that vary in size and style.

They’re only distinguished by their size though, ranging from 7.25 inches to 8.25 inches, which is a frustrating decision on Camillus’s part since I’m pretty sure the different versions can’t share blades. This is largest of the two fixed blade versions, and it comes with two plain edge blades.

Be warned, though, replacement blades for this one are a little harder to find. The folding versions seem to be a lot more popular, so most of the replacements you’ll find when you search will be for those. Also, these blades will dull fairly quickly, since 420J2 is more on the softer side, but a new blade generally runs under $15. You decide if that running cost is worth the novelty of having a replaceable part on your fixed blade knife.

Tyrant

Overall Length:	7.25″
Blade Length:	3.0″
Blade Steel:	D2
Blade Coating:	Carbonitride Titanium
Blade Style:	Drop point
Blade Grind:	Hollow
Handle Material:	G-10
Sheath:	Leather w/ built-in sharpener
Model#;	19144

This was designed by G&G Hawk, a father and son designer team with a penchant for automatic knives and weird lookings folders, so the odd look of the Tyrant shouldn’t be that surprising.

They really stripped down this design to make it travel friendly. While that didn’t result in the prettiest knife, it did make one of their hardier and more functional fixed blade knives. Not only have they slapped some hardy D2 tool steel on this thing, they carved a huge finger choil and set the blade at an angle so you can get a really firm grip when you choke it up.

The sheath is another big highlight. Instead of the usual floppy nylon, they outfitted this in a leather pouch with a button flap. It’s a lot more secure and rides higher on the hip so the knife shouldn’t by slapping against your leg while you hike.