Mora Garberg Review: 18 Months of Professional Use

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paulkirtley.co.uk I've been using the Mora Garberg Stainless Steel knife for a wide range of tasks and in multiple environments for the last 18 months. I share my thoughts in this video...

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hi guys I'm Paul currently and today in this video I would like to share with you my thoughts and my experiences with the more garbage knife which I've been using for about 18 months now as I record this video give give or take I was asked by Maura to to review it they at least their publicity company sent this knife to me in 2016 around the time that this knife came out I haven't been paid to do a review and but you know just everything out in the open they sent me this knife for free to to use and to try and as always with my full reviews I don't just take something out of a box take something out of the sheath and go ooh that looks nice that looks like it's a good knife you can't tell with equipment particularly equipment that you're gonna want to use in wild and remote places in the outdoors and you want to rely on you can't tell by looking at it and whether or not it's going to fulfill that duty you can get a good idea of course but the only way you really get proper experience of using something like this is by using it so initially I just started taking it on courses that I was running so I wasn't you know a million miles away from home and I also had access to other knives so if there was any problem with this I could swap out and use it but I i quite quickly became happy with this on my belt i've used a number of Moroz over the years everything from the very basic Clippers through to the companion knives the heavy duty companion is a is a firm favorite of mine as a very very good value but robust day to day belt knife what I like about this initially is that you get a leather sheath with it and one of my I guess one of my bugbears it's not a big complaint but one of my bugbears with normal Moroz you know the classic

Clippers and companions is that that the plastic sheath and also just the rigidity of that connection between the sheath and your belt and I like a leather sheath that's just one of my personal preferences I'm not saying you should like it I know some people like the plastic sheath I know some people like Kydex I get that I'm not saying you must have a leather sheath I like a leather sheath so I will it was nice to see that this had a leather sheath what I was unused to though was a leather sheath with a popper closer and that took a little bit of getting used to for me and I have to say on on some teaching courses I was quite tempted to slice that off because having too unflattering flap it all the time to get the knife in and out when I'm using it a lot particularly what I'm teaching when we're carving when we're doing a lot of things out in the woods I started to find that a little bit irritating that said on trips I ultimately took this on on a big wilderness canoe trip last year and I wasn't using it all the time but I wanted it on my belt all the time and I wanted it secure I found the reassurance of it having it not only with a pretty decent firm closure in the firm grip in the sheath but then having the pressed hood closure over the top on my belt while I was paddling all day and I was happy to have that security there and then I was using the knife you know on and off in the evenings around camp and what-have-you but also it was there on my belt should I need it so I actually quite liked that closure but I have to say when I was teaching I found it somewhat in got in the way now I've used this knife everything from you know making feather sticks processing lots of cattail roots so Tifa latifolia on one course we were taking a lot of those plants out of a pond and I was cutting the roots off and it was covered in mud and grit and dirt and it served that purpose really well now this is the stainless steel version I know that Maura have got a carbon version coming out around about the time that I'm recording this video this is a stainless version and I have to say I was particularly interested in the fact that this was a stainless knife and because of some of the jobs that I do like I say all those cattail roots and cutting them off they're all wet they're coming out of the ponds that was a job that I use and for but also as I say I I wanted a knife that I thought okay this would be good for a canoe trip because as good as you are on canoe trips sometimes you may well end up in the water whether that's you capsized or maybe you just end up wading deeper than you expect to and you want a knife that is going to cope with getting wet or at least being in a wet sheath and as I say I like a leather sheath but the problem of the leather sheath is that if it's wet and you've got a carbon steel knife in there the knife automatically pretty much rusts and so I like a stainless steel knife for wilderness canoe trips and for that reason and so this this was attractive to me for that purpose the other thing that attracted me to this was its full tang now as you know the the the the Clippers and even the the robust the heavy-duty version of the of the companion knife they're not full tang they have a tab tang and I have seen a number of normal companions standard companions break over the years the heavy-duty ones are more robust still of course but what attracted me to this was this has a full tang coming all the way through not quite in the same way as your kind of classic wood law knife where you've got the scales on the outside and you've got a full width tang there I have heard of one of these knives being broken in battening I had a conversation with a guy in in the Netherlands at an event about a year ago just over a year ago and he said he had broken one of these battening and it had broken where there was on the on the tang there is a little sort of insert to do with the way that the the the knife is manufactured and that is was a point at the fracture it started in the Tang in my experience if the if the Companions break if the Tang fractures it's also in one of those little stress points that their fracture starts so that was interesting but I haven't managed to break this I haven't gone out of my way to break it I've just used it in the way that I use and and that includes battening and I've not had a problem with this knife so far it's quite thick on the back it comes with quite noticeable machine markings on there on the bevel this has been sharpened so much now that I've got a nice flat effectively a Scandi grind on on this on this one here it's been on everything from pocket stones through to bench stones and I find it quite easy to sharpen it's quite a nice silky smooth steel both in terms of sharpening it and in terms of using it you can get a good edge on it and I found the edge retention to be to be to be good on this as well it holds its edge quite nicely in terms of the quality of the steel so I think overall the quality of the actual blade is it seems pretty good and I find the handle a little bit plasticky and that said it's got a good feel in the hand that overall the balance to me is quite nice and thus well in the palm is also comfortable for me and it's slightly rubbery but also plasticky it's not as grippy as the as the companion knives but the knurling the diamond shaping on there does give it some grip I have found though both in terms of using it for dirty jobs as I say like removing the roots from Tifa latifolia as well as sharpening it on a on a water stone that that water with the fine grit gets into the patterning on the handle and it's quite difficult to get it out you'd have to get in there with an old toothbrush or a nail brush or something to clean it out if you really wanted to so it does look a little bit dirty even though I do look after my gear and but it's just the use of that knife there's dirt in there from my hands and from using it and from sharpening it but I don't have a huge complaint about that to be honest with you but some people some people might but overall it feels good in the hand it's comfortable to use and you can get a good strong grip and get some good powerful cuts with it so in

in terms of use you know compared to a lot of the Morrow's it's a very similar size it's about that palm width which is a very good size for a general-purpose belt knife or a bushcraft knife if you want to call it that that's very very good in terms of the back of the knife here

it's very square which works very nicely with a fire steel a Ferro rod if you like and what I found with the one that I got now I don't know if this is true of all of them it almost had a little it while it did not almost had it had a burr on the back line and whether that was intentional or not I'm not sure and but what I found was as I was reinforcing cuts when I was doing some carving particularly making pot hangers and beaks notches and various small camp craft jobs that I was using this for as I was testing it out I found as I was reinforcing and being careful with some of those cuts that I was getting little slices on my thumb and I'll pull up a photograph of that coz I took some photos of that at the time and at first I was like I just became aware of my thumb being sore one morning I was like what have I done to my thumb and then I realized I've been using this knife quite a lot the day before for making various camp implements and including making some beaked notches for an adjustable pot hanger and I figured it was my thumb on the back of the knife as I was controlling those cuts there it was the burr was cutting my thumb and that's what was going on so what I actually did on the on this section of the back here to where it starts to narrow down a little bit what I did was actually filed it off I removed the burr there because I don't use that section of the blade on a Ferro rod anyway as many of you know I tend to push off from the front of the blade I've left the burr on the front here and but as a lot of you know in terms of that technique that I use for pushing really big sparks off the end of a Ferro rod I use where the bevel comes up to the back anyway you always get a nice square edge there but suffice to say you can get really good sparks off this very very easily a lot of people think that you can't get sparks off a non carbons blady the people say uh now you need your stainless steel blades you can't make sparks with that's not true I've shown it before with my Falcon even tk4 knife I did a video on that last year but there's absolutely no problem generating sparks with that reinforced thumb grip pushing nice big sparks off the front of this it's absolutely great for that job the other thing the other thing that I noticed because the tang goes all the way through the handle and this also has a burr on it that you can use that on your Ferro steel as well and that allows you to push tons of sparks down onto material which i think is quite an interesting additional use and if you struggle to use that technique you've also got this technique as well and you've got that strong grip just be careful about the point of course and what you want your what your fake get your face away from it but you're pushing it away but yet you can push really big Sparks using that pole section there as well that pommel section if you like so no problem generating sparks with this knife using a Ferro rod at all and that's again something that I look for in a good wilderness knife so I was using this knife over the course of 2016 and into 2017 and so I decided to take this knife with me on the mission IB canoe trip that I did in 2017 with clients and this was my main knife I didn't take a spare knife I was confident enough with this knife by that stage to take this as my only belt knife I did have a pocket knife I did take my TK 4 as well which I normally take as a backup knife and but this was my main wilderness knife for that trip and I used it for making feather sticks and for lighting fires and just general camp duties and it served that purpose very well and of course with it being stainless steel and no issues with with water either of being around water now I that was a trip I didn't fall in the water didn't capsize there was a bit of wading of course and but I didn't have any concerns about this knife being on my belt for that trip and it served its purpose very very well and I'll share a couple of photos and here's one I took of a few bits of kit that I had with me and there's another one here of it in sexual case for that we had shown quite nicely there so I was very pleased with it and the sheath has held up well it's to look a little bit used as you can as you can see if I can get this camera to focus no to focus I think there's something nice about that there's a kind of patina to it it's looking worn in rather than worn out if you like and I think that's you know that that's quite nice it's not a super top quality leather it's not the quality of a leather that you'd get on a custom-made sheath or with a custom knife typically you know if you're buying a custom bushcraft knife multiples of the cost of this garb ugh you're going to get a better quality leather with it as well but there's there's nothing wrong with this it serves the purpose it you know that the the riveting is all good the stitching is good its riveted here it's not going to split very easily there the bottom is as held up well to where there even though it's looking a little scuffed I have no complaints really it's a tough little unit that's held up well to a lot of use lots of different use in terms of carving not bad at all and feather sticks it makes good feather sticks it battens very nicely it's a tough knife it feather sticks are good once you get a good sharp edge on it and maintain a sharp edge on it and he's got a good nice smooth action it does run off a little bit quick towards the tip as you always get with a knife that's got a bit more belly on it like that where is it a typical Morel companion knife comes up to the tip a little bit more gradually and therefore you get a more gradual cut that said in terms of having that belly it's quite good for skinning for example but it's not so good for carving and doesn't you know most carving job spoons and whatnot no problem at all making a netting needle for example starts to get a little bit difficult with this because you don't have that spear point on it like you have on a typical wood lure type knife that type of bushcraft knife or on a more a clipper more a companion that type of knife that many people use and so it's a little bit harder for some of those sort of internal jobs because of the depth of the blade and you don't have that spear shape but overall if you want to carve green implements around camp for pot hangars and pegs and all those sorts of things absolutely fine carving spoons absolutely fine there's just a couple of jobs with a little bit more wood carving specific that maybe you'd want something with a fine tip but then again of course you can get a more a wood carving knife if you want to do lots of that type of fine work and they're inexpensive and they do the job absolutely wonderfully so yeah as a robust wilderness knife that's not too expensive that holds up to water and holds up to prolonged use and I have no complaints about this whatsoever it works very very well and I'll leave it to you as to whether or not you think it's worth the extra money over and above a heavy duty Mora for example a heavy duty companion but I think it's definitely worth consideration if you want to step up from that very very basic Mora but don't want to spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds or hundreds of dollars on a on a handmade custom bushcraft knife for example and there's definitely something to think about there as I say if you really really want to do lots of wood carving though you'd probably want to get a more a wood carving knife to go along with it because the the lack of spear tip on this the fact it's got more belly makes it more suitable for some jobs but less suitable for those wood carving jobs but overall I really really like it and do beware the thumb on the back there as I say if you don't need a burr there maybe remove it just gently file it with a metal file and you'll get rid of that quickly but I really do like the fact you can create sparks from the back of it too so overall very very happy of the GAR bag as I say I was happy to the extent that I took it on a proper wilderness trip where I had to rely on this knife and it served the purpose very very well so yeah well done tomorrow a good addition to the range thank you for sending it to me thank you for allowing me to test it over a long period of time hope you found that useful I hope you you know the bottom line is I've used this for nearly two years I haven't broken it I've kept it sharp it served me very very well for all the general-purpose push craft jobs that I do apart from maybe some fine carving so pretty pretty good thumbs up for that for the GAR burg so that brings me to the end of my thoughts on the guard burg I appreciate your attention thank you for watching please like the video if you haven't done already and please subscribe to my channel if you're not a subscriber then I will be able to share more thoughts on more aspects of outdoor life outdoor equipment as well as bushcraft in general with you going forward so like share subscribe thank you very much much appreciated take care and good bye [Music]

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