Does China Make A Better $15 Knife Than Sweden!?

#morakniv #knife #survival #camping #bushcraft

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DO NOT ATTEMPT ANYTHING SEEN IN THIS VIDEO AT HOME. YOU TAKE ALL RESPONSIBILITY AND RISKS WHEN USING, HANDLING, OR ARE OTHERWISE ENGAGED WITH ANY OF THE ITEMS, SCENARIOS, OR TOPICS MENTIONED IN THIS VIDEO.

[earlgrayman]

I'd just go with the Mora. They're well made and the quality will stay the same whereas the Chinese will alter the quality after a few months of selling their knives and make it as janky as they can while still selling units.

[thewanderingheathen]

One thing about the tip bend: it has a significantly thinner profile on the grind. I have owned a couple of puukkos that had the same grind, and they will bend slightly if put under the same stress as the Ganzo. Dave Baker said it best: a bent blade can be fixed. A broken one cannot. For the price, having one as a backup, or even an expendable primary for some cases may not be a bad thing.

[danielhuff]

My son in law gave me a Mora for Christmas a few years back. I love it. I've field dress many deer with it with no glitches at all.

[mrphucyoo]

That tip test was janky! The china blade was near twice as deep for the 2nd(bend) test.

[bomaite]

I got a Mora as a little kid, some 60+ years ago. I thought it was scary sharp then, and I still think that. I don't use a belt knife very often and don't like to have it dangling at my waist, but I would guess that it is as good as anything out there. There are many fancier, cooler knives around, but for something you can just use without treating it like a holy object, and maybe replace if you have to, Mora knives are damn good.

[FancyPrimate]

Devil's advocate. I've used the Ganzo to cut lots of stuff and done plenty of work with it and it has held up fine. I didnt jam it into a log and fold it over but I didnt get it to pry stumps. I got it to cut. I'm not saying its better or worse than the Mora. I'm just saying that for standard utility it has served me well. If you like the design i think its still its a lot of knife for the price.

[aepage]

That Gonzo was bent after one stab on the tip test. They don't boast an expensive steel, and I still wonder if they're lying.

[charlescollier]

Thanks for the much needed data, Aaron. I'm not sure the comparison is completely fair, though. In fact, I would argue that if it was GANZO's intention to go after the Mora Companion, THEY don't understand knives. I actually think (and hope) they were trying to accomplish something slightly different.

1) The higher flat grind was never going to carve as well as a Scandi, even if it were Mora making it. A Scandi is made FOR that and will ALWAYS carve wood more efficiently than a high flat or full flat ground knife.

2) The geometry with the tip was never going to hold up to that tip test, even if it were Mora making the knife. It's a higher grind, which means it's thinner at the tip, AND it tapers, which a simple Scandi knife doesn't. I think it would be more apt to compare this GANZO to a Kansbol, which I would NEVER tip test like that, because physics.

3) I think GANZO was trying to do something very clever - create a Mora-esque knife with a higher flat grind, because Scandi ground knives are great for wood carving, but less efficient at other camp tasks, like food prep. If you test the two knives in the kitchen, especially if you're cutting up things like potatoes and apples, The GANZO is going to win that contest. I think that was their target - to create a companion to the Companion - a Mora-like knife that is for camp kitchen and general use tasks, to pair with a Mora for wood work. That's how I would use these.

4) The big knock, in my view, is the too-soft heat treatment that showed up in the cutting of abrasives. If they tighten that up, just a smidge, I think they fill a nice gap in the budget camping/hiking knife market.

[goldrush]

As a swede that actually works for Sandvik I'm going to explain one thing for you all. When it comes to steel we probably make the best steel in the world. We are famous for our high quality swedish steel. Why?

Well, we have the highest iron ore content in the world in our iron ore. It's around 70% and sometimes even more. Because of this fact we out competed all countries in Europe within the iron ore/steel industry. Around 90% of all iron ore that is mined in Europe today is mined in the northern part of Sweden.

But how could we do this? Well, if you have a high iron ore content in your ore then it's much cheaper to make steel because you don't need as much energy to refine it and make it clean. To melt iron ore consumes a lot of energy. If you only have 10-15% iron ore content in your ore it will take so much more energy to refine it, which in turn will lead to very high prices of the steel you are going to sell.

But we also have another huge competetive advantage and that is basically free energy. We have many hydro power plants in the north of Sweden. We are one of the countries in the world with the most hydro power plants. Norway beats us, but they don't have the iron ore instead. This has been a huge advantage since as I said earlier it requires a lot of energy to refine iron ore. In the rest of Europe they had to burn coal, which took a lot more effort and it was far more expensive.

But this is not the only reasons to our competetive advantages. You also get much cleaner steel if you start from ore with higher iron ore content and with much less impurities. That in turn means less corrosion and better quality of the steel.

So, we had this going for us and because of these great resources that we had, we started many companies to make stuff out of our iron resource.

The Mora knife is one such product that is made of superior steel. So this is a big reason why it outperforms chinese knifes.

But also, we have hundreds of years of evolution of making greate iron/steel products. We have secret recipes and stuff for making the best steel. The chinese lack that experience. They simply havn't had enough time to gain that knowledge. It's actually much more complex to make good quality steel than you think.

[adrianjagmag]

Mora are scandi grind and 60 HRC in either 12C27 or 1090 equivalent, this is a flat grind with a more acute tip and ~56 HRC in 8Cr14Mov. I've both the Companion and this Ganzo and they both excel at different tasks, I use the Mora Companion mainly for bushcraft and the Ganzo for a camp food prep knife with the occasional bushcraft. That's the roles they're most suitable for. So they aren't really competing in roles but in price...

[Switchblade]

I think it looks more like a Benchmade Puukko clone, than a Mora.

[SevenSixTwo]

Like everything made in China, it overpromises and underdelivers. If you're serious about survival and/or bushcraft out in the wilderness, you cannot cheap out on your blade. Go with a genuine Mora, or just stay home and watch TV or something.

[tombeckett]

I Love the Mora Companion. I own several of them. At first I was open to the idea of it BUT the weak steel of the Gonzo has me sticking with the Mora

[gregritchie]

I see these as two completely different knives. I do like my Mora Companion HD as a general use camping / bushcrafting knife and it stays on my belt. What I do not like is the Scandi grind as a camp kitchen knife. I keep a Opinel in my camp kitchen kit. The Opinel with its flat ground blade is just so much better as a camp kitchen knife. I see the Ganzo as a fixed blade replacement for the Opinel.

[johnruggiero]

My first fixed blade was a Buck 119. It's about 50 years old now. I replaced it in my camping kit with a Mora Companion Spark. Still love my Buck but the Mora is the one that goes camping with me.

[neutronalchemist]

So we discovered a finer tip bends when a thicker one doesn't. Wow!

[AbdulRahimAbdulJalil-ot]

I would always prefer a full flat grind knives. I had a few Moras and they are good knives, the limitations are in food preparations and other tasks when small knives are used. Tis is my experience and my thoughts. I can be wrong...

[kennethkrieb]

Very informative video. Thanks Aaron. Another great video.

[UnCoolDad]

Would have liked to see real world edge retention test after both had been sharpened. You can't guarantee that the factory edge is optimal. I also think a direct comparison is a little unfair due to the geometry being so different between the two,

[donjobi]

for slicer & easy to sharp go for ganzo