ESEE Knives Junglas

The flagship of all Esee knives. The only knife you really need to do everything in the outdoors. This knife will do big and small knife tasks equally well.

If you're interested in an Esee product, this is the one you want first. I've worked this knife hard for about 6-7 years now. It is a do-it-all knife sized machete. You can chop with it, cook with it, carve with it, cut rope, clean fish, baton, scrape bark you name it and the Junglas can do it.

It's got a very interesting high saber grind that provides both strength, rigidity, and flexibility. You could literally take this as your only tool and live in the wild for months. People complain a lot about rust but I found it a nonissue for all my Esee knives as long as I spray the knives off with g10 or wd40 periodically. The baked on paint also works very well to protect the overall blade.

Another plus for all Esee knives is the steel's ability to take a razor-like edge with minimal effort. I use a Lansky puck sharpener when in the field to touch up my Junglas and it works great.

The only potential negative for this knife is the sheath and handle slabs. The sheath's very high quality and robust, but only useful for lashing to a pack etc.  It would be very awkward to carry this knife on a belt anyway, so it's not a major issue.

The handles are a personal preference issue. I find all Esee micarta scales somewhat blocky and odd feeling. I have pretty tough hands from work, but the handles that come with their knives always give me hot spots due to their taper. As a result, I now only order the knives with the G10 handles from the knife connection which I find superior.

Overall, I've owned about six different Esee knives and I feel this is their absolute best product. I have not found anything that can really compare to the Junglas in terms of feel, size, and overall usefulness. The closest knife that comes to mind would be the Ontario sp10, which is much heavier but also does well at both large and small knife tasks.

Hopefully this review helps someone out. I have no regrets buying this knife and wouldn't hesitate to purchase another if I lost this one.

Background

I've used this knife quite often while camping. I lash it to my pack routinely. It has been a great knife and I highly recommend it for all outdoors tasks.

A durable large blade for wood processing.

The ESEE Junglas is a beast of a knife. Its superb heat treat means that the knife can take a beating and come back for more. All of the knife is designed to resist severe use and abuse. The coating on the blade is one of the most durable I have ever used, surpassing even the custom coatings on some of my blades.

The canvas micarta handle is impervious to water and fitted perfectly to the handle. While canvas micarta can potentially crack it would take a hell of a lot for that to actually happen and it is both more tougher than natural materials and more comfortable than most synthetic alternatives.

The handle is also perfectly fit with the spine of the blade and the scales being perfectly flush. The handle is large enough to fit even the largest hand, or a hand and a half should you want to double up for chopping. The handle is also slightly curved at the back making a long grip for chopping easy without fear of losing the blade, of course adding a lanyard in the provided hole helps there as well.

It's a shame the company hasn't decided to make the bearing block hole as found on the RC-5 a standard feature. While it might be slightly cumbersome with a large blade like this it would certainly be possible and it would be nice to have the option.

The biggest issue I've found with this blade is its tendency to rust, as high carbon steels are prone to do. The coating protects the majority of the blade from this, and it can be easily sharpened off the edge. Unfortunately the laser etched ESEE logo exposes the steel under the coating and is prone to rust. What's worse, the rust cannot be removed without damaging the coating even further.

All in all this is a great large blade for processing wood.

The knife is amazing. The sheath is nice, but could be better.

"This is a knife." - M. Dundee

If I had to choose one item to take with me to survive, this would be it. You could chop a tree down with this knife if you had to, or you could clean a fish (not as easy as with a small knife, but it's not difficult with a little practice).

It does have some weight to it, but it helps with chopping and durability, and it's balanced pretty good to minimize fatigue.

While a big knife is more weight to be carried, it's a hatchet, a knife, a sword, a machete, a shovel (will kill an edge), a pry bar, and probably a few other things, while a smaller sized knife is generally just a knife.

Smaller blades are easier to handle at first, but that's because people are generally used to kitchen sized knives on a daily basis. With a little practice, doing small jobs with big knives is simple and requires less force to make cuts.