The Entrek Destroyer Survival Blade Review

Entrek USA is a knife line founded and designed by internationally known knife maker Ray W. Ennis with the intention of providing the customer with the high quality of a custom knife at the more reasonable price of a production knife.

Ennis has been professionally designing and making knives since 1973 and has made over 7000 of them!  With that being said, I believe that it is safe to say that he has he has learned at least a little bit about how to properly construct a knife with that much experience behind him.

To prove that is the construction of today’s Entrek knives. All of the knives are made from 440C stainless steel blades that are heat treated, sub-zero stabilized and double drawn to 57-58 Rockwell. This provides a good combination of blade toughness, edge holding ability, and corrosion resistance that is hard to match even with much more expensive steels.

Furthermore, Entrek USA uses black canvas Micarta from only one source in order to maintain color uniformity which does cost more but also creates a better quality knife. Therefore, Entrek USA lives up to Ray Ennis’ vision of producing a custom quality knife at a production knife price.

Entrek Destroyer Survival Blade Features:

The Entrek Destroyer is one of my favorite Entrek designs. It has an overall length of 13 9/16” with an 8 7/8” drop point, sabre ground blade made from 1/4″ thick 440C stainless steel with a bead blasted, non-reflective finish. In addition, the point of the spine features a false edge to provide the knife with a very sharp point for piercing and it features full tang construction with an integral quillion and black Micarta handle slabs. Last, this knife is supplied with a Kydex sheath that includes either a belt loop or a belt clip and hollow rivets so that you can lash the knife to your gear.

For those of you who have read my article on this web site about the TOPS Armageddon, the concept behind the Entrek Destroyer is the same in that it is something of a cross between a Philippine Bolo and a Malaysian Kukri. Yet, it is specifically designed to handle our woody North American vegetation. Thus, it features the weight-forward design of the bolo and the recurved, sabre ground blade and a forward positive angle of the Kukri for tremendous leverage when chopping and slashing.

Also, with a full, 1/4″ thick, spine, and an ergonomically designed, non-slip, handle design, the Entrek Destroyer is perfect for most any chopping or splitting task you might need to ask of it. In fact, I consider it to be a considerable improvement over of all the ethnic Malaysian and Philippine designs. Therefore, this knife is the perfect choice for our North American temperate rain forests because the 8 7/8” blade makes it easy and convenient to carry but, the heavy, 1/4”, spine and weight-forward design of the drop point blade makes it a very effective chopping tool.

440C Stainless Steel:

In addition, the use of 440C stainless steel (although somewhat expensive) is another result of Ray Ennis’ desire to produce a true, custom quality knife for his customers. You see, 440C stainless steel contains 0.95%-1.20% carbon, 16.0%-18.0% chromium, 1.0% manganese, and 0.75% molybdenum. Thus, 440C is a very hard, very corrosion resistant, stainless steel with the addition of manganese to increase toughness and the addition of molybdenum to bond with the chromium and form hard, double carbide bonds which help improve the abrasion and corrosion resistance of the steel.

In fact, for many years, 440C was considered to the pinnacle blade steel amongst custom knife makers with everything else considered inferior until Bob Loveless began to experiment with an aviation steel called 154CM (the American equivalent of Japanese ATS34). When 440C is tempered and hardened correctly, this steel is both tough and hard making it the perfect steel as a dedicated blade for survival & preparedness.

Black Micarta Handle Slabs:

Furthermore, the full tang construction makes this a very strong knife and the black Micarta handle slabs have a very ergonomic shape that will enable the user to easily maintain a positive grip even with wet hands. Plus, the integral single quillion will prevent the user’s fingers from accidentally sliding forward onto the edge of the knife.

Thus, not only is the Entrek Destroyer Survival Blade a very elegantly designed and well made knife, it is exactly what a person needs for performing light to heavy chopping and splitting tasks in a wilderness survival situation. Plus, with Ray’s special treatment of the 440C stainless steel, I suspect that the Entrek Destroyer will easily live up to its name by destroying most anything in your path.