Victorinox Venture Review: A Simple, Do-It-All Bushcraft Blade for Under $100
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As someone who spends a lot of time hiking, camping, and hunting, I’ve handled more outdoor knives than I can count. Most are overbuilt survival tanks or ultralight slicers that lack versatility. Enter the Victorinox Venture, the brand’s first foray into dedicated bushcraft knives. Victorinox is a brand best known for the iconic Swiss Army Knife, and the Venture promises to balance its heritage of Swiss craftsmanship with the rugged demands of modern outdoorsmen. With fine-tuned slicing geometry, ergonomic grip, and fire-starting spine, the Venture seems ideal for carving, food prep, and general camp chores. But will it work in the woods? I put the Venture through its paces in the field to find out.
Victorinox Venture Specs and Key Features
Alice Jones Webb
- Weight: 5.4 ounces
- Length: 9.5 inches
- Blade Length: 4 inches
- Blade Steel: 14C28N stainless steel
- Handle Material: Polymer
- Sheath Material: Thermoplastic elastomer
- Fire-making blow tube sheath
- Made in Switzerland
- Price: $75
Victorinox launched its Venture and Venture Pro in July 2023. While this wasn’t the brand’s first fixed blade offering, it is its first stab at romancing the ever-growing bushcraft crowd. And its first poke isn’t shabby.
The Venture is a 9.5-inch, full-tang, drop-point blade with a full flat grind crafted from 14C28N stainless steel hardened to 59 HRC, which strikes a nice balance between edge retention and blade durability.. Developed by Sandvik, 14C28N performs well in tough environments without being overly brittle. The steel’s high nitrogen content also adds to its rust resistance.
The point is in line with the center of the grip, which creates a strength and control. The tip is also relatively robust with minimal distal taper, making it durable for tasks like prying and batoning. If you want a blade for precision tip work like drilling or fine carving, this isn’t it.
Victorinox included a “protruding tang,” which turns the butt of the knife into a smashing tool. The exposed tang also features a ¼-inch hex hole for attaching a lanyard. It is also great for throwing sparks from a ferro rod. The spine has a 90-degree edge and generous jimping for improved blade control and tinder scraping.
Victorinox chose to place the Venture’s jimping relatively far forward along the blade’s spine, much closer to the tip than the handle. The relatively unusual placement supports a non-traditional grip, allowing the user to choke up on the blade for more control when making precision cuts while carving, whittling, or feather-sticking.
The Venture’s sheath doubles as a fire blow tube to help coax embers into full-blown flames. It can also accommodate the knife in either direction, which is a plus if you’re a leftie (or a right-handed normie sharing a blade with one).
For an extra $40, you can splurge and get the Venture Pro, which has several bushcraft upgrades, including a bow drill divot integrated into the handle and a MOLLE-compatible sheath with tweezers, fire steel, and a pressurized ballpoint pen.
Testing the Victorinox Venture
I first laid hands on this knife on a camping trip in New York’s Catskills. The Venture made a solid first impression. The handle has a surprisingly ergonomic grip that sits in that Goldilocks sweet spot — just enough real estate for beefier hands without overwhelming small palms and petite fingers.
Straight out of the box, I used this knife to split kindling and scrape tinder. The Venture blade is relatively thin (.13 inches), which made me concerned about using it to split wood, but it took batoning like a champ. After a few solid strikes, the wood split like an old zipper on a worn out coat.
After splitting a half dozen pieces of wood into quarters, I used the Venture to carve a featherstick. The 90-degree spine also proved to be a great tool for scraping tinder.
The exposed tang at the butt of the knife, threw enough sparks on its first brush with a fresh ferro rod, and I had embers smoldering and then a good flame going in less than a minute, even though I’m far from a firebug.
While the Venture initially impressed me in the Catskills with its firemaking capabilities, I wanted to make sure this blade could prove its mettle on a campsite. Once I got back home to North Carolina, I tested how the knife performed in a variety of cutting tasks, including slicing a tomato, peeling an apple, cutting paracord, and slashing cardboard. After using it to carve sticks and baton kindling, I didn’t bother to sharpen the blade. Even so, the Venture still sliced through tomatoes and flayed the skin from a Macintosh in one long ribbon. It also carved through cardboard and 550 without breaking a sweat.
What the Venture Does Best
It shouldn’t be surprising that Victorinox, the veritable king of multitools, would create a do-it-all knife. The Venture is light, nimble, and easy to control, making it great for food prep. It easily slices, dices, cuts, and carves, yet is tough enough to split kindling and start a fire.
If you’re looking for a jack-of-all-trades bushcraft or camping knife, this one fits the bill. And at a price point well under $100, you get a ton of bang for your buck.
Where the Venture Can Improve
Although the Victorinox Venture does a lot of things well, it is far from perfect. Victorinox had to sacrifice some brute force utility to achieve the Venture’s superb slicing geometry. The Venture has a thin blade with a high flat grind that works well for slicing food and carving feather sticks. However, it’s not ideal for prying or tough chopping tasks, particularly because some users have reported blade deformation when using the Venture for those jobs. If that kind of work is part of your outdoor repertoire, you’ll probably want to bring a thicker, more robust blade.
While the ambidextrous nature of the Venture’s sheath is a plus, there’s a ton of wiggle room in the design. As a result, the blade rattled around a bit while I was hiking. It’s more annoying than a dealbreaker, particularly since the blade never fell from the sheath, even during climbing, squatting, and bending over.
Final Thoughts
The Victorinox Venture offers excellent slicing performance, fire-starting features, and a well-designed handle. It may not be built for heavy prying or hardcore chopping, but it works pretty darned well as a simple, versatile camp knife for hikers, hunters, and novice bushcrafters who value function over flash. And at a price point well under $100, it’s a great value.
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Source: https://www.outdoorlife.com/gear/victorinox-venture-review/
