Top of the Gear & Outdoors shelf
Gear & Outdoors holds the non-knife outdoor equipment and the tools that are not primarily cutting instruments: axes and hatchets, machetes, saws, lights, shovels, and camp accessories. It is our second-largest category after Knives.
If the item is outdoor equipment rather than a knife, it lives here. Chopping tools such as axes, hatchets and machetes, camp tools, and a range of accessories that support outdoor use.
Some pieces here have edges, which is why the category boundary is about primary purpose rather than about whether something is sharp.
Chopping tools are deliberately run softer than knives so they survive impact. Chrome vanadium carbon steel at 48 to 54 HRC is a common and correct choice for a machete, and it would be a poor one for a folder.
Do not read a chopping tool's hardness figure as a quality signal. See what steel is toughest.
As of this build the category holds 361 live products, which is 25% of everything we list, across 9 brands (Buck, Böker, Böker Magnum, Böker Plus, CIVIVI, Case, Gerber, Hogue, Kershaw), priced from $2.52 to $449.10. The most expensive pieces in it today are Boker Trppr Micarta, Case Kitchen Set Walnut, Gerber Savvy Pivot Lock CF.
These numbers are recounted every time the site is rebuilt, so they track the live catalog rather than a figure typed in once.