This knife is alright for minor work or hiking.
great starter.
its a must buy for beginers and collectors alike.
Rating: 3 / 5

For the price, this is a great, sharp, light weight knife. And, I think the sheath is just fine. It ships with the rectangular cordura sheath (pictured) that has a stone pocket. I believe the kydex is an available option. The cordura model has got a lot of options for mounting.

The blade feels good in the hand…balanced.

For the dollar, I like it a lot.
Rating: 4 / 5

First, let me own up, I have the other Field knife, not this one. But I have some useful comments about this knife which may help you decide about it.

Next notice that while both “Field” knives are from SOG this one is made from a different steel AUS8 than the larger one which is made from BG-42 a more exotic and harder steel. BG-42 is considered by collectors a more “cool” and better steel but I understand its much more expensive and difficult to work with. If you search around you’ll find a lot of knives made with AUS8 so it must work reasonably well.

To get a good look at the blade shape, its not quite the same as the bigger Field knife, you’ll have to go to the Sog Knives Home page at http://www.sogknives.com IMO this knife has a better cutting surface as the sharp part extends almost all the way to the handle while the X-42 knife stops about an inch from the handle. What this means is that you could peel something with it by pulling the blade toward you. Now the blade is a bit wide for this task but it will be easier than the long reach required to make it work for the X-42.

Both knives have a sort of swoop up in the center of the straight part of the blade. This makes it hard to chop the way a a good French Chef’s knife works. But with the nice curve on the tip it makes a much better skinning and meat slicing blade. And after all this is a “camping/hunting/fishing” knife.

For fishing both knives are way too wide to filet fish. But they have nice grippy handles so cutting heads & tails and gutting would be fine. No losing control of the knife with slippery hands.

The bad is that again this is another awful sheath from SOG. From the photo you’d think it was at least adequate, but in fact there are two major faults. The first is that the belt loop is made from Kytex which won’t flex. So any odd shaped belt and you can’t deform it enough to get it to pass through. So forget wearing it with that old western belt with the metal tab on the end. The second is that the inside of the sheath is lined with plastic that is not bonded to the leather. This means every time you put the knife back you either have to pinch the sheath or it will catch the lip of the plastic and start to roll it toward the center.

Now I would have most likely tried to cut the plastic out, but its attached all the way down along the back side and I don’t have long tool with a bit on it. If you are a surgeon you probably have a used one from doing orthoscopic surgery that would work fine. The rest of us will be better off making our own sheath. There are a number of nice and fairly easy to make ones. Just do an internet search. I like the one on “Cliff Jacobson’s'” page. Or go to your local leather store. They should be able to help you out.

So all in all, not a bad knife and the price is very reasonable for a quality sheath knife.

Update: Using the knife I was able to cut out the stupid plastic sheath. Took about 15 minutes of fussing to get all of it. Second I made a much nicer sheath following Cliff’s instructions, took about 2 hrs. Well worth the time spent.
Rating: 3 / 5