http://www.woodcarvingguru.com/blade-utility/
What is the best hunting/utility/survival knife?
Ive owned over two hundred knives in my life. Most of them fixed blade bowies. im gettin into forging and i wanted to forge a knife with all the best attributs roled into one.
my opinion? a 3 1/2 to 5 inch blade of drop point form or a shallow clip point with a decent amount of belly.
For a serious survival knife go towards the larger end with a blade 3/16-2/10 inch thick and a flat grind. Keep enough of a spine that you could use a heavy stick to hammer in the spine and drive the edge through/into bone wood to split it.
Hunting/utility smaller side with a bit of distal taper and no more then 3/16 thick but still over 1/8. Grind can be anything from flat to hollow but if you want to mess around with making kindling and the like keep the hollow on the shallow side.
Obviously you split the difference and you’ll have a pretty goo all around blade.
You could even go toward a 3 to 3 1/2″ full belly drop point form in 1/8″ thickness for a straight up hunting/skinning knife. Again I’d suggest a definite distal taper to the blade and a taper in tang thickness/width for balance.
Good luck with the bladesmithing! Expect to have numerous mistakes as you learn and I hope you have someone both good & helpful teaching you.