Bear Claw is one of those projects that, looking back, feels interesting precisely because none of us really knew where it would lead. In fact, in the beginning, it was never meant to be a camping knife at all.
From filleting knife to something else
The original idea came from Ernest, my colleague and a former sushi chef with more than 20 years of cooking experience. He wanted to design a slightly different kind of filleting knife for fish and meat: something precise enough for filleting, but versatile enough to comfortably slice salami, prosciutto, and whatever else you might be preparing.
Basically, a knife with one simple priority: it had to cut really, really well.
He made a few sketches, we played around with the idea, and then at some point the whole project stalled. The design ended up sitting in a drawer and was almost forgotten.
The motorcycle problem
Then, during one of our sharpening courses, I got a message from my friend Tomaž. We’ve known each other for years, going all the way back to our motocross days, and he asked if we had a smaller knife that would be suitable for carrying on a motorcycle.
Roman, his friend from ADV Spirit, had already been travelling for quite some time with one of our 210 mm Japanese gyuto knives packed on his motorcycle.
Which is funny when you picture it: a guy riding through the backcountry of the Balkans with a long Japanese kitchen knife, just so he can properly slice his salami.
Tomaž clearly liked the idea of having a Japanese knife with him on the bike. He just wanted something smaller, more practical, and easier to pack on a motorcycle.
From the drawer to the road
While I was thinking about what I could offer him, I suddenly remembered Ernest's design. We pulled it back out of the drawer, looked at it with a slightly different perspective, and realized that maybe we'd had something much more interesting sitting in front of us all along.
I think that's where Bear Claw really began.
We never wanted to make another traditional survival or bushcraft knife. There are already plenty of those out there, and many of them are fantastic. But Bear Claw was never meant for chopping branches, opening cans or proving how much abuse you can put a piece of steel through.
Its purpose is much simpler. To cut damn well. And that's probably one of the reasons I like it so much.
Made for real outdoor cooking
When I think about what I actually use a knife for on a motorcycle trip, it’s all pretty ordinary stuff. Making breakfast in the morning. Slicing bread, salami, cheese, vegetables, or fruit. Maybe preparing a piece of meat in the evening.
Basically, the things you actually do every day when you’re out travelling.
That's why, in its character, Bear Claw has much more in common with a Japanese kitchen knife than with a traditional survival knife. It's made in Japan from SG2 powder stainless steel, hardened to approximately 63–64 HRC, but more than anything, we wanted to preserve what we love about Japanese knives in the first place – the geometry and the way they feel when they cut.
And then came Montenegro.
That's where the whole story took on a completely different meaning for me.
Montenegro and the ADV Spirit Quest
Before I even get back to the knife, I have to say something about Montenegro.
If you’ve never been — and I mean the mountains, not the coast — go.
I’ve hiked and travelled through quite a few mountain ranges in my life, but Montenegro genuinely blew me away. The hiking is incredible, the roads are amazing, and I won’t even get started on what you can find there on a motorcycle once you leave the asphalt behind.
The landscape seems to change constantly, and every now and then you simply have to stop and take it all in.
And that was exactly the kind of environment we brought some of the very first Bear Claws into.
At that point, only a handful of them existed: early samples that had arrived directly from Japan just before my Montenegro trip. Two went to Tomaž and Roman, and we prepared another one specifically as a gift for Adam Riemann.
That made this part of the story even more special for me, because I’ve been following Adam and his YouTube films for a long time.
If you’re into adventure motorcycling, he probably doesn’t need much of an introduction. If you’re not, all you really need to know is that he has spent a huge part of his life on motorcycles, travelled all over the world, and turned those adventures into some truly incredible films.
So to me, Adam wasn’t just someone with a huge following who we could give a knife to and hope that maybe, one day, it would show up in one of his videos.
There was another reason he felt like exactly the right person for Bear Claw.
The reaction we hoped for
Back home in Australia, he lives a fairly self-sufficient life on his farm. For him, a knife isn’t just another piece of gear hanging from a backpack. He actually uses knives for preparing and processing meat, and for all kinds of everyday work.
So what interested me wasn’t really whether Adam thought Bear Claw looked cool. I wanted to know what he thought of it as a knife.
And I got my first answer before he even knew he was getting one.
The first time Adam saw Bear Claw with us up in the mountains, he practically forgot where he was. He picked it up, turned it around in his hands, studied the geometry and the overall shape, and almost immediately started talking about how perfect it would be for slicing salami, preparing food, and processing meat.
At that point, he had absolutely no idea that his own Bear Claw was already waiting for him.
I was just standing there, watching his reaction and thinking: Ernest, you absolutely nailed the design. Later came the moment when we actually gave him his knife.
I don’t think I’ll forget that moment anytime soon.
Adam was genuinely and visibly moved. He told us that, out of all the gifts he had received during his travels over the years, this was the first one he truly felt he would cherish and use for the rest of his life. He also said that this knife would be what he remembered most from his trip through Europe.
I have to admit, I was incredibly happy at that moment.
Partly because I was standing there, watching such a genuine reaction from someone whose work I had followed for years. We had made something, put it in his hands, and it had genuinely moved him.
But what struck me even more was that none of what followed was something we had expected from him. We didn’t give him the knife in exchange for a video, and we didn’t arrive with any kind of agreement about what he was supposed to do with it.
The idea came from him.
We had gone to Montenegro with a few of the very first Bear Claws, wanting to put them into the hands of people we knew would actually use them. I came home feeling that maybe we had created something a little more special than we had realised at the beginning.
And Adam somehow managed to wrap the whole story up perfectly.
As we were saying goodbye, he said:
“When we were riding in the mountains, I knew I would have this knife… I just thought I’d have to steal it from Tomaž.”
Looking back now, I think that sentence sums up the whole Bear Claw story pretty well.
This was the first time I had been so closely involved with a project from almost the very beginning. From that first conversation with Tomaž and the early ideas, through the prototypes and the first finished knives, all the way to the moment when we handed one of them to someone whose work I had followed for years.
And the best part of all was that Adam seemed to understand Bear Claw almost immediately: exactly what it was, and exactly what we had been trying to create.
A small, genuinely useful Japanese knife you can throw into your motorcycle luggage, take camping with you, or simply use at home.
It wasn’t made to be another survival or bushcraft knife, built to survive every stupid thing you could possibly do to it. It was made to be a knife you’ll actually want to use, especially when there’s food to prepare.
Made to be used
And maybe the biggest compliment Bear Claw could ever get, at least for me, would be to see Adam’s knife ten or twenty years from now: scratched all over, the leather saya worn from years of use, the blade sharpened countless times, but still somewhere on his farm or packed away on his motorcycle.
Because that would mean we had made exactly what we set out to make: a knife worth carrying, using, and keeping for years.