- Joined
- Apr 22, 2013
- Messages
- 16
The Tahoma Field Knife was designed by Andy Tran, an outdoors videographer who has is own great YouTube channel called InnerBark Outdoors. He's been making knives for himself since he was very young, but this is his first design to see production.
The TFK is designed to accomplish a lot of tasks you might use other tools for, though it doesn't replace an ax or hatchet. Rather, it is a knife for when you are really limited in how much gear you take into the woods. Andy lives this every week as he carries upwards of 40lbs of camera equipment in addition to his camping gear when he's out making videos, and his TFK prototype did the job well enough that he linked with TOPS for commercial production.
The first thing some knife people say when they see the knife is "that looks like the Hoodlum and it will break at that notch." Well, TOPS actually made the first run of Hoodlum knives using their differentially heat treated 1095, and none of them have ever broken at the notch in the spine. Buck's Hoodlum is made of different steel, resulting in completely different properties to the blade.
In any case, I spend the last half of the video trying to break the blade at the notches on the spine as I have done for the last 4 weeks that I've had this knife, and as you'll see, this TFK will handle everything it is designed to do and then some.
This really is a clever design, providing additional functionality that most field knives don't offer. Not everyone is in the market for a 14" field knife, but if this is something that interests you, I think you'll find the TFK very appealing.
[video=youtube;MdNMgWXG_NQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdNMgWXG_NQ[/video]
The TFK is designed to accomplish a lot of tasks you might use other tools for, though it doesn't replace an ax or hatchet. Rather, it is a knife for when you are really limited in how much gear you take into the woods. Andy lives this every week as he carries upwards of 40lbs of camera equipment in addition to his camping gear when he's out making videos, and his TFK prototype did the job well enough that he linked with TOPS for commercial production.
The first thing some knife people say when they see the knife is "that looks like the Hoodlum and it will break at that notch." Well, TOPS actually made the first run of Hoodlum knives using their differentially heat treated 1095, and none of them have ever broken at the notch in the spine. Buck's Hoodlum is made of different steel, resulting in completely different properties to the blade.
In any case, I spend the last half of the video trying to break the blade at the notches on the spine as I have done for the last 4 weeks that I've had this knife, and as you'll see, this TFK will handle everything it is designed to do and then some.
This really is a clever design, providing additional functionality that most field knives don't offer. Not everyone is in the market for a 14" field knife, but if this is something that interests you, I think you'll find the TFK very appealing.
[video=youtube;MdNMgWXG_NQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdNMgWXG_NQ[/video]
