Tops Knives Any Good?

N

Nephron44

Gold Member
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Aug 20, 2015
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Hey everyone!
I'm about to pull the trigger on some new knives and I was hoping for some input on a few of them. I'm looking at a few of the smaller Tops fixed blade knives. Are they any good? How's the Tops warranty? Will I even need the warranty at all? How durable are the sheaths? Thanks!


The knives I am looking at are:
Wolf Pup
M1 Sub Compact
Snake River Ranger
Any of the other small ones

These will be used for EDC.
 
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I have a TOPS Silent Hero & Askari. Both are excellent knives. There warranty & after sales serves is great. TOPS 's leather & Kydex sheaths are excellent, but the nylon sheaths are okish, but I would upgrade to kydex ASAP.
 
Tops IMHO are much better than Kabar and Becker, but slightly less than or just barely equal to ESEE.

For the price of Tops you could get a smaller Scrapyard like the 311 and have a much better knife than all of the companies listed in this post. The only issue at hand would be that the 311 is discontinued and you would have to get one off the exchange or some other secondary market. The smallest Scrapyard that is currently available is the Skinner and its OAL is 9 &1/4" but at $99 plus cost of an AzWelke or Buy Brown sheath you will have much more knife.

BTW I have had 3 Tops knives the Firestrike 45, BOB, and the Cougar Claw. Each was ok, but 1095 fails to impress me anymore.
 
I have a tops bootlegger that I carried every day for about 2 years. Really like that knife.
 
I have the Tops Mini Scandi and love it. I just don't carry it that often because of my job. When I go home I usually carry a larger folder.

The only bad thing I have to say was the sheath on it was very difficult to remove the knife from. Ended up taking a heat gun to it and remolded it with a thumb ramp to push it off.

It's a great knife if you want a small edc fixed blade.
 
Had the wild pig hunter loved it!. Great steel perfect heat treat, sharpened easily. Would recommend Tops knives for sure.
 
Thanks for the replies! Anyone have issues with corrosion? I know 1095 steel rusts pretty easily. I don't neglect my knives, but I don't routinely oil/clean them either. Plus, whatever I get will ride high on my belt under my shirt (too many sheeple here), so some sweat from normal activity might be a factor.
 
Yes they are good.
Some aren't sharpened the greatest, but others shave hair with ease.
Their 1095 rusts or doesn't just the same as everyone else's...they tend to have a coating which will keep most rust at bay till you wear it off in the areas most heavily used. Just apply a little oil, or use a Tuf-Cloth to wipe them down.
Or use some car wax on the exposed steel between uses.

They make a wide range of models, from silly ninja stuff to awesome EDC and woods-worthy knives.
Just buy the ones that appeal to you. :)
 
Most TOPS knives are big ridiculous things with stupid names, which they emblazon across the full length of the blade in a generic sans-serif typeface. (I haven't actually looked, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was Arial.) That used to be a turn-off for me, but they recently started coming out with some new designs that appeared to be quite good. Still dumb names and lame overall aesthetics, but I went ahead and ordered an MSK 2.5 after seeing rave reviews on Youtube.

Out of the box, the sheath required several sessions with a hair dryer before it would give up the blade; once I did that, I was disappointed to find that it wasn't a scandi grind at all, and I don't think my hair dryer did that. I gave it a chance anyway, and carried it for a few weeks, but for my use case it wasn't any better than several other neck knives (including the Izula).

I would still recommend the knife itself, despite the sheath. It's well-designed and the fit and finish is good, it's just not particularly impressive when compared to the alternatives. I'm still open to the prospect of other TOPS knives, and I might give the Silent Hero a try, but I'm still very happy with my ESEE 6 and have other things to buy first.
 
Nephron44 said:
Thanks for the replies! Anyone have issues with corrosion? I know 1095 steel rusts pretty easily. I don't neglect my knives, but I don't routinely oil/clean them either. Plus, whatever I get will ride high on my belt under my shirt (too many sheeple here), so some sweat from normal activity might be a factor.
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Well, uncoated 1095 will help motivate you to develop a better maintenance routine. ;)

Fortunately, with coated blades, it's the exposed edge that'll be the issue but easily solved by a little light sharpening.
 
I have a Tops 10/27 karambit. Love the knife but wish the sheath was set up differently or was at least ambidextrous.
 
I bought a Steel Eagle in like 2005. It was a great blade. Good quality but if I did it over, I feel like Tops has much better designs now than the steel eagle. They are great blades imho
Keep in mind, for that price range.. at least consider Swamp Rat an their sr101. But you can't really go wrong Tops is good to.
 
Nap said:
I went ahead and ordered an MSK 2.5 after seeing rave reviews on Youtube.

Out of the box, the sheath required several sessions with a hair dryer before it would give up the blade; once I did that, I was disappointed to find that it wasn't a scandi grind at all, and I don't think my hair dryer did that. I gave it a chance anyway, and carried it for a few weeks, but for my use case it wasn't any better than several other neck knives (including the Izula).
.
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Lol yea the green g10 model is the worst one, it's almost impossible to draw the knife out of the bag...It probably wouldn't been as bad if they added a thumb ramp for popping it out...The micarta versions are much much easier to draw.

It's weird thou the green g10 version has much thicker scales than the micarta version, which is opposite of is big brother the tops BOB. With it the micarta scales are much thicker than the g10.
 
I live 10 min away for the beach & rust is not a problem for me. My stainless steel locks rust more them my 1095 knives. The protective coating does help & some oil will add additional protection.
 
Bobby3326 said:
Lol yea the green g10 model is the worst one, it's almost impossible to draw the knife out of the bag...It probably wouldn't been as bad if they added a thumb ramp for popping it out...The micarta versions are much much easier to draw.

It's weird thou the green g10 version has much thicker scales than the micarta version, which is opposite of is big brother the tops BOB. With it the micarta scales are much thicker than the g10.
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Wait, really? Yes, mine's green G10, and the lack of a thumb ramp was a bit of a head-scratcher. Plus that large empty cavity at the opening that I can only assume is meant to guide the blade in, but it's rather oddly shaped.

I very nearly went with the black micarta, and it sounds like I'd have been happier if I did. Especially since they thought that red liners with green scales were an attractive combo(?!), something not visible in any of the photos I saw. (I wasn't going to mention that in my earlier post, since I think I did enough to establish that their designers were blind, and like I said, it has plenty of things going for it.)

All in all, I think this paints a pretty good picture of TOPS knives in general. They get a lot of things right, but they're still a bit "out there" and don't quite have it together when it comes to delivering the whole package. That's my impression, anyway.
 
Nap said:
Wait, really? Yes, mine's green G10, and the lack of a thumb ramp was a bit of a head-scratcher. Plus that large empty cavity at the opening that I can only assume is meant to guide the blade in, but it's rather oddly shaped.

I very nearly went with the black micarta, and it sounds like I'd have been happier if I did. Especially since they thought that red liners with green scales were an attractive combo(?!), something not visible in any of the photos I saw. (I wasn't going to mention that in my earlier post, since I think I did enough to establish that their designers were blind, and like I said, it has plenty of things going for it.)

All in all, I think this paints a pretty good picture of TOPS knives in general. They get a lot of things right, but they're still a bit "out there" and don't quite have it together when it comes to delivering the whole package. That's my impression, anyway.
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You think reds bad some newer ones I've seen have orange with the green g10 and pink with the black micarta lol


If you have larger hands thou you made a good choice with the g10 version. Being such a small handle the added girth fills your hands better.


If I end getting another thou it'll likely be the black micarta.
 
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