- Joined
- May 20, 2021
- Messages
- 645
Don't worry, it is not a dishwasher that you see the TRM Atom sitting on top of. Just a drying rack after I cleaned it off a bit in my sink. I think you are all familiar with the Three Rivers Mfg Atom. If you are not, you can find the dimensions here: https://www.threeriversmfg.com/accessories/ATOM-KEEP-AN-EYE-OUT-FOR-HILARYS-STORE-FAQ-1-p214881228
I own a Small Sebenza, and that has been the best EDC I can ask for. I wasn't looking for something to be my everyday carry, but I was just looking for a knife that was extremely slicey. What I found in my usage, is that the thickness of the blade determines the level of slice that you can achieve. Admittedly, the TRM Atom is not the sliceiest pocket knife that I found. The TRM Atom's blade comes in at a thickness of 0.090 inches. The two knives I have found to be the thinnest to my knowledge are along the lines of the Spyderco Chaparral at 0.078 inches thick, and the Sandrin Knives TCK 2.0 at 0.035 inches. The TCK 2.0 would undoubtably be the best at slicing, but would be impossible or hard to sharpen being that the blade is not made of steel. The Spyderco Chaparral is great, but I am not personally a fan of back lock knives. Nothing wrong with them, but I would rather have a liner lock or frame lock as a personal taste thing.
The TRM Atom came up on the exchange here and it was at an unbeatable price. I bought it, and watched YouTube reviews of it and tried to gauge my hype level. From what everyone says online, the TRM Atom is great, cuts well, is heat treated well, and is run by a very friendly and customer oriented company. I found these things all to be true, outside of the heat treat since I have no equipment to test the HRC or anything. From what I have seen however, you are likely to get an Atom with an above 60 HRC 20cv blade. With everything, there is bound to be mistakes and lemons, but every time I have seen someone ask TRM for help, the company goes above and beyond. Very Chris Reeve-like in terms of the level of customer service from what I have observed.
In using the TRM Atom I thought I would need to be careful with the knife being so thin, but not really. I don't misuse my knives, and I don't abuse my knives, but I do use them a lot at work. I wasn't worried about using the Atom on thick cardboard or anything really. I would probably be worried about using it on metals or harder plastics but that goes for most knives. I do think if you used the knife in a twisting or bending motion, it would probably break or something. You have to be realistic when you are using a blade this thin, but it isn't unreasonably thin for taking on things like rope or triple walled cardboard or basic packaging. The trade off to this, is that you get a very slicey blade. When it comes to box tape, or thin plastic packaging or paper, the blade soars through the material. It becomes much more effortless to cut finer material with 0.09 inches of blade thickness. In comparison, the Small Sebenza at 0.12 inches blade thickness seems like a brute. In a practical sense, they both cut basically the same, but to a knife guy, I think experiencing a blade this thin is something you should treat yourself to. You can even go with the Spyderco Chaparral, and have an even thinner blade. The Atom surprised me because I did not really expect the action to be good or anything of note. The Atom fires out very easily, and with almost no effort on a thumb flick. It is also easy to reverse flick. The O-Rings do help a lot on the thumb studs, I would suggest using them, they not only provide more traction for a sure deployment, but they also add comfort as the O-Ring is softer than metal. The knife also free drops shut for me, and I noticed that if you leave your thumb in the liner lock area when you close it, the unsharpened part of the blade falls onto your thumb. So you can leave your thumb in the area that you unlock it in, and let it free drop onto your thumb, and then complete the close. I don't know if this is easier or faster for closing, but it is cool. Also, try this at your own risk, because maybe my thumbs are just the perfect size to allow this. Do not blame me for cut thumbs!
At least recently, I have seen more TRM knives in stock at their website. I don't know if that will be a permanent thing, but it seems like they are becoming more and more available. Perhaps production has increased or something. TRM knives are generally seen as hard to get, but honestly they are not too difficult to get in the grand scheme of things. You will have to monitor their knife section of the website a bit to catch a drop, or just sign up for some social media thing but I don't know anything about that.
Lastly, the titanium scales. They came with my Atom already on the knife, so my experience with the Atom is just in this form so far. The titanium is nice, but it is a bit slippery in some situations. It feels really good in the pocket as it is not grabbing or causing friction onto anything so much. I had a Neutron before and I didn't like it, because the model was too small and too thin for my hands to really feel comfortable using. The Atom is tall enough that the handle fills up my hand, kind of like the Spydiechef. Both have very flat handles, but are tall handles. I gotta be honest, I don't really notice the contouring so much on the Atom. Are the handles contoured? Yeah, I mean I think so. I don't really feel it much since it is so flat in the hand. Honestly, after holding and using a Shaman, if you wanna say contouring you better go all the way with it in my opinion. Perhaps it is a limitation of the model or something, but I would say it is more milled than contoured. The milling pattern is easy to notice in hand, and it does feel good. The entire handle feels good, but I just wouldn't call it contoured so much, maybe if you used the other scales before the titanium it would be more obvious. The titanium scales are well done, but if you are expecting this to be round or broomstick like in contouring, I would say no. No sharp edges on the handle though, so that is good.
