Yuma and Tradewater in for a visit

Joined
Apr 27, 2012
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I was lucky enough to be part of a passaround on another forum with a Yuma and Tradewater. As annoying as it can be to see the same stuff on multiple forums I also know I don't check them all with the same regularity and just don't belong to some. I'm sure that if this is unwelcome I will get told so and take my spanking. So.. modified a bit from my post on the ESEE forum. These were coldwaterboys' Yuma (bmurrary here on Bladeforums) and MountainMistWanderer's Tradewater.

Well the holiday weekend didn't allow the time I would've liked, but I felt pretty honored to have them at all. MountainMistWanderer's Tradewater is seriously the nicest knife I've ever had in my hands.

The Tradewater, Yuma, and my Magua when I got them.
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I wish it were whitetail season while I had these, I think any would do a fantastic job on a deer in the field. I took the oldest two nephews squirrel hunting Saturday but the oldest started barfing so we headed back. Friday night while at mom and dad's I pulled out the ridiculous pile of knives I'd brought along and did some filling of the kindling bucket.

Battle Horse Knives Smoky Mountain Razor scandi
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Battle Horse Knives Smoky Mountain Razor saber ( love this so far)
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Battle Horse Knives Woodcrafter
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Smith and Sons Cherokee
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Off the Map Bushcrafter
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Fiddleback Forge production Bushfinger
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Yuma
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Tradewater
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Wtf you looking at Loki, never seen a person cut so little wood with so many knives before?!
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Saturday was our Thanksgiving dinner. My mom, my dad, my sister, and her litter of five kids. Much to be grateful for. After some dishsoap and scrubbing in case that was WD-40 I smelled on it the Tradewater did the honors.
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When I handed my dad the Tradewater it garnered an honest to goodness 'Holy shit' from him. He said that as nice as it felt in his hand and as nice as it looked it deserved to be in a display case or hanging on a wall somewhere and he'd feel wrong using it. Now.. background info. My dad was a sticker in a cattle plant for 15 years. He wore out and threw away more knives than I can imagine I will ever use in my lifetime. He likes a good knife the same way he likes a good hammer or cross cut saw. When we go hunting he takes one of his old butcher knives in a cardboard and duct taped sheath. I've handed him Beckers, ESEE's, Kabars, Fiddlebacks, Battle Horse, Blind Horse, LT Wright, Scrap Yard, Swamp Rat, Busse, TOPS, Survive!, Enzo, Mora, customs, etc. Every time he grabs them in a regular hammer grip, flips them into a reverse grip like you'd do when gutting(gutting a hanging carcass that is), then into a pinch grip. Something is always in the way, wrong for some grip, too loose, or something like that. He ignored the Yuma for the Tradewater, did his thing, and then the 'Holy shit' comment was made. Some pretty dang high praise right there.

That was about all I had time for until I came home Sunday night. I was a bit stressed to be honest. Initially working with the Yuma and Tradewater had me thinking that these knives were going to do bad things to my hands with a lot of use. I thought the guard was too sharp and the bird's beak too severe and it was going to tear my hands up, with hot spots or blisters being the best I could hope for. I have faith in and mad respect for Todd though so I grabbed some elm, cedar, and apricot wood; a trash can; and the Yuma. I don't know how many hours later I had this.
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I was in my living room so I didn't exactly need to churn out a pile of kindling or tinder quickly, I wanted a lot of time bearing down on the knife to see how bad it killed my hand. The answer- not one tiny bit. I didn't get so much as a hot spot and I would guess I was working this thing hard for probably five maybe six hours. That's a pretty enormous testament to the handle ergonomics. The only thing that was sore afterwards was my forearm. And that forearm gets plenty of exercise if you catch my drift. On that disturbing and depressing note-

Thank you very much to Coldwaterboys and MountainMistWanderer for letting us knuckle draggers get our meat hooks on these fine blades. Thank you Todd, Murph, and crew for putting out these fine blades. And thank you Jeff and Mike for putting up this forum, putting up with us, and thanks to the great people here that make passarounds like this possible.

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I really should've sent these off yesterday, I've sold much more expensive knives without batting an eye but these are pretty special.
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I've been following this passaround pretty closely. I'd say it's fair to assume that that's pretty high praise from your Dad. He sounds like a man well qualified to judge a blade. We're proud to have his attention.
 
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