Curved (Americanized) tantos?

[Bayoublaster]

I've got a Masters Of Defense Ayoob and I like the profile of it. It is an American style tanto with a slight curve to it. I've seen a similar profile on some of the Microtechs (most of which are illegal where I live ). What other knives have a similar design?

 

[The Moose]

Crkt Hissatsu

 

[vjb.knife]

I got this one fairly recently. It is a Bob Lum design made by Vaughn Neely.

 

[SIFU1A]

IIRC the BM stryker is similar.

 

[Benjamin Liu]

I've got a Masters Of Defense Ayoob and I like the profile of it. It is an American style tanto with a slight curve to it. I've seen a similar profile on some of the Microtechs (most of which are illegal where I live ). What other knives have a similar design?

Cold Steel popularized the American Tanto and all their designs, as well as every copy and other American Tanto I saw in he 1980s aside from folders (Butterfly knives and Cold Steel's Shinobu series) was curved. Later people started making fixed blades with the profiles of those folders.

Cold Steel still makes most of their Tanto series aside from their Mini Tanto and some limited editions like the Imperial Tanto.

 

[SIFU1A]

i thought bob lum did all that not cold steel?

 

[Planterz]

Find a (out of production) Spyderco Bob Lum fixed blade.

 

[Bob W]

Here's the Bark River Tanto.

 

[vjb.knife]

i thought bob lum did all that not cold steel?

He did.

 

[Phil Elmore]

I had heard of Cold Steel's tantos long before I ever knew who Bob Lum was (which is not to say he doesn't deserve credit; I don't know so I couldn't say).

 

[Benjamin Liu]

i thought bob lum did all that not cold steel?

Inventing it is not the same as popularizing it. Cold Steel is the one with all those magazine ads in the early 1980s, and the one some other companies copied before making original designs. Since at least 1984 there have been CS Tanto clones, some taking their design off the entire knife. I still have my Taylor-Seto MCR-11 purchased in 1985.

Custom makers are popular with collectors but not the general knife market, and that was even more true in the 1980s than today.