Problems encountered regrinding a TOPS Tracker

[averageiowaguy]

I reground a TOPS Tracker for Dwayne Keith Puckett (Armoralleather) as a favor because he made a bunch of sheaths for me. What I did was put a full height convex grind on the front portion of the knife and a hollow grind in the draw knife portion of the blade next to the handle. He was happy with it, showed some photos and now guys are contacting me for regrinds, which it turns out is good and bad.

I reground a Tracker for someone that Dwayne knows but he wasn't happy with it. I decided to send him back his money for the regrind plus $40 extra for any shipping costs plus the cost of the most expensive TOPS Tracker I could find so that he could replace the knife that he sent me for regrind. He said that the gesture wasn't necessary but I wouldn't have felt right unless I restored him to what he was before I reground his knife.

Specifically he was not happy with the quarter round portion of the knife - the transition between the hollow ground draw knife portion and the convex front portion of the blade. Regardless of whether or not I liked the regrind, the customer didn't.

So now I am trying to figure out an artful way to make the transition between the hollow ground draw portion of the knife and the convex portion. I think I have figured out what some of the technical problems are by looking at other examples of the knife. I am certainly open to suggestions and ideas.

According to Tom Brown III, this knife was the original Tracker knife that all other versions were based on.

Looking at this knife, the front portion seems to be a Scandi grind and the portion towards the handle is a hollow grind. At the transition point there seems to be an extra little notch that is a different grind. It may have been resharpened after use and ended up that way. I don't know.

One of the makers who picked up the design and ran with it is Beck. Here is a photo from his website of the current model.

The grind on the front does not appear to be a Scandi, it looks more like a flat grind. I am told that the knife is ground by first grinding the front portion of the knife and then grinding the draw area towards the handle. Look at the transition point. How does one make that hollow grind turn the corner like that? I can't do it with a 2 inch wheel. The only thing I can think of is that the transition is made with a very narrow wheel or is machined in.

Here is TOPS version of the Tracker.

Notice on this knife that the quarter round area isn't really a quarter round at all, it is a gentle slope sort of working it's way up to the front portion of the knife.
I do not know for sure how those are manufactured, but my guess is that the bevels and grinds are machined in and that the hand portion of the work is just establishing the edge.

Here are a few other examples of Trackers.

Here is a tracker made by Bark River. They made 20 of them. The reason I show this example is because they used a convex grind at the front with a hollow grind in the draw portion. I use a full height convex grind in the front so it is a little different, but the key is they are going from a hollow grind to a convex grind.

Notice that there is a vertical line between the draw portion of the knife and the convex portion. I do not know a way to avoid that unless you grind out that line on purpose. I wasn't there when they ground the 20 knives that they sold, but I was there when the other 4 knives of that run were ground at the Grind In.

I don't have a photo of the 4th knife. All four of those knives had the grinds/edges established by Bark River personnel. I'm not sure who did the top one. The middle (red handled) one was done by Skittles. The bottom (orange handled) one was done by Jim Stewart. The final production version ended up more like the bottom one. It is interesting to notice that the vertical line is not present on the middle knife, because Skittles ground that transition line out.

Here is one of the blanks that Bark River used to make the production model.

I'm not sure if all the production models that Bark River made ended up with the same grind, but in the one in the photo above, they ground the hollow grind all the way up to the white line and had the convex portion after the white line.

Another thing to notice is that the quarter round on the blank is actually a quarter round and not a gentle slope.

Because I learned to do the grind at Bark River I have been regrinding the TOPS knives by trying to do it the same way it is done at Bark River. I first establish a full height convex grind up front. Next I establish a hollow grind in the draw portion of the knife up to the exact transition point between the draw portion and the front portion (white line.)

Without reducing the height of the draw portion of the knife, I will not be able to turn the gentle slope on the stock model into a quarter round. It may be my own bias, but I have not found the quarter round feature of the knife to be useful anyway, but the customer is always right. Indeed, the original version of the knife doesn't have a quarter round. My favorite variant, the M-18, doesn't have a quarter round either.

So anyway, that is where I am at with this particular problem. Without investing in a mill, I won't be able to make the hollow grind turn a corner. Even if I had a narrow wheel, I'm not sure I would be able to grind that corner perfectly anyway. In my opinion, the knife performs better with a full height convex grind up front with a hollow ground portion towards the handle. There really isn't a point, in my opinion, of stripping the paint off of the existing TOPS grind lines and putting a little sharper edge on the blade. In my opinion the edge geometry is what will make a difference in performance.

 

[JollyRoger3]

I have always wanted to see a picture of the "medicine blade" very, very cool. Thanks.

 

[schmittie]

There are a BUNCH of followers of the Tracker style knife on bushcraftusa, and I see your dilemma. For many, the quarter round is a unique feature of the knife and essential as an option.

I wonder if the spot could be done by hand with a file??

I'm interested in seeing what the experts say.....

 

[averageiowaguy]

There are a BUNCH of followers of the Tracker style knife on bushcraftusa, and I see your dilemma. For many, the quarter round is a unique feature of the knife and essential as an option.

I wonder if the spot could be done by hand with a file??

I'm interested in seeing what the experts say.....

The problem, as I see it, is that the TOPS doesn't come with a quarter round in the first place. I could recreate that, but only by adding metal to the front of the knife (impractical) or by grinding the draw portion of the knife down.

I'm not sure it is worth the trouble. If you make your own knife and sell it and someone isn't happy with it, you refund the cost of the knife and have them ship the knife back. You can refurbish it and send it to someone who will be happy with it. In that situation you're out some shipping. If you regrind someone else's knife and the customer isn't happy with the regrind, you're out the cost of the regrind + shipping + the cost of the other guys knife. I didn't have to do that, but it is the only way I felt right about the situation.

 

[schmittie]

I agree with you. The Tops isn't a quarter round at all, maybe an eighth. Some of the other "regrinds" I've seen, it's a little more pronounced. Like on Pitdogs in this thread, notice posts 1 and 5:

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/925494-Thoughts-on-WSK-Knives

And I see where you are coming from. Regrinding someone else's knife could be risky. But I have to say I admire your strength of character in making it right with the customer. That says a lot.

 

[12345678910]

You really like that knife style huh ?.

Good array of photos to illustrate your points.


Of the examples you have shown, I like the Beck the best.
do you have one ?


One of the obstacles you have is regrinding finished knives.
You have to be perfect and your mistakes are costly.
They are already hard, so you cannot use something like a half round file and finish with abrasives on a dowel.

I would try starting from bar and creating those shapes from scratch, half round files, small wheels, and so on.
If you use a soft j flex belt, you can run the belt over the edge of the wheel and it will curl up somewhat to give you taper out.





Don't just look at the edge grind line, look at the grind line at the top too.

You don't have to approach the belt with the blade held straight, or held still.
You can go at it and "sweep it in" - Salem Straub has some good posts / drawings on a swept plunge

Measure the width, see if the ones with the straight shoulder plunges are almost the same width as the 2" belt
See if the swept in ones are wider than the belts.


ON the Bark river, it looks like they are just profiling that curve in and grinding it with a square shoulder, there must be steep ramp up at the corners of the curves.
The angle in the middle is different than the angle at the edges.


On the original, my guess is that it was filed in flat at the beginning or sharpened in with extra coarse diamond stones on hard steel - something like that.


On the Beck and Martin it looks like small wheels, keep in mind you can use a smaller wheel and move it in the grind to flare it out, not a perfect circle.

I can see that curve being useful if you wanted to wood craft some poles or stuff like that.




Try some from scratch for practice, whether mild steel, or real blade steel
It's easier to make a new blade than to regrind an existing blade because you have more room for "design changes"

 

[averageiowaguy]

You really like that knife style huh ?.

Good array of photos to illustrate your points.


Of the examples you have shown, I like the Beck the best.
do you have one ?


One of the obstacles you have is regrinding finished knives.
You have to be perfect and your mistakes are costly.
They are already hard, so you cannot use something like a half round file and finish with abrasives on a dowel.

I would try starting from bar and creting those shapes from scratch, half round files, small wheels, and so on.
If you use a soft j flex belt, you can run the belt over the edge of the wheel and it will curl up somewhat to give you taper out.





Don't just look at the edge grind line, look at the grind line at the top too.

You don't have to spproach the belt with the blade held straight, or held still.
You can go at it and "sweep it in" - Salem Straub has some good posts / drawings on a swept plunge

Measure the width, see if the ones with the straight shoulder plunges are almost the same width as the 2" belt
See if the swept in ones are wider than the belts.


ON the Bark river, it looks like they are just profiling that curve in and grinding it with a square shoulder, there must be steep ramp up at the corners of the curves.
The angle in the middle is different than the angle at the edges.


On the original, my guess is that it was filed in flat at the beginning or sharpened in with extra coarse diamond stones on hard steel - something like that.


On the Beck and Martin it looks like small wheels, keep in mind you can use a smaller wheel and move it in the grind to flare it out, not a perfect circle.

I can see that curve being useful if you wanted to wood craft some poles or stuff like that.




Try some from scratch for practice, whether mild steel, or real blade steel
It's easier to make a new blade than to regrind an existing blade because you have more room for "design changes"

Thanks a ton for the input. I do like the design of the Tracker because it is an American designed blade. I think that some day makers will put their own spin on the knife much like they currently do for Bowie knives. My own favorite system for woods is situational but mostly consists of a parang and a folding knife of some sort. That being said I have used the Beck version, the Martin version, the TOPS version and the Bark River version. Of those choices I liked the performance of the Bark River version the best. The Beck version definitely has it's appeal, especially visually. But I found the edge geometry on the TOPS and Beck versions to not be optimal for my tastes. I found the grind angles to be a little steep. The quarter round portions of the Bark River worked better for me that the other versions and the grinds were better for my particular uses.

To answer your question about ownership I don't own a Beck or a Martin. I borrowed those from Chance Sanders when I was testing all the different versions to figure out which handle shapes/grinds worked best for me. I do own the M-18 and the Orange handled knife in the above photos. I love both.

When Dwayne asked me to regrind his tracker I explained what I would do and why. He loved it. When another person contacted me asking if I could regrind his TOPS like Dwayne's I did it exactly the same and he ended up not happy.

If I was going to make my own version exactly to my own tastes I would do the grinds the same, make the draw portion only 2 inches wide and make the whole blade about 3/4" longer. I would make the handle to my tastes but taper the tang. If I ever do make a run of those I'm not selling any of them unless someone holds one in their hand first. That may have been my problem in the first place. I made the assumption that the guy had handled Dwayne's. I won't make that mistake again.

 

[Adam Buttry]

I know that design has it's enthusiasts, but personally I'll never understand it. Seems it's trying to be a jack-of-all-trades, which usually means a master-of-none. I know my comments aren't particularly helpful in any kind of way Kyle, but I just had to get it off my chest. As a knife maker, I find that design to be an abomination. I wish you the best of luck though and I hope you get it figured out!

 

[Karl B. Andersen]

If you have the capacity to "re-grind" those knives, you have the talent and capacity to make the full knife.
You should just make that knife to your own specs and sell them to the same people.

 

[james terrio]

Kyle, I like your version (1st pic) best. It provides the smoothest transition between the two grinds. But at the risk of sounding like a jerk, it's the best of a very poor field... which ain't saying much.

That transition is the major flaw in the whole design to begin with, and there's really no getting around that. It makes what is normally one the most handy and effective sections of a medium sized blade, effectively useless. The reason Todd Hunt's M-18 actually works, is that it's large enough for both sections to actually be efficient without interfering with each other.

It's all academic to me anyway, because having made and used a couple of these style knives, I'm convinced they're six of one/half a dozen of the other, but don't add up to full carton of eggs. Other than looking interesting and giving people something to discuss, I simply don't see any advantage to making a bushcraft/survival knife so dang complicated. In fact in my experience, in many ways the Tracker style handles and performs noticeably worse than a "normal" blade. I'd much rather have a boring old standard FFG or convex blade in the same general size.

But exotic compound grinds do have a rabid following, so if you want to address that market... be my guest. Next time someone asks for one I will happily refer them to you

If you make your own knife and sell it and someone isn't happy with it, you refund the cost of the knife and have them ship the knife back.

This is really not the venue to discuss sales practices... but I strongly disagree. If a client agrees to my design proofs (from scratch or as a regrind) - especially on something as whacky as this - and decides later that they just don't care for it, frankly that's their problem. I warranty materials and craftsmanship, not personal taste. I'm certainly not going to pay them extra for the privilege of wasting my time. Doing so sets a very bad precedent that can only end in heartbreak and hard feelings.

 

[james terrio]

Seems it's trying to be a jack-of-all-trades, which usually means a master-of-none.

Exactly. "Trying to drink whiskey from a bottle of wine" and "All hat, no cattle" also spring to mind.

 

[stezann]

I personally hate that kind of knives... unuseful with cheap "cool factor".
Aside that i consider it surely a challenge that kind of grind.
Martin knives' take on that transition is IMHO the neatest with it's clean hook/claw shape.
Should i try my thake at it i would take a piece of something cheap and put my nose on something abrasive (small, NARROW and radiused wheel) to see what happens.
I appreciate the way you stand behind your work :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

 

[averageiowaguy]

This would be an interesting experiment. People who like Tracker knives talk about the quarter round area of the knife as being a really nice feature. The problem is that on the TOPS Tracker, that isn't a quarter round. It is a gentle slope.

I think that the Beck model (shown in the photo) has the same height in the draw area but has a taller front portion. That is why there is a more true quarter round on the Beck. To modify the TOPS tracker to a quarter round I would have to remove metal from the draw area.

Here is what the TOPS model would look like with a true quarter round.

After establishing a true quarter round, the next step would be to grind a full height convex grind in the front, followed by a hollow grind in the draw area. I would try to maintain a line perpendicular to the draw portion of the blade as the separation between the 2 grinds.

One concern I would have is that by the time you remove enough metal from the draw area to establish a quarter round, you would have a VERY thick edge. In order to make that edge nice and sharp again, the hollow grind would have to be fairly deep. I worry that the hollow grind would feel weird, given that the blade is like 1/4" thick.

The other thing I would worry about with this grind would be the vertical line. Whoever was getting that knife would have to understand that the line would be there and that the hollow grind would NOT turn the corner. It would look a lot like the BRKT version.

Finally, there is a LOT going on with a knife after regrinding it like that. If you were to take calipers out and measure every grind line and every little spot, you are going to find flaws. If I had to guess I'd say the production models are done with a ball mill and NOT by hand.

 

[JollyRoger3]

1st generation TOPS Tracker that I reground mostly with water stones. I pulled back the draw knife edge and formed a quarter rounder. The transition slopes upward and required hand tuning with a slip stone to get it right. The draw knife edge required a decent amount of metal removed to cut the gentle slope in to an L. Once the L was formed I had shape into a J by rounding and angling the corner. Hope that makes sense. It's by no means a large quarter rounder (like Dave's WSK) but it works really well for it's intended purpose.

Before:

After:

 

[JollyRoger3]

Another thought that comes to mind is, you really have to look at it like three edges not two. First is the Draw knife, then a 3/8 or longer curved cutting edge (the quarter rounder). The QR starts just above the draw knife and ends below the hatchet. It also blends the two larger edges together. Then you have the hatchet edge.

Sounds obvious, but if you look at it like blending just two edges, it will be an abrupt transition. All three edges require their own work and angles.

 

[averageiowaguy]

It is that third edge that you are describing that is problematic. That has been my dilemma with this knife from day 1. Making that draw portion turn the corner is a real bitch with my current tooling. Plus, if you full height convex grind the front portion of the knife, there would still be a bit of a vertical line between the draw portion and the axe portion.

One solution to that would be to keep a partial height convex up front in order to have a line to grind to. When I have played with these knives before the grind that I thought worked the best was the full height convex in front with a hollow ground draw portion in back. In my opinion only, if you are going to go to the trouble of regrinding the TOPS, I wouldn't compromise on having the full height convex up front with a hollow grind in the draw area. I haven't figured out a way to have the best grind combo (in my opinion) with a hollow grind that turns the corner and a true quarter round. The Bark River version of the tracker performed the best in my hands anyway, so for me it is easy to compromise on the desire to have a third edge. Mind you, the Bark River in the photo above doesn't have a full height convex, but I've played with one that did. It was bombass.

Good job on your knife! That had to take forever
.

 

[ivan51]

Lets mod my tracker! I think you can make the stock knife better!

 

[JollyRoger3]

It took quite a while over the course of a few days.

I

 

[trentu]

I use a 3/4" sanding drum in my drill press to finish out the quarter rounder/gut hook area on one's Ive made. You start with that section first and then put the grind on the curved top of the blade. Kind of tricky.

 

[ivan51]

Thanks. It took quite a while over the course of a few days.

I have looked at several versions of Dave's knives. Even he, the master, sometimes bungs up the quarter rounder area. The first "C" model I got from him back in 2003, was perfect in everyway. My brother has a "C" model that was made just a few ahead of the one I had, and you can see where the edges didn't blend as perfect.

It's hard to get right. I truly believe you get the most out of a scandi-ish (with slight secondary bevel for strength) draw knife then a saber/slight convexed hatchet edge.

I think you really have to bring the draw knife back only partially to leave enough metal to form the quarter rounder. (Not sure that makes sense)

I hope I am "tracking" you here.

Hmm I like this idea do you think you can mod the tops blade like that? Scani'ish draw blade and covex/saber front edge?