Jaeger and all...
I believe that I am like most people in our particular niche, in that I never heard of "Tom Brown", "The Tracker School", or "The Tom Brown Tracker Knife"...until TOPS began to develop public awareness in our industry about the man, the school, the knife, and the movie.
More importantly, I do not believe the knife itself is given any credit in the film. Therefore, no matter WHO made it, even after seeing the film and feeling pumped about the cool knife, I would have remained bewildered with every other viewer.
I have never seen any of Mr. Beck's work or recall his advertising in our trade journals for the 11 years I have been reading them. Does that mean Mr. Beck never advertised...no. It just means "I" don't know about Mr. Beck's knives, and I firmly believe that countless others don't either.
I do however know about TOPS knives and have known about them since they began advertising in consecutive issues of nearly every trade journal in our industry for almost five years.
It is because of TOPS considerable courage and market development for the Tracker project, which has been in public view for several months now, that I feel they are due congratulations and thanks for a job well done, particulary for the new people they will draw to our industry, to the Tom Brown School, and to Mr. Brown as an instructor.
After reading the post and thread started by Mr. Beck, particulary wherein he indicated that as a custom maker, he only made a total of 525 Trackers over the course of almost 12 years; and further that Mr. Brown's letter indicated that he was given opportunities to tool up for project that MAY be a hot return on a movie knife for which he declined...I heard all I needed to hear.
Any proposal that the "little guy" was or is being "railroaded" smacks of an utter lack of common sense in my assessment.