stabman
Gold Member
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2007
- Messages
- 21,322
For my birthday last year, my dad got me the Tom Brown Mini Tracker (Tracker #4).
Well, that stoked my curiosity to try its big brother, so I found my way to getting one of those in November of 2014.
It came DULL...forget slicing paper, it wouldn't even cut it really.
But, I decided to give the factory edge a go, and chopped and hacked at things for a number of months. Cut down about 5 trees with that crappy edge, but it wasn't fun.
So, I decided to sharpen it till it would shave arm hair, but didn't touch the main bevel much.
So I took it out to Ojibway late winter 2015 (end of February) to try it out. It still chopped like crap.
Here's a picture of the water on the trail that stopped my progress that day:
And a picture of the Tracker posing (about the only thing it did well that day
):
So, I reprofiled the hell out of it, turning the front area into a full zero-grind convex, and thinning out the back area a bunch too.
Took it out to the woods about a month or so prior to the stone axe adventure.
I brought the Clax to compare it to, as the weight was similar; 27.5 ounces with sheath compared to 24.6 ounces for the tracker in the sheath.
That's another thing; TOPS can make a good knife, but apparently they don't own a ruler or a scale. They list the knife weight at 28 ounces, but it really weighs 20.4, and they say the blade is about 4 inches, when it is really about 6.25 inches long.
Anyway, let's see the pics.
Brought the folding picnic table my brother owns. It's really handy, and he got it for free; someone was throwing it out, and they normally cost $100.
Batonning a rather thick, tough piece of wood...why not:
Tracker posing in the old chopping stump:
And making a skewer...just look at that wood curl away now that it's actually sharp (the curved area shaves hair away with the greatest of ease now):
But what if I need a weapon? You never know when a Westside Story style brawl will break out in the woods--complete with finger snapping and choreographed dance--and Bladeforums has taught me that knives are completely useless as weapons. So, I needed a wooden knuckleduster. Thankfully, the Swiss Army Knife's awl made getting a hole started easy, after I had batonned and planed flat a piece of wood:
The Umnumzaan did most of the rest of the work:
There's a hole!
My brother piggybacks a knife, but not a smaller one...RD-9 Piggybacking a Pestilence Chopper:
Here's some aluminum preheating...we did manage to melt and cast about 7 ounces worth, which is why we erroneously thought we could melt a bunch more for casting axes the next time out:
Cooking sausages before the aluminum melts and makes icky fumes:
Knuckleduster done!
Did I mention that fire is good?
Just prior to heading out:
So, in summary, the Tom Brown Tracker is just fine...IF you reprofile the hell out of it.
The handle is great, although I did use some 400 grit silicon carbide paper to contour a couple of spots to fit my hand.
The heat treat is good; it holds an edge very well (you just have to supply your own edge
).
One thing about it is that it's pretty much indestructible; you could loan it to your dumbest friend, and it would not break.
It does not chop as well as, say, the Junglas, but it does about as good as the Clax...once it's reprofiled, that is. I actually didn't even pull the Clax from the pack that day, due to how happy I was at how it was working.
The "saw" on the back is NOT for sawing, so don't try doing that. It is for notching, and it does that very well (didn't take pics, but it works great for making notches for lashing or traps).
It is lighter than all the supposed "experts" on YouTube yammered on about...I guess they don't own scales either.
Makes me doubt all their other "wisdom" when they cannot even tell how much a knife weighs.
But yeah, it's okay. :thumbup:
Well, that stoked my curiosity to try its big brother, so I found my way to getting one of those in November of 2014.
It came DULL...forget slicing paper, it wouldn't even cut it really.
But, I decided to give the factory edge a go, and chopped and hacked at things for a number of months. Cut down about 5 trees with that crappy edge, but it wasn't fun.
So, I decided to sharpen it till it would shave arm hair, but didn't touch the main bevel much.
So I took it out to Ojibway late winter 2015 (end of February) to try it out. It still chopped like crap.
Here's a picture of the water on the trail that stopped my progress that day:
And a picture of the Tracker posing (about the only thing it did well that day
):
So, I reprofiled the hell out of it, turning the front area into a full zero-grind convex, and thinning out the back area a bunch too.
Took it out to the woods about a month or so prior to the stone axe adventure.
I brought the Clax to compare it to, as the weight was similar; 27.5 ounces with sheath compared to 24.6 ounces for the tracker in the sheath.
That's another thing; TOPS can make a good knife, but apparently they don't own a ruler or a scale. They list the knife weight at 28 ounces, but it really weighs 20.4, and they say the blade is about 4 inches, when it is really about 6.25 inches long.
Anyway, let's see the pics.
Brought the folding picnic table my brother owns. It's really handy, and he got it for free; someone was throwing it out, and they normally cost $100.
Batonning a rather thick, tough piece of wood...why not:
Tracker posing in the old chopping stump:
And making a skewer...just look at that wood curl away now that it's actually sharp (the curved area shaves hair away with the greatest of ease now):
But what if I need a weapon? You never know when a Westside Story style brawl will break out in the woods--complete with finger snapping and choreographed dance--and Bladeforums has taught me that knives are completely useless as weapons. So, I needed a wooden knuckleduster. Thankfully, the Swiss Army Knife's awl made getting a hole started easy, after I had batonned and planed flat a piece of wood:
The Umnumzaan did most of the rest of the work:
There's a hole!
My brother piggybacks a knife, but not a smaller one...RD-9 Piggybacking a Pestilence Chopper:
Here's some aluminum preheating...we did manage to melt and cast about 7 ounces worth, which is why we erroneously thought we could melt a bunch more for casting axes the next time out:
Cooking sausages before the aluminum melts and makes icky fumes:
Knuckleduster done!
Did I mention that fire is good?
Just prior to heading out:
So, in summary, the Tom Brown Tracker is just fine...IF you reprofile the hell out of it.
The handle is great, although I did use some 400 grit silicon carbide paper to contour a couple of spots to fit my hand.
The heat treat is good; it holds an edge very well (you just have to supply your own edge
).One thing about it is that it's pretty much indestructible; you could loan it to your dumbest friend, and it would not break.
It does not chop as well as, say, the Junglas, but it does about as good as the Clax...once it's reprofiled, that is. I actually didn't even pull the Clax from the pack that day, due to how happy I was at how it was working.
The "saw" on the back is NOT for sawing, so don't try doing that. It is for notching, and it does that very well (didn't take pics, but it works great for making notches for lashing or traps).
It is lighter than all the supposed "experts" on YouTube yammered on about...I guess they don't own scales either.
Makes me doubt all their other "wisdom" when they cannot even tell how much a knife weighs.
But yeah, it's okay. :thumbup:
Last edited:
:thumbup:
