- Joined
- Jul 22, 2004
- Messages
- 527
I got this a few days ago and had a chance to play with a downed poplar tree yesterday. This is my first TOPS blade and it's definitely a solid hunk of 0.25" thick 1095 steel. It came with a kydex sheath. I measured it at 700 gm without the sheath. It seems to balance right around where the edge starts at the front of the choil. OAL is 16.5." The blade is 10.75" from tip to micarta and has 9.75" of cutting edge.
The black (linen?) micarta handles feel pretty good but would be better with a little more radius around the edges. Fit and finish on the blade are very good, but the sheath's retention was not very strong. I heated the opening and tightened it in until the grab was satisfactory. The finger grooves and choil actually feel comfortable with my size medium hands. The rear hook on the handle proved to be very harsh and uncomfortable when I moved all 4 fingers to the rear grip section to get more leverage for chopping. It would be much better if it was rounded off and would still give good grip retention.
The edge sliced paper nicely out of the box. The poplar tree I cut on was ~3" thick in the chopped areas and still green and wet inside. I cut a 7' section off the end and then limbed it. The 0.75-1.0" branches were easily cut with one swing. I didn't count the number of swings to chop all the way through, but it was a relatively quick and easy process. At the end, the edge was still very sharp and I shaved a bunch of bark strips off. Interestingly, the bark has a very strong orange-citrus smell to it.
After all the word work, the egde still cut paper with almost the same effort as it initially took. There was a barely detectable chip in the blade on the recurve front area. It sharpened out without much effort and now has an even better paper-slicing edge. The black blade coating was scuffed some, but mostly just gunked up with sap and juice from the tree. There is no actual wear on the coating yet. I'm pretty impressed overall and will try to remember to post some updates after more use.
Well, it seems like I didn't format my pics all the same somehow
.....oh well
The black (linen?) micarta handles feel pretty good but would be better with a little more radius around the edges. Fit and finish on the blade are very good, but the sheath's retention was not very strong. I heated the opening and tightened it in until the grab was satisfactory. The finger grooves and choil actually feel comfortable with my size medium hands. The rear hook on the handle proved to be very harsh and uncomfortable when I moved all 4 fingers to the rear grip section to get more leverage for chopping. It would be much better if it was rounded off and would still give good grip retention.
The edge sliced paper nicely out of the box. The poplar tree I cut on was ~3" thick in the chopped areas and still green and wet inside. I cut a 7' section off the end and then limbed it. The 0.75-1.0" branches were easily cut with one swing. I didn't count the number of swings to chop all the way through, but it was a relatively quick and easy process. At the end, the edge was still very sharp and I shaved a bunch of bark strips off. Interestingly, the bark has a very strong orange-citrus smell to it.
After all the word work, the egde still cut paper with almost the same effort as it initially took. There was a barely detectable chip in the blade on the recurve front area. It sharpened out without much effort and now has an even better paper-slicing edge. The black blade coating was scuffed some, but mostly just gunked up with sap and juice from the tree. There is no actual wear on the coating yet. I'm pretty impressed overall and will try to remember to post some updates after more use.
Well, it seems like I didn't format my pics all the same somehow
.....oh well
