The Evolution of the "Tracker" Type Knife

 The Infamous TRACKER/TRAKKER Type knife 

Almost as famous as the "RAMBO" knife but with a far more interesting history than that of Jimmy Lile's iconic design.

Most people who hear the words "Tracker knife" will immediately think of the TOPS knives product  (shown below)

and secondly think of the movie, "The Hunted", starring Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio del Toro. I say secondly because  "The Hunted"  was a box office failure grossing less than the cost of the movie by a long way. As for  a "cult status", Mmmm, I doubt that too!

 Quite possibly due the fact that the predominant audiences at the time of release expected "justice to be done" and  like today in real life, it isn't the case either. Here I refer to the current global situation of concurrent warfare across several countries, all of which arguably or without argument are "fostered" shall we say by the USA government and their partners in crime, who are represented by some blue stars. 

Sorry, I pull no punches here, as I have up until now kept a political free channel/s and blogs but it's just too much now to pretend it is any other way. So if you didn't know where I stand on this subject matter then you do now.

Ok so there is a third thought which might cross one's mind and that is the association of the name of Tom Brown as the originator and designer of the "Tracker Knife". 

So despite the true origins of the Tracker design having being known for some years TOPS continues to advertise as such. Their justification is that the design was modified by them! LOL, I think not. They simply made a product based upon what Tom Brown told them and nothing more. To be honest Tom Brown fell from Grace once I learnt the real story behind this knife design.

So, unfortunately if you believe this about the original Tom Brown Tracker) then you are/were just like me as of  several days ago and that is swayed by this stupid Hollywood movie and over twenty years of marketing hype as to the origins of the "Tracker knife".  The real credit goes to a guy by the name of Robb Russon. Russon, an academic (Professor) at the time and hobbyist knife maker (Yes, Russon, is the father of Mark S. Russon, knife maker) came up with this design 

Image taken from https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/utahknifeworks/utah-knife-works-original-tracker-survival-knife

It is a faithful reproduction (according to Russon's knife maker son) of Robb Russon's original "Tracker knife"  as made by his knife maker son, Mark Russon.

during the early eighties. You can watch all about it here. and I totally recommend to watch this video to learn the facts.

Like all good designs, this knife of Russon's has been copied countless times and there is a plethora of design modifications and even changes to the naming, such that the word "Tracker" and or "Trakker"  and or " Trapper" have become synonymous/analogous with a  compact "survival knife"

Let me say this, (I know it's an understatement)  that Russon Sr. came up with an excellent idea/design. Far from a "mall ninja knife" (which it has been called) the design embodies several key features for the true outdoors persons who are in the know and by that I mean knife savvy.  

As to the Chinese made knife that was made by Russon (shown above) it has been reviewed and whilst it was great that the video set the record straight about the origins of the Tracker design and who came up with it first, the knife itself performed very poorly in field tests. I know the guy reviewing it said otherwise but the video did not lie. He did in  fact say the knife was "not shaving sharp", I think probably blunt out of the box. Yes, bamboo is very tough and a jungle benchmark when it comes to what's really sharp and what isn't for ANY KNIFE!

Now that being said, the knife was tested in the jungle environment with some pretty tough tasks but from my standpoint it certainly was a poor performer and I suspect to be a poorly finished/sharpened edge and or rubbish steel (he did say it was D2. You can see this video here and judge for yourself. It's a long video and you may want to skip to the actual testing at time code: 14:53

As I mentioned this original design has been much tweaked/ copied etc. 

The "tweaking" is the important thing here and for such a knife, correct geometry must be key, ie the weight distribution must be correct in order for the knife to be used as both a chopper and a cutter (see below FKMD Parus, an excellent example of great geometry).

 However, before we look at individual knife designs let's refresh ourselves with some text from one of early pioneers into the wilderness, yes no other than Horace Kephart who wrote countless books   one of which entitled:

The Book of Camping and Woodcraft 1906 by Horace Kephart, where he wrote:

Note where Kephart correctly identifies the sole use of a (large- because they were back in the day) Bowie knife inappropriate for campers. I would agree with this. Sure, I've taken my "chungfat" (I coined this term way back in primary school -like 50 years ago LOL, as a nonsense word meaning anything ginormous and amazing but it had to be ginormous!) Kizlyar Supreme Bowie knife 

out of day hikes into the deep snow of the mountains, and it's a great  knife although a little too big for regular camping and food prep and or long (greater than 10km) hiking trips on foot. 

This Bowie is like most modern Bowie knives,  a modern rendition of what the public has been  conditioned to believe is a "Bowie knife" - as a side fact, the original Bowie  knife looked  nothing like today's Bowie and in fact was of the "bird beak handle design" you can see it in some early movies, notably:  in the 1932 version of "The Most Dangerous Game" staring Joel McCrea and Fay Wray.

You can see this type of knife here at time code 6:31

Now back to this "tracker knife" and the iterations....... (excluding the plethora of no name brands).

The key cutting  features of Russon's design is that the blade features two distinct regions of cutting surfaces ( excluding the spine saw). We have a generous "belly" but now located towards the tip of the knife and a straight edge towards the hilt of the knife. The logic being that the belly could be used for skinning purposes and butchering whilst the straight edge was for cutting specific purposes. There was a little more weight towards the tip and this made the handle region not feel heavy and it shouldn't be on any good knife no matter the design ie a heavy handle.

Over the years we have seen the straight edge move towards a "recurved or slightly recurved cutting sections as seen on the following knives.

You will note the absence of a "gimmicky spine saw"*

The above 3 images afre of the FKMD ( Made in Italy by FOX knives) Parus (an in house design at FOX Knives) . Currently still in production and is a superb TNS knife. (last image is of where I easily demolished a green coconut at the coast on a chunk of wood.

The above 4 images: Knife was short term  collaborative design project between Memo tek in Russia and Fox Knives of Italy, called the Grand Trapper, no longer in production. Also a great knife seen here thoroughly tested out in  the southern hemisphere bush and jungle environments.

Now to the custom knife maker.

Above 2 images:  Knife based upon the FKMD "Trapper" knife (pers. comm. by knife maker and myself) and is an early  custom design from Nino Maglia. No longer in production as this was a "one-off"  made with 8mm Sleipner steel. Big, heavy and indestructible, with a wicked edge holding capacity. 

This knife, design (by Angel Corts) based upon Chilean knives 

This knife, however is definitely a pre 1980's design from the Spanish knife maker Aitor and bears all the hallmarks of early Spanish knife designs.

The knife shown above is from FKMD, it is their long term production model known as the "Tracker Sniper knife". This is a super robust small survival  knife intended for military personnel engaged in sniper activities. Snipers working alone may need to be in the field for some time and as such require a knife which can double as a small shovel/survival tool. This knife has a very thick spine, a slight belly, a tanto-like tip and a recurved section for cutting in an arcing motion. This portion of the blade enables rapid effective cutting strokes for cutting fibrous materials such as ferns, reeds, grasses  etc (which could be used to disguise one's position), make bedding material/ cover booby traps etc. etc. 

The sturdy forward weigh enables this tool to be used to cut down small saplings with ease. Since there are multiple sections of  blade, if one dulls the front edge from digging then there  is still the  remaining edge close to the hilt which can be used for cutting tasks. 

As to the robustness of the knife tang, this knife has been subjected to being run over by a "people mover"   stuck in the  ground and kicked repeatedly and subjected to all sorts of ridiculous  abusive tests many years ago by a YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/@bastinelli AKA Bastinelli 

and also here you can see another crazy video.

I will now focus upon the above knife in the rest of the discussion here in relation to the evolution of Tracker type knives.

Some of the specifications at a glance. 

Thickness: 6mm or 0.24" (I measured 6.19mm at the guard)

Blade Length: 150mm or  5.91"

Weight: 310gr or 10.93 Oz.

Steel: Böhler  N690

Blade coating: PVD DLC

Designer: Giorgio Danese (military background)- I found him impossible to locate and as such I will not be able to offer any input from the designer.

Handle: Forprene elasto polymer (TPV- thermoplastic vulcanizate). Long since field proven toughness.

Tang: Full width to tapering with lanyard hole.

Scabbard: Ballistic nylon and plastic. There is a hard plastic inner scabbard liner, an elasticized leg loop and a quick release dangler strap which also features a safety lock to prevent accidental release.

 This knife can also be worn simply attached to a belt . OR carried directly on a pack or any article of clothing that features PALS webbing.

So I've had my eye on this knife from FKMD (the military division of FOX Knives in Maniago) for many years, (about 13 to be exact) infact ever since they started producing it however for some strange reason, I  never got it but now all that has changed and I decided I MUST have this knife because I must share my thoughts on  it with other outdoors persons and just knife enthusiasts the world over! (You can tell I'm excited about it!).

Already a very satisfied user of other similar yet different FKMD products as shown above, this is like the bare bones "military grade" version of the Trapper knife also by FKMD, which was one of my earliest acquisitions from FOX and has served me well all around the globe. I saw no reason why the FX9CM01B would not also serve me well.

The FX-9CM01 B TRACKER SNIPER KNIFE is a small knife by outdoor standards coming in at only just under 6". However, as a military knife which needs to be carried with a plethora of other equipment, especially a sniper, then the size is totally appropriate. It is of very robust design without being overly heavy.

As mentioned above the blade has been coated with a Diamond like Carbon via a PVD process. This is the same PVD process which has been used on my super abused and heavily used FKMD Hitam Golok. (Shown below)

The FKMD FX9CM01B has 3 separate blade grinds. A small recurved portion closest to the hilt, A belly region and the tip is in the shape of a Western styled tanto.

I'm not going to say this knife is "bullet-proof" but I'm certain it could take several rounds and come out basically unscathed!

The scabbard is very well made and features what appears to be Hypalon material for the retention strap (same stuff Zodiac inflatables are made from). The stitching is top notch as could be expected for a military end point knife. The scabbard also has generous room for a pistol mag or for a folding knife or a multitool.

One thing you will find in ALL of my blogs about knives is that there will definitely be images showing the spine. Why do I do this? Well, that's because when I read a blog or watch a video about a knife and there is no image of the knife's spine, this annoys me because the spine shape will tell you a lot about the knife even before one sees the blade. In the above image, one can clearly see that the spine is at full thickness but at approximately 40mm away from the guard it starts to taper with a chamfer to the tip. 

The tip is not overly thick so this knife is still capable of piercing tasks without too much effort.

There is a generous thumb ramp to upper guard the guard has two holes which could be used for a multitude of purposes, for example but far from limited to: lashing to a pole, wire bending, extraction of certain objects made from lead (5.8, 5.56, 5.45 mm) use your imagination here, these guard holes are NOT some random diameter. After all this knife is intended for military personnel and I'm a big advocate of certain military knives as excellent bushcrafting knives, notwithstanding their usual robustness as a key feature. 

 So in summary, this FKMD knife, called the TRACKER was in production over 16 years ago, designed by Giorgio Danese, manufactured by FOX knives. At least 3 years before the release of the movie, The Hunted and definitely BEFORE the release of the Tom Brown Tracker knife manufactured by TOPS knives. You see, maybe Russon had a great idea back in the eighties but he didn't know how to bring it into production (and he put his trust in the wrong people). 

Before anyone says Danese copied Russon's designs, I doubt that Danese ever saw any of Russon's earlier correspondence between Russon and Tom Brown (he would have been a kid or not even born then LOL) , that would have been impossible at the time. What I'm getting at is that if one thinks they have a good idea then usually there is a high probability that someone somewhere else will have the same idea. The dual blade edges thing are NOT new. This form of knife has been around for 100's of years, (see early Spanish designs). Truly new knife designs, at least functional ones, have already been invented! Just go visit any good history museum which houses edged weapons and you'll be going: "Ah, he was right!"

Anyway, stick around for some outdoor stuff. I haven't done any full reviews for some time as the audience retention level is non existent so I really appreciate those of you who bother to read my articles and watch my videos.

@BushCampingTools

* I say gimmicky because there are definitely good spine saws but the one on the Russon tracker and Tops Tracker are not good saws as they are just of the wrong design IMHO.

FKMD Hitam Golok Review

FKMD Hitam Golok Review

FOX KNIVES MILITARY DIVISION (FKMD)

Version of a GOLOK, the Hitam Golok.

Here are the facts:

Austrian manufactured N690 Cobalt martensitic stainless steel.

Blade surface treatment, Positive Vapour Deposition (PVD). High durability Surface coating

Actual blade HRC is 58-60

 

FORPRENE handle, feel is slightly tacky but grippy and comfortable in the ungloved hands.

Swinging ergonomics: Swings well with good weight  balance.

Full flat grind.

1/4 inch thick at widest point on the spine closest to the handle.

Light enough to prepare food with around camp as this is not a hugely long Golok.

 Lanyard hole.

 

A super ergonomic light-weight golok, intended for jungle work but also as a weapon.

Check it out here!

When Failure Is Not an Option

 Worried about your RADIOACTIVE bolting/peg hammer?

JUST JOKING ABOUT THE RADIOACTIVITY!

BIG WALL HAMMERS

BUT SERIOUSLY,  YOU notice that the wooden handle has some cracks in it within the head. Is this a reason for concern as after all this is not a hammer where you can simply lose a head mid pitch and this is going to be ok. Well rest assured, these heads are designed not to accidentally part company with the shaft for that very reason!

Firstly, let me explain how a bolting/peg hammer differs from your regular hardware hammer. (BTW we are talking about traditional bolting hammers which have a wooden shaft- natures composite!). 

Unlike a regular ball peen hammer or carpenter's claw hammer, where the head is secured to the shaft, via  at least one steel (or sometimes wooden) wedge smashed into the end of the shaft and hence spreading the shaft ever so much in order to provide a tight frictional fit (sometimes some sort of epoxy may also be utilized); a BOLTING PEG, PITON hammer, specifically designed to manually drill holes (via belting the daylights out of a SDS drill bit or  self drilling anchors) into rock, usually but not always while one is suspended only by a 10mm or even less diameter rope, at height, these hammer heads can not fail due to obvious reasons; features a different design.

First, let me tell you a short story:

 Some years back three of us were setting a new climbing route. This route required no bolts to be set during the entire climb, however at the summit if you like, there was, believe it or not, ZERO placements to be found and of the one possible (dodgy) placement required me to leave behind a newly purchased large  Black Diamond Camelot! 

I was not willing to do this (we nearly had an argument) and besides that, it was not enough protection for 3 adult males to be be rapping off a cliff face of more than 50m!  Out with our bolting kit to save the day!

 So, what did it comprise of? One hardware store, slightly modified ball peen hammer (it had it's handle drilled to accept a lanyard- no sense in dropping that hammer, and a small bag of Petzl self drilling anchors and of course the Petzl drill holder itself! Now as to the rock, it was of course some indestructible igneous stuff manufactured from the interior of the earth to resist weathering for the next several million years- in other words, damn hard stuff! 

So after each one of us took turns to spend approximately 40 minutes per hole- that's right 40 minutes!, we placed three high tensile bolts into those perfectly flush anchors, tied sacrificial tape to them, via larks heads and ever so super carefully rapped off that cliff. Yes indeed the bolting kit saved maybe a day or more hiking in virgin Australian bush back to the car. 

I guess those are the things you do when you are mad about finding and setting new climbing routes!

So what as wrong if anything with what we did? The type of hammer, was our weakest link because that sort of hammer is not meant for any task where failure in not an option. If for example, the head popped, then we would have been faced with a very very difficult bush bash (that's being nice) to get back to the car through almost non navigable terrain. Lesson which was learnt on that day was don't scab on a proper caving bolting pegging piton, whatever you want to call it hammer, as hardware hammers are not meant for these kinds of activities ( oh I forgot to mention canyoning as well- for new routes).

Now let's address any concerns you may have over the above hammer head fixture. We can see ( shown by green arrows) that there are 2 small cracks in the wood. Let me tell you that those cracks were present at the time of purchase and they have zero effect on the integrity of the actual head on the shaft. WHY? Because these types of heads are fixed via two right angled plates via a peened brass pin securing the head to the shaft which prevents the head from coming off the shaft no matter what. In the above image, one can clearly see where these "brackets" if you like fold over part of the hammer head (top and bottom of the image).

Now like many climbers and or people into extreme sports- I'll just talk about climbers here, there is some value I believe for psychological protection (not to be confused with any other sorts of "protection") and if you are one of those climbers (for the knife guys and gals, here it is equivalent to taking 2 knives out with you on adventures (just incase LOL!) then you can do the following to your hammer head if you have something similar:

Impregnate (for want of a better word) the shaft with either PVA**, ie wood glue, or more permanently but will make replacing the shaft in the really worst case scenario, use epoxy resin to do the same. If this makes you feel better. it's NOT necessary, LOL but I did it despite having belted the daylights out of this hammer with zero effect upon it's integrity.

This particular hammer, a KONG EAGLE, made in Italy (no longer in production*) and designed based upon the famous or  Super hero of rock climbing JIM BRIDWELL.

What one doesn't want to do is to belt the following part of you hammer, which can damage it, because while it is indeed (this hammer) as tough as Thor's hammer, unlike Thor's hammer, is not quite indestructible! So don't use these hammers when you are tired because this will happen (when I lent it to a mate). (see image directly below).

Where they accidentally belted the top of the shaft (using wild uncontrolled blows) . It was remedied by my son asked him to return the hammer to be shown what not to do LOL. No bad blood was forthcoming.

The mighty (THOR)- just joking;  KONG Big wall hammer (made in Italy- sadly no longer in production) , AKA the "KONG EAGLE", a heavy but not too heavy >800 gram hammer capable of almost ALL aid climbing, canyoning, and caving tasks. A design based upon Jim Bridwell. Also doubles as a super heavy duty bashing hammer for crazy geological adventures ie bashing cold chisels etc. (note it is NOT a substitute for a proper geology pick!)

@BushCampingTools

* there are lighter hammers and ones also made from one piece of steel plus the good old battery powered drills for holes but a hammer is still needed for pacing pitons and bashies (malleable metal aid gear)

** PVA is NOT waterproof

and the consequences should be obvious. So of the hammer is to be used underground........ that PVA will be affected, again with this type of head design, it will have little bearing upon it's integrity on the shaft.

WithArmour: Fury Compact-BK a N. Sutter Design.

WithArmour:  Fury Compact-BK

 a N. Sutter Design.

 

 

N. Sutter is a Swiss designer and artist. He has his own brand of knives and this FURY COMPACT-BK is the first of his designs to be made for a brand (WithArmour).

 

WithArmour have constructed this knife with their proprietary San Mai construction they are calling WA Steel. This is 420J2 sandwiching VG-10. 

The handle (my version) is made from carbon fibre reinforced G10 and G10 liners. The black blade coating is according to WithArmour a Ti PVD, which in order to produce a black appearance it should be something like TiCN. However, the manufacturer does not state their actual process, nor do they state it is TiCN.

 

Knife type:

 

The FURY COMPACT-BK is exactly that, a very compact, rather small knife for which many who enjoy tactical type knives will like the look of. However, many, unless you have a very small hand will not be able to grasp it properly. My hand is a size 8 and I would say this is by no means a large hand size and yet I can barely grab this knife without my hand almost contacting the deadly sharp knife edge. Speaking of knife edge it is actually “plural” as the upper tip also sports a dead razor grind like the main portion of the blade and this makes this knife somewhat of a dagger* in design The knife feels somewhat heavy and no doubt due to its rather thick but at the same time rather robust design. WithArmour’s site lists the blade thickness as 4.7mm however, it appears that I have been sent for review a pre-production model number 89/100 

for which the spine thickness is a whopping 6mm!*** (see below at end of my blog for the latest info on the production models, as they will be made with 5mm thick sheet, NOT 6mm).

 Now, in his defense N. Sutter was heard to say publicly at IWA (in Germany) that he thought the 6mm thickness to be too great and I can understand this as any tactical fighting style knife should remain nimble and certainly not heavy. He went on to say that the head of WithArmour thought it was a good idea. I did hear this conversation and in defense too of the head of WithArmour, I can see their marketing tactics here as the American market is the largest by far consumer of edged tools and as such Americans tend to err on the side of liking their knife tangs thick for some reason as yet unknown to me. So, if WithArmour or any manufacturer for that matter wants to have sales success in the USA then thick it will be. Mmmmmmm.

 

The Fury Compact-BK is definitely NOT a bushcraft knife but one intended for close quarters combat/last resort action, 

although I believe the handle to be too small for such action. For what I can grip, it is comfortable for sure. The fact that the blade is made from laminated steel also adds to the very indestructible look of this small knife. How small is it? Well it’s a similar size, maybe a tad smaller than my Extrema Ratio SATRE neck knife, however, whilst the SATRE is perfectly balanced to hang around my neck, the FURY Compact-BK is way too heavy to be worn as a neck knife and indeed, it comes with a kydex super secure and adjustable kydex scabbard for belt carry. 

Speaking of things which come with this knife, it is accompanied by a diamond rod sharpener, and kydex holder, 

belt clip and a special driver for which one can use to remove those pesky “chain ring bolt” type bolts made from 416 stainless steel. I say pesky because unless you have such a tool, these bolts are very difficult to remove with ordinary tools.

Included assorted accessories

 

 The scabbard has a very simple but cool feature too, it can be sort of "tuned" for exacting custom lock up of the knife by a small screw mechanism!

(see below)

By varying it's position in this slot, varies the tension upon the knife.

The overall finish of the knife is very nice and despite it being on the slightly heavy side it is indeed comfortable and does look, dare I say it, very cool. The black PVD coating serves no purpose other than aesthetics as the main part of the blade due to the unusual grind, like a high Sabre to a large bevel which then transforms into a Scandi to the actual edge, is uncoated and thus for tactical reasons looks like a mirror in the sun. I guess if the intended purpose is for some sort of backup knife for fighting (for which I know nothing about -knife fighting I mean) then whether a blade is coated or not is not going to be of an issue.

 

Speaking of this funky grind, it is one way to reduce the overall weight of the blade and also to improve the cutting power of a thick blade stock. There are zero hot spots on this knife design. Like my other WithArmour blades, this one too came razor sharp out of the box!

 

 

Packaging is immaculate and considerate of the environment with little plastic being used.

Instead of paper business cards, WithArmour produce a coated stainless steel type business card which is also one of those somewhat gimmicky bottle cap openers, fire steel striker, line cutter and box openers! To be honest we accidentally carried one of these on an international flight once and it was indeed picked up at security check in and deemed not be a hazard or some banned item! Luckily as my son had forgotten he was indeed carrying it in his wallet! Needless to say, at the time I almost went ballistic on him when security found it LOL! OK so just to be clear this is NOT an endorsement to carry such items when flying! It was a mistake by us and never repeated. So, what I’m trying to say is that carrying such an item without even noticing it, is in itself quite useful if you see what I mean as in you will always have it on you- ie if you use a wallet.

 

 

 

·      * this may present some carry  restrictions dependent upon which country you reside in and dependent upon what definition’s are being used to define a “double edge weapon”

***

Latest breaking news as of 08/05/26

The actual production models of this knife will be released in 5mm thick sheet rather than the 6mm thick sheet as in my first production run model.

@BushcampingTools