TOPS has a new ax to grind – well, okay, to be fair they’ve already ground it, because it’s out now. It’s called the Wolf Pax, a stout but compact chopping tool built to the usual beefy TOPS standard.
In our last article about a TOPS release, the Tick fixed blade, we mentioned how versatile company CEO Leo Espinoza is as a designer. With the Tick, he showcased his ability to merge seemingly disparate concepts – the fillet knife and the EDC fixed blade – into a harmonious final piece. Here, we see him flexing his ax design credentials, something that his own father did some years ago, under the TOPS label no less, with a model called Grandpa’s Ax.
There is a bit of visual lineage between Grandpa’s Ax and the Wolf Pax, for sure; and the son’s piece, like the father’s, is also a small, lightweight example of the ax genre. Its blade length is 3.06 inches long, and it has a sort of compound grind element, with the under-edge have a much wider, dished out grind – an element that certainly looks cool, but as for its specific applications we’ll once again defer to our sister site AxNews, whose expertise outstrips our own in this area.
What we can confidently comment upon, however, is the steel, which is one most of us will be familiar with at this point, either through TOPS or one of many other companies who believe in its decades-long track record: 1095. This carbon steel is, probably, the oldest steel still actively used in knife manufacturing, and when it comes to axes, it’s an equally wise choice as it soaks up shock and impact with relative ease, and can be sharpened on just about any setup imaginable.
Espinoza the Younger kept the handle design simple here, with a fairly linear and uncomplicated profile. The most notable feature is the forward choil cut into the neck of the ax, above the top of the Micarta scales. There’s a Kydex sheath included, as you would expect, which accounts for about 8 oz. of the Wolf Pax’s total weight. The Pax ax itself weighs 20 oz. – a skotche over one pound.
This Wolf Pax is out now.
Ax in Featured Image: TOPS Wolf Pax
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