![]() ![]() The over promise under deliver can make a decent product seem bad (the Kershaw Cryo for example) and the under promise over deliver can make a good product seem great (the Kershaw Skyline for example). As a person that has written reviews for two years now, I know that expectations are the most difficult thing to work around. I have craved a Dauntless since I first saw its fullers and flippers and choils. I think I can say with little doubt that I have never been so eager to review a product before. This was an exceptionally difficult knife to review. It is a testament both to the knife and to TAD's meticulous management of the Dauntless brand.Īll of this breathless text goes to one point that I must lay out before the review begins. Few blinked or hesitated when a production Dauntless came up for bid at $600. The production knives quickly paced into custom price ranges on forums and ebay. The second run, a few months later did the same. The first batch sold out in minutes, even with the impressive $400 and $300 price tags. Then last year, TAD announced that they would be making a production version. For knife knuts, the Dauntless project was the culmination of the rebirth of the craftsman and the distillation of knife utility to perfection, with a dash of limited edition, hard-to-find scent thrown in for good measure. Here is more on the Dauntless project, with links to gorgeous photo archives. They have created a following, a cult of cutlery-the Dauntless Owner's Group. Customs, resplendent in their quality and lines, are then sold in painfully small numbers on TAD's site. And that idea was given to masters of the form, folks like Rick Hinderer and Michael Burch, and each produced an iteration of the design adding their own aesthetic touches to the Platonic idea of the Dauntless knife. But that is all-this is an idea, not 4 apples or oranges, but simply 4 itself. It has the heritage of a Strider, with a spearpoint blade and generous finger choils. It marked by fullers on the blade and the scales. There is, you see, a form, an idea that is the Dauntless, a Platonic conception in the mind of TAD Gear's founder Patrick Ma, for a capable, rugged, and muted beauty. The idea of the Dauntless or more accurately the entire Dauntless project is a genius one. And in this precious, precocious economic space, they have dared to dream of a knife like no other-the Dauntless. It is this trend, found in craft beers and $750 jackets, that makes TAD Gear possible. We, those fans of quality and innovation, are the beneficiaries. The power to bring people together with similar niche interests has allowed specialty makers to gather enough numbers to make their enterprises profitable and sustainable. The small boutique that had no chance of finding critical mass in one of the many suburban malls that ring our metropolises can now live and thrive in a digital age. Craftsmen, lost for five decades in a march of machines, can now make a living, selling their wares directly to a buying public. In this age of the Internet, when Etsy and Kickstarter empower the small guy with the big idea, we are treated to a bounty of amazing things. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |