Go to Klean Kanteen’s site and look for the Insulated TKPro 16 oz. The page for it returns an error. US retailers that carried it list it as sold out. The last copy of the maker’s own page in the Internet Archive is from 2022, and it has a price on it: $39.95.
Now go to the page for the TKPro Maintenance Kit. It is live as of the last time we looked, in stock, $5.95. One ring gasket and one low seal gasket, “for use on the TKPro pour-through cap.”
So the company sells you the spare parts for a bottle it no longer sells. I can’t tell you why. Maybe the catalog was pruned and nobody told the parts department. Maybe there is stock left to clear. What I can tell you is what the two pages together say about the bottle, because it’s a useful thing to know before you buy one secondhand or from a shop that still has it.
Two seals, not one
The TKPro has a twist-and-pour cap with a 360-degree pour-through opening, and the maintenance kit tells you why that costs you an extra part: it needs two: a ring gasket and a low seal gasket.
The maker says why they matter in the same blurb: “Gaskets work hard to keep your TKPro bottle leak-proof, and they can stretch and wear over time.” That is an honest sentence for a marketing page. It is also a promise that the part that fails first is rubbery and replaceable, which is the right way round. I’d rather own a bottle whose weak point costs six dollars than one that has to be thrown out when the lid goes soft.
The retailer evo lists the bottle’s construction as “Stainless Steel and Silicone Construction”. The kit’s reviews say the same in plainer words. One buyer: “These silicone washers are easy to remove and install. They are sturdy, thick, and do their job to keep everything leak proof tight.” Another has had the bottle three years of diving trips and says the kits “just keep it functioning perfectly.”
What that means for the bottle
We list the brushed stainless TKPro as Bronze. Steel body, steel cup, steel cap. The Bronze is the silicone: two rings inside the cap. That is the one small synthetic part, and we name it rather than bury it.
Two warnings, both of which matter more now that the bottle is hard to find.
First, only the brushed finish qualifies. Klean Kanteen’s own FAQ says its Klean Coat finish, “on our products with colors and prints,” is a powder coat. A powder coat is a plastic layer baked onto the steel. Every painted TKPro is out. If you find one on a clearance table, check the color before you decide it fits.
Second, we don’t know everything. We can’t say what else is inside the cap besides the two gaskets. We can’t say what the logo is, or the base cap, or what seals the vacuum. The maker’s FAQ says it uses “silica/glass plugs” to make the vacuum in its insulated bottles, but that is a statement about the line, not this model. We’ve asked Klean Kanteen. Until they answer, those parts stay on the unknown list on the bottle’s page.
Buying one that’s discontinued
A bottle that is out of production is a bottle you buy once. That sounds like a drawback and I think it’s mostly a feature, as long as you do the arithmetic. The only thing that wears out is the gaskets, and the maker still sells them. Order a spare kit at the same time as the bottle, and you’ve covered the failure that ends most bottles’ lives.
The catch is that the kit is the maker’s only commitment to the bottle, and it could vanish the way the bottle page did. If you buy one, buy two kits. That’s $11.90 of kits against a bottle that a UK shop, Babipur, was selling for 38.95 pounds when we checked. Gaskets are cheap until they are the only thing between you and a working bottle.
I’d also keep the old ones. A worn silicone ring is still a spare for a ring that gets lost at the sink, and anyone who has washed a lid in a hurry knows how that goes.
None of this makes the TKPro a recommendation for everyone. It makes it a good bottle to own if you already do, and a reasonable one to hunt down if you want steel, a pour-through cap, and a plain account of the one soft part. Every bottle on our list in this category has a seal of some kind, and we tell you which. We keep the whole set on the water bottles page.