{"id":4762,"date":"2019-01-08T19:54:06","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T01:54:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/?p=4762"},"modified":"2019-01-08T19:54:06","modified_gmt":"2019-01-09T01:54:06","slug":"on-cold-steel-knives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/?p=4762","title":{"rendered":"On Cold Steel Knives"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

*NOTE: This is a transcript of my segment on the Assorted Calibers Podcast episode 36<\/a>*<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Welcome to Oddball\u2019s Corner Pocket.  This week, I think I\u2019ll do a request.  Weerd had asked me to talk about Cold Steel Knife and Tool Company, and why the their reputation is, shall we say\u2026 mixed in the knife community.  So, let\u2019s delve in to this topic, and see if I can avoid getting sued for anything I say. Oh, and I may or may not be drinking while making this segment.
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For those that don\u2019t know, Cold Steel is a brand that sells knives, swords, axes, canes, martial arts training weapons, and other similar items.  I\u2019ve mentioned their \u201ctri-lock\u201d folding knives in a previous segment. One of their big advertising points is that their knives, etc are overbuilt, and extremely strong.  Since their founding in 1980, they have become one of the major players in the knife world, and I would say that any collector will know about them, if not have a couple Cold Steel items in their collection.
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They have a bit of a reputation for making what I would call \u201cwell made Mall Ninja\u201d knives.  Mall Ninja knives are those knives that are so tactical that they say TACTICAL in big bold letters on the side, have unnecessary spikes, or are painted in \u201czombie\u201d green and are sold for $5 in that martial arts store at the mall or in gas stations.  Now, where a chunk of Cold Steel\u2019s knives differ from those is that the $5 Mall Ninja knife will probably break the instant that you actually use it, while Cold Steel\u2019s knife is actually well made and handle a good bit of abuse. Unfortunately, they have steered clear of the awesome paint job.
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That said, if you want something purely, to steal a term from Nick Shabazz, for jack-assery, Cold Steel is a great choice.  You want well-made folding \u201cpocket knife\u201d with a 6\u201d blade? They\u2019ve got at least 4 to choose from. You want a functional plastic knife, so it doesn\u2019t show up on metal detectors?  They\u2019ve got a wide assortment, including a copy of a World War I trench knife! You want a polymer basebat? What size do you want? They even have a polymer cricket bat!
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This is the type of company that has collaborated with Stone Cold Steve Austin on knives, and Steven Seagal on canes.
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Of course, this means that they advertise their products in a\u2026 certain way.  For the most part, this involves YouTube videos of them demonstrating just how heavy duty their stuff is.  This means hammering a knife into a car hood, proping sword up on something and hanging from them, and chopping into cement blocks, pig carcases, cowboy boots, etc.  Of course, these are done by a demo team. Most of which seem to know what they\u2019re doing, and some of them are a bit colorful. If you haven\u2019t watched them, I highly encourage you to go to YouTube and look them up.  They can be really entertaining.
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Of course, then there\u2019s there\u2019s head of their demo team, which also happens to also be the founder and owner of the company: Lynn Thompson.  I\u2019m sure the fact that he\u2019s the owner has nothing to do with him earning that position.
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A bit of my own background.  I\u2019ve been studying martial arts of one sort or another since the 1990\u2019s.  I hold ranks in a few martial arts. I\u2019m a certified open hands self-defense instructor.  I have a few medals from tournaments, been invited to help run national and international tournaments, and trained with types that regularly go to national and international tourneys and win.  Basically, that\u2019s a long way to say that, when it comes to martial arts, yeah\u2026 I have an idea of what I\u2019m talking about.
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Having seen Lynn Thompson do demos in person, I am highly suspect that he knows what he\u2019s talking about.  For example, he claims that he\u2019s been studying Filipino martial arts (among others) since the 1980\u2019s. Conveniently, I don\u2019t have that much experience, but I have been studying them for a few years now.  I\u2019m pretty sure that when he says \u201chas studied,\u201d he means \u201cI read a book.
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Let me be clear.  I\u2019m not saying that he\u2019s not a martial artist because he\u2019s fat.  I\u2019m not exactly slim, myself, and my original instructor was best described as a \u201csuper bouncy ball of death\u201d when sparring.  Butterbean was a forminible boxer, regardless of the fact that he was huge. I am saying that, from what I have seen, he is a rank amature.  If he has, indeed, been studying martial arts consistently since to 80\u2019s, he should have considerably more skill than he does. It is a fact that he, and his demos, are laughed at and ridiculed in martial arts circles.
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Of course, if it was just \u201coh, he\u2019s that fat lightsaber kid grown up and with lots of money,\u201d the company wouldn\u2019t be as controversial as it is.  There\u2019s been a couple legal issues from Cold Steel that have soured many folks as well.
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The most recent is a lawsuit against CRKT and their LAWK system.  This is basically a second lock on some of their liner locks that drops in and stops the liner lock from disengaging.  CRKT advertised this as making their folders \u201cvirtually as strong as a fixed blade.\u201d Cold Steel has long declared their Tri-ad lock as the strongest locking mechanism, and decided to sue over CRKT\u2019s claim.  The general thought is that they were upset that anyone might think that any other lock might be close to, or stronger than theirs\u2026 even if there was no comparison made. This lawsuit has been settled, but no one outside of those companies no the details of the settlement.
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The other legal issue, which I think is the more damning, is over San Mai.  As I talked about in a previous segment, san mai is an ancient Japanese term for laminate steel.  Cold Steel has managed to register the a stylized image of the term as a logo for some of their knives.  They have decided that this means that they have a trademark on the term itself. This has meant that they have sent cease and desist letters to knife makers, almost all of which are small time custom shops.  Needless to say, this hasn\u2019t made them too many friends.
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So, in the end, I guess the question is \u201cshould you buy from them?\u201d  I can\u2019t answer that. I will tell you that I own a few of their knives, including a 6\u201d Ti-LIte knife for purely jackassery reasons.  One of my favorite canes, the City Stick, is made by them, and I also believe that their plastic training knives are probably the best on the market.  I will say that I won\u2019t frown on you for carrying something made by them, nor will I fault you for steering clear.
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*NOTE: This is a transcript of my segment on the Assorted Calibers Podcast episode 36* Welcome to Oddball\u2019s Corner Pocket.  This week, I think I\u2019ll do a request.  Weerd had asked me to talk about Cold Steel Knife and Tool Company, and why the their reputation is, shall we say\u2026 mixed in the knife community. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4762\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunscarstech.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}