Batoning Warranty

Greykilt

Greykilt

Joined
Dec 12, 2013
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Over in the Cold Steel Forum, the subforum monitor posted a reply to a silly complaint but in the reply he stated that batoning is not covered under Cold Steels Warranty. With all the different opinions on batoning offered up here I found that rather interesting.
We Make The Toughest Knives In The World UNLESS Batoning Them, Then All Bets Are Off...
 
Just a possible discussion thought. A manufacturer has every right to exclude what it deems abusive behavior and I'm sure other knife makers have similar exclusions. Just an interesting thought. I EDC a Custom Made James Terrio Fugitive. It was made to baton. Hmmm.

Cold Steel Knives said:
I have spoken with our customer service team and this knife hasn't been sent in to us here at HQ.
We've received no calls or emails that I can find about this.
Without getting the knife in hand and testing it I have no idea how or why it failed.

Our warranty covers defects in materials and craftsmanship. If the knife comes in and it's our fault it failed, the owner will immediately be sent a replacement.
Until the knife gets in our hands it's all speculation.

Note that as a general rule batoning is considered abusive under our warranty, HOWEVER, regardless of how the blade was used, if it failed because of a defect on our end, then I'm pretty sure it'd still be covered.
I suggest sending the knife to our guys to check out, or at least just contacting us. We're here to help!
Our contact info, including a toll free number can be found at www.coldsteel.com
Thanks!
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With the advent of YouTube and people doing "knife tests", I have seen a lot of stupidity with battoning. I mean forget the knife, but risking serious injury due to their "technique". If I owned a knife company, I'd probably say the same thing. It's one thing using a valid knife technique, it's another just being flat out dumb about it! Taking even the toughest knife and wailing on it with wild abandon can pose quite a few different problems for the knife, the user and anyone within shrapnel distance.
 
The Cold Steel response seems pretty reasonable to me. If I break one batoning, I am not going to tell the manufacturer. I will simply say "It broke." The other side of the coin is that I personally feel that you're pretty much on your own with knives and I don't really care what the warranty is.

As a kid, Case replaced a Barlow that the blade broke on when I was cutting a stick. That is pretty much my only experience with any kind of dealings with manufacturers or warranties. SOG sent me a canvas sheath for my Seal Pup Elite. That was just a promise made at Blade years ago and had nothing to do with any warranties.
 
You pays your money and you takes your chances. Honestly, plenty of manufacturers just say their knives aren't warrantied against abuse, without at all defining what may constitute abuse. With larger fixed blades in particular that's kind of a blank check to refuse warranty service. Given that, I'm much happier when a company specifies at least some of what they consider abuse.

Cold Steel is, frankly, not a company that I think of as having a great warranty. The trade off is that you can now get some really premium materials for significantly less than many competitors knives. Companies like KAI and ESEE have much, much better warranties. But their comparable knives are significantly more expensive. It's all a trade off.
 
You could use one as a shim and break the blade off and they'd probably replace it.
 
Greykilt said:
Just a possible discussion thought. A manufacturer has every right to exclude what it deems abusive behavior and I'm sure other knife makers have similar exclusions. Just an interesting thought. I EDC a Custom Made James Terrio Fugitive. It was made to baton. Hmmm.
Click to expand...

Have you Batonned with it?
 
Hi,
see Batoning with our Survival Edge - csknives discussed at Lynn Thompson on Batoning
The OP makes a few great points, here is one of them
The idea about care and such, while on the surface seems reasonable always seemed to me to be really silly. Just take a look at any of the equipment you would use in a survival situation from your small can that you heat water in to your boots. Now consider if they were that fragile that unless you use them extremely carefully they would break, how would you rate them. To be specific if you took your boots, in a hurry and pulled them on a little too fast with a little too much force and your foot tore right through the bottom and broke all the stitching would you accept - well that is abuse you didn't put them on with enough care? It is similar with calling a knife a survival tool, it has to have some measure of durability to sustain such use in such conditions.
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You know those pig chopping videos? Those are considered destructive testing / GROSS ABUSE that voids warranty
 
What was the line over in the multi-sub about Leatherman, "If you sent them a road-killed cat, they'd send back a kitten"

I see the warranty wording as a bit of marketing copy. One of the reasons I bought my ESEE when I did, was that warranty, I wanted to know that I could really pound on it, and because of that warranty I saw a few pictures on here about broken ESEEs, and it confirmed that I would likely never be able to break one. Without that warranty, I doubt I'd have seen the insane stories of abuse that were heaped on some knives. They would have done alright, but would have not been pushed to that end.

On the other hand, seeing the pics of busted Beckers puts me in that same camp, I see what they get put through, and that they are plenty tough for my needs. Even though the standard Ka-Bar warranty is a bit more strict on abuse.

Some may feel that sending in a knife you broke is dishonest, but unless you set out to destroy that knife, it should do what you wanted it to do. But that assumes the user is reasonable, and I get that isn't always the case. Its not an easy question to answer, even personally for myself.
 
gadgetgeek said:
I see the warranty wording as a bit of marketing copy. One of the reasons I bought my ESEE when I did, was that warranty, I wanted to know that I could really pound on it, and because of that warranty I saw a few pictures on here about broken ESEEs, and it confirmed that I would likely never be able to break one. Without that warranty, I doubt I'd have seen the insane stories of abuse that were heaped on some knives. They would have done alright, but would have not been pushed to that end.

On the other hand, seeing the pics of busted Beckers puts me in that same camp, I see what they get put through, and that they are plenty tough for my needs. Even though the standard Ka-Bar warranty is a bit more strict on abuse.

Some may feel that sending in a knife you broke is dishonest, but unless you set out to destroy that knife, it should do what you wanted it to do. But that assumes the user is reasonable, and I get that isn't always the case. Its not an easy question to answer, even personally for myself.
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Pretty good response. There is a tremendous gray area in terms of what is reasonable and appropriate use or or unreasonable misuse of a knife, especially fixed blades. Some say and I think it has merit, that if you use a large fixed blade (say a BK-9) in the woods to baton, it is not misuse as why else would you carry the beastie in the first place? I just try to be reasonable. There are factory defects and those should always be covered by the manufacturer.
 
All that boilerplate is in there to deal with multiple offenders.

Lets say you got a guy who breaks his knife batoning. He sends it back to Cold Steel and being who they are they give him a new knife.

Then unlike other users he doesn't learn from the failure and keeps doing what he does and breaks the new knife. Sends back to CS & etc.

So 4-5 knives into this the knife maker says enough, no more knives for you. And then customer gets super huffy and starts citing the videos, and that there's nothing in the literature that says he can't do this and then uses the fact that they replaced the previous knives as leverage instead of cluing in that this was goodwill.

So then CS adds some more terms to the boilerplate to shut stuff like that down after one knife. Same thing with ESSE and throwing, and Medford with don't take your knife apart. It's all a response to the dummies that live among us.
 
Rhinoknives1 said:
Have you Batonned with it?
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Certainly Not!! That's abuse.... :D
This is a Terrio Handmade Custom. I walk up to a tree, show the tree my knife. I make sure said tree gets a really good look at it. And branches just fall from above.
 
NO !!! Because you can take a perfectly made knife and break it by improper batonning !!!
 
Good for them. I expect the knife to warranted for defects. If I break a knife with no manufacturing defects, that's on me. I don't get doing something dumb and then asking someone else to pay for it. Take some responsibility for your actions.
 
The knife that the discussion was about is the Master Hunter...IMO The basic design is for processing game , hence the name Hunter....
I don't believe that its described anywhere as the perfect woodcutter ... shaving wood for tinder, yes... Batoning, No ...
The decision to not warranty it is valid from what I read....
 
It seems like urban bushcraft hipsters are camping amongst the homeless.
 
I broke a brand new Schrade SCHF36 on a camping trip, attempting to baton firewood. I've batoned with an old US-made Schrade and had no reason to think that the new one wouldn't be capable, based on the materials used. The guy I bought it from (gun show seller) carries the same exact model as his camping knife and said he uses it for bushcrafting tasks. Schrade's website has a video showing someone doing all sorts of wood-related work with this model, although not batoning specifically. Well, I had pictures showing a flaw in the knife, called Schrade expecting that they'd want a lengthy description and photos in an attempt to get out of replacing the knife, and instead, they replaced it with no questions asked. I was frankly surprised. My opinion of Schrade definitely increased that day.

That being said, I think it was a case where a manufacturer would rather replace a flawed product than have an unhappy customer telling other people in the very specific target market for that product that it wasn't up to the task. Cold Steel may or may not feel the same.
 
Inazone said:
.....That being said, I think it was a case where a manufacturer would rather replace a flawed product than have an unhappy customer telling other people in the very specific target market for that product that it wasn't up to the task. Cold Steel may or may not feel the same.
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Yeah. I remember when you broke the Schrade and they replaced it. That raised my attitude toward the Taylor Schrades quite a bit. I think if you're honest, you do what needs doing. The forums are a powerful media tool and it is the knife nuts that buy many knives.
 
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