Cold steel Great sword breaking on tosh.0

hodges said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hfLZozBVpM

In the cold steel video he chops through metal pipe onto a solid wood table, stabs and chops concrete, and chops through ice blocks, again onto a solid table, oh and stabs a car. How is chopping wood more abusive, and in the videos the most safety they ever wear is cheap glasses. This is what they advertise, they are totally to blame for a crap product being used stupidly.
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This guy is right.


Im glad there are more tosh fans out there then i thought
 
Looking at the water cooler cut again, the pommel is loose there.

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hodges said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hfLZozBVpM

In the cold steel video he chops through metal pipe onto a solid wood table, stabs and chops concrete, and chops through ice blocks, again onto a solid table, oh and stabs a car. How is chopping wood more abusive, and in the videos the most safety they ever wear is cheap glasses. This is what they advertise, they are totally to blame for a crap product being used stupidly.
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Tosh's joke was he saw the CS promo vid and said "I would like to chop some shit with a big Conan sword" - so he bought one and chopped stuff. It held together for a while and catastrophically failed splitting the second log. He likely would have used the footage regardless, but the complete sword fail makes it a better clip.

Lynn advertises this as if it were a live sword. FAIL.
 
I used to chop wood with my khukuri frequently. My khuk had no advertising. I think it was made from melted down truck springs. Never fell apart.

I'm highly skeptical that Tosh intentionally went out of his way to remove the pommel in an attempt to raise the fatality rate of his camera men. If it's off the sword, it's likely because it came off in something off camera.

I can't imagine what CS' litigation costs must be. They advertise their stuff as invincible, going so far as to cut through all these crazy objects in their videos, and then apparently, according to the forum mod, it's just totally insane to think that just because the sword cuts through concrete it could maybe cut through wood too.

At any rate, why does CS even care? Tosh didn't blame it in the cut--he seems to imply it was his fault by saying that it wasn't meant to chop wood.
 
hodges said:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hfLZozBVpM

In the cold steel video he chops through metal pipe onto a solid wood table, stabs and chops concrete, and chops through ice blocks, again onto a solid table, oh and stabs a car. How is chopping wood more abusive, and in the videos the most safety they ever wear is cheap glasses. This is what they advertise, they are totally to blame for a crap product being used stupidly.
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Haha I love how he poses with it after every shot and says at the end "you'll praise my name!" And he keeps saying that he doesn't understand why people don't think this sword is awesome.
 
Heh, I wonder if they have ever been sued. It would be interesting to see someone argue need or proper use of a sword in this day and age, plus no sword expert would ever say anything in the CS vids was legit to begin with. Kinda hard to gauge reasonable expectations and common sense in the misuse of an item that has no proper use today. I would think it a bit different if the use was part of a structured application like test cutting/tameshigiri.

CS maybe could get in trouble for advertising swords based on such gross misuse, but then you kinda ought to be a mature adult to buy one to begin with - how much blame can you attribute to advertising that involves cutting pig carcasses in half?
 
Sevorius said:
...the shiny steel pommel is clearly present at 1:20 if you look at the bottom of the handle. skip ahead to 1:40 and it is miraculously gone.
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Really :) Miraculously? It takes a miracle to break CS sword or something else? Anyway, I think the assumption that the pommel BROKE off is far more plausible than miracles and conspiracies. HardHeart already pointed out loose pommel in post 62.

What's so unbelievable, the sword was banged around, just as CS video claimed it had no problems doing so, then pommel got loose, which eventually caused blade to get separated. Therefore, the blade was defective, or design is flawed, BECAUSE CS advertises the sword can withstand far more abuse than what Tosh did.
 
hardheart said:
Looking at the water cooler cut again, the pommel is loose there.

m7ypub.jpg
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good eyes, I'd say its more than just loose though, the tang itself appears to be badly bent. probably happened when he was throwing the sword.

and no Gator, it doesn't take a miracle to destroy any knife or sword, just one very stupid person. No sword made using through-tang construction would have held together without a pommel for very long, regardless of who manufactured it. I don't believe CS's construction was to blame for the failure, but I agree with you that their advertising IS to blame, along with Tosh's ignorance. As for how much abuse the sword endured in Tosh's hands, the video did not show him doing anything that could have caused that sort of bend in the tang, so obviously whatever he did to cause it was edited out to save time and face , not because of some anti-Cold Steel conspiracy. I seriously doubt anyone anywhere cares enough about cold steel to conspire against them. except perhaps PETA lol.
 
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That was a funny segment.

I've defended CS many a time, and probably will do so again, simply because they get a lot of frankly idiotic and easily countered criticism on the forum. However, CS deserves any lumps it gets as a result of this bit. I agree that the sword was likely abused to the point of failure. But despite disclaimers, CS videos make a big dramatic show of heaping abuse on their own wares. I'm sure CS is no stranger to jackass customers doing the same. I'll bet they not only expect that to happen, they work their business model around it. I can certainly understand why the sword failed, and chalk it up to abuse. But I cut CS no slack for having their own show biz shoved back in their faces. Especially when it makes me laugh in the process.
 
Sevorius said:
I don't believe CS's construction was to blame for the failure, but I agree with you that their advertising IS to blame, along with Tosh's ignorance.
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That was my point, if the advertisement was true, then the blade was defective, otherwise the advertisement is BS.


Sevorius said:
so obviously whatever he did to cause it was edited out to save time and face
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I doubt Tosh was concerned with saving his face, considering all the things he does on his show, which I love btw.
 
Not bad, it can chop wood but the design needs work to improve the handle pommel section. Wonder how it will fare if it was full tang riveted construction handle? :)

Frankly speaking guys it didn't turn out so bad. I believe the pommel was damaged cause he threw it (dart style) at the wall. Likely it fell out of the wall cause of a bad throw and fell on the pommel therefore kaputting it. For me the chopping or whacking or stabbing actions/forces could not have resulted in a bend in the pommel like shown in post 62 by hardheart. Only a direct force on the pommel could have caused that. :)
 
And strictly speaking the cold steel marketing never claimed / showed that the pommel can resist impact. No dude who makes swords where the pommel is screw type onto threaded tang can claim to resist impacts. Rather fragile design. Only need to hold it in place. :)

In other words, to me, the cold steel marketing/advertising is not wrong or misleading in this case. The sword performed well until the pommel was damaged. Unless cold steel boasts of it's indestructible pommel then the critics can shoot cold steel. In my opinion of course. :)
 
Cotherion said:
And strictly speaking the cold steel marketing never claimed / showed that the pommel can resist impact. No dude who makes swords where the pommel is screw type onto threaded tang can claim to resist impacts. Rather fragile design. Only need to hold it in place. :)

In other words, to me, the cold steel marketing/advertising is not wrong or misleading in this case. The sword performed well until the pommel was damaged. Unless cold steel boasts of it's indestructible pommel then the critics can shoot cold steel. In my opinion of course. :)
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I'm fairly certain that Cold Steel's advertising wasn't intended to demonstrate that each part of the sword used were incredible, but the other parts are of unknown quality. Instead, I think the claim was implicit, and the claim was that the sword, and CS gear in general, is extremely, extremely tough.

If that's not their claim, they really need to do a better job marketing, because anyone watching it is probably going to get that message.
 
I can't get a good shot, but it looks like a bend in the tail end of the tang when it comes apart.

And this is pretty much why you don't chop logs with a sword. This is the flexing the blade did when it hit the ground, not exactly a splitting maul.
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Artfully Martial said:
I'm fairly certain that Cold Steel's advertising wasn't intended to demonstrate that each part of the sword used were incredible, but the other parts are of unknown quality. Instead, I think the claim was implicit, and the claim was that the sword, and CS gear in general, is extremely, extremely tough.

If that's not their claim, they really need to do a better job marketing, because anyone watching it is probably going to get that message.
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Yeah I agree, kinda get that impression myself. Of course I try out blades as how they are claimed or marketed to be but In Cold steel's case they really market to the extreme.

I feel if the threads on the tang failed or the pommel came off due to unscrewing or something then I'll bash cold steel. In this case the tang was bent. I'm fairly certain the pommel experienced direct impact.

Kinda like if you take a busse and whack at the handles. It won't fail but the scales will come loose. Or the old Aitor Spanish army knives which held up well until the rather fragile pommel was impacted. In this case for tosh's video I personally do not consider the sword as failed. In order to improve on this then cold steel will have to forsake the traditional and authentic ( not to say their renditions are totally traditional or authentic :)) handle design, Lynn may not want that in their sword line. :)
 
Probably a big issue with the proof video is the creation of expectation for one sword to replicate the acts reliably. I doubt that each man in that video performed every cut/chop/hack by passing the same sword between them. The multiple samples used probably also had between scene tweaks/fixes done to them.
 
No mercy here for Cold Steel. Someone copied their video cutting things that most of us wouldn't and the sword failed. Cold Steel makes these extreme videos to sell their products and they should expect their customers to do stupid things just as they show themselves doing.

I think the episode was funny and he did it all because of the balloon.
 
Have to agree with some others here. Tosh was being very reckless and ignorant with the sword and no safety gear. It is a bummer it broke, but he clearly doesn't know squat about technique. Just beligerant horse play BS.
 
hardheart said:
Probably a big issue with the proof video is the creation of expectation for one sword to replicate the acts reliably. I doubt that each man in that video performed every cut/chop/hack by passing the same sword between them. The multiple samples used probably also had between scene tweaks/fixes done to them.
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Good point. I also never believed that they used one same item for one video. However in Tosh's video that one sword did quite a lot of stuff. Most if the stuff he did bordered on the reckless and is beyond what a sword us expected to do. Though I'm unsure the cold steel proof videos are of one same item per video, I'm sure Tosh's were of one sword.

As I mention earlier, I reckon the sword either fell off the wall when he dart threw it (he could not have gotten a good deliberate miss onto the head on the picture in the first try, i saw numerous holes on the wall, someone confirm?) or basically it fell down. The sword fell pommel first and all that pounds of steel kaputed the pommel. If Tosh just went for chopping or those kinds of abuse I'm sure the sword would have lasted longer. :)
 
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