Cold Steel has made a name for them self by claiming the superiority of whatever steel that they are selling at the time, I watched through the 90's and 00's as they bashed all other steel types except theirs. I would be extremely suprised if they started using anything but their old standbys.
And as as smatchets are concerned most companies that make them in short runs due to the inherent danger of making something that large and double-edged. I think it was either Buck or Wells Creek that actually had a few employees lose fingers or hands during their production run of smatchets. And almost everybody else that makes them either does short production runs or charges a premium for them, most likely due to the fact that it takes fairly skilled grinder to make/finish one. Those highly skilled production grinder/finisher guys are usually to valuable to tie up on a relatively low demand item like a smatchet.
