cold steel outdoorsman

[perchjerk]

ok before i was as educated on knives as i am now, i felt the need to buy a cold steel. i went with the outdoorsman, a fixed blade hunter that seems to be well made. now i know cold steel doesnt have the best rep around here but i do know that some of their knives do have a following. my question is strictly about the outdoorsman. do any of you have any experience with one or some of their other higher end fixed blades?

second question is what do yall think about their vg-1 san mai 3 steel since i have no prior experience with it. A thank you to all comments in advance!

 

[waterdogs]

It would seem that most of the controversy surrounding Cold Steel concerns their past marketing concepts, and the opinions of their founder and owner....many of their knives are actually quite good (as long as you don`t pay full retail for them . Back in the early `80s, I purchased a couple of their knives (the original Tanto, and a first-production-run Trailmaster in Carbon V). I really wanted to see if they were as good as Mr. Thompson`s rather extravagant claims, so I took them out in the woods and beat the living piss out of them in just about every conceiveable situation....they met (and survived) the Pepsi Challenge with flying colors....the Trailmaster severed 3 inches of hanging manila rope with a single swipe....not too shabby....

 

[Bimmer1]

I began my knife collecting career many years ago thanks to the Cold Steel tanto. Today I think I own three Cold Steel knives out of the hundreds of knives I have. I have an old large Voyager Tanto folder that I have used and abused over the years. It was my go-to knife to cut anything for a long time. I still have a little small Shinobu tanto folder. And.....I kept my Outdoorsman (which you made reference to). I don't know if they are worth anything near their retail pricing but if you can obtain one at a decent price then they are not "terrible" knives by any means.
The marketing hype is the problem as mentioned above. They are marketed as if they are the best made knives on the planet.
I like the blade profile of the Outdoorsman myself. I have always though it was a nice funsctional design. More of a traditional tanto style blade as opposed to the Americanized style tanto we see so often.