Cold Steel Recon Tanto

so what is the difference between a rt with brass pommel and guard and a regular tanto?? what am i missing?
 
nagod said:
so what is the difference between a rt with brass pommel and guard and a regular tanto?? what am i missing?
Click to expand...

Look closely at the pict in the thread. The pommel is rounded brass. The regular version has a ss pommel with a more refined config touted as a skull crusher pommel. The rt version also has a rather course bead blast.

I remember these advertised in the Cutlery Shoppe catalog back in the 80's. Never liked it for the reasons mentioned above. The mid 80's saw the development of the sem-custom manufacturers, SOG, Cold Steel, Al Mar etc.
 
I think another difference was that the "Recon" was a little less expensive b/c of the bead-blast finish, whereas the original has and had the sweet satin-flats, polished-grind blades.
 
Wow....You learn something new every day it seems. I was with mdauben in the belief that the RT was always a full Kraton handle. But my (faulty it seems) memory also seems to recall that the original regular tantos had a brass guard as well. Anyone know for sure? I have the original Magnum tanto that has a blade made out of stainless steel, and it has a stainless guard and pommel as well. However, the Magnum Tanto came out years after the original, normal-size tanto.
 
A quick note. Got an email from CS. The original RTs were AUS-8.
 
If memory serves:
All of the early Tanto knives offered from CS had brass hardware (guard & pommel). It was towards the late 1980's/early 1990's that Cutlery Shoppe offered what they called their Special Ops tanto. It was the first time one of the CS tantos were offered with stainless steel guards and pommels. (I should know, I have one in my collection>)
Shortly afterwards, CS changed their guards to be a bit more sculpted rather than the wedge-shaped guard (as you can see in the prior posted pics of the original Recon Tanto - which was a Cutlery Shoppe exclusive in the late 1980's).
The shape of the guards on today's CS high-end tanto knives started in the early to mid 1990s and have continued to today.

How do I know all of this?
I started collecting cutlery because of my liking for Japanese swords. Couldn't afford them, so I started collecting tanto knives and one of the earliest was from CS.

Also, I recall the first advertisements for the Carbon V Recon Tanto. No pics - they had a 1 or 2 page line-drawing advertisement of their entire product offerings and it was there that I spotted the revised Recon Tanto. Bought one as soon as it became available from Jeff Loffer over at the Cutlery Shoppe. Still have it and it's my nightstand knife.
If anyone is interested, I could probably dig back through my catalogs and files and find out exactly when the Carbon V Recon Tanto was first released.

Regards,
Mike
 
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