Cold Steel Steels

[Gaston444]

digging up old threads, mods ain't gonna like that. Interesting new discussion though, so I'll chime in. @Gaston444 even though there are a ton of videos of 1095 breaking, keep in mind that could be because there are many millions of 1095 knives out there being used very hard. So without being able to compare and analyze the statistical significance, one should not say that 1095 "seems brittle" based on the videos out there. That said, as compared to 5160, 1095 is certainly more brittle. The charpy test results show that 5160 is a much tougher steel, one of the toughest, in fact. But as others are saying, it's still all in the heat treat. 1095 is supposed to be plenty tough enough, and not brittle, if heat treated properly. Look at the Tops knives. They're all 1095 and very tough.

And there's one other thing about the BK9. It's only 3/16 thick. Whereas the standard for a really tough big knife seems to be 1/4 inch. So it stands to reason that pushing a 3/16 inch knife to the extremes of hard use will have a good chance of causing catastrophic failure. I'm not saying the BK9 is no good. I have one myself and think it's a good knife. I'm just saying I wouldn't use it as hard as a Cold Steel Trail Master in SK5 steel (equivalent to about 1080 American), which is 5/16 thick.

All very good completely valid points. Although I would note that Carbon steel 5/16" Trailmasters do break, while I have never seen a stainless Trailmaster break. Stainless Trailmasters have been around since at least the late 80s, and unlike the San Mai III, all of the older ones are just a single piece of Aus-8.

Since we can guess Carbons Trailmasters outnumber the stainless non-San Mai by some significant ratio, and that even the basic stainless were a lot more expensive (so, in some measure, less likely to be abused), it's hard to say what it means... But at least we know the huge square-corner 5/16" tang in carbon is far from immune to breaking, which in itself is surprising, even with the square cut corners... It does tend to happen in colder weather, so I wonder if some steels are just more sensitive to cold...: I do know the effect of cold on toughness is huge, and probably under-estimated by those who have not experienced cold weather failures.

Gaston

 

[Glock20sfguy]

Agreed...

Yeah, Cold Steel uses good steel and they seems to heat treat it just right, though there are exceptions with every manufacturer. Their San Mai steels are a gimmack, though as a knife blade is only as good as the best steel that makes it up. And in the case of the San Mai steels, the protected (core) steel is either AUS8 or VG-1. In short, you're better off spending your money on a real premium steel. Spending a few hundred dollars on AUS8 or VG-1, laminated by 420, just doesn't make sense. Either steel holds up just fine without the 420 slabs.

But I like many of the Cold Steel's knives. They're a good value and they're strong and dependable. And by and large they're improving their steels, except in the cases where they've gone from Carbon V to AUS8A, but that wasn't their fault (their Carbon V source dried up.)