I picked a swift 3 on sale. I've got a pretty good collection of knives built up over the last 40 years. Funny it took me till lately to dive into cold steel. It was an itch I needed to scratch. I bought an ad10, recon 1, and the swift 3. Figured it was a good start. Month later I now find myself edc my cheapo s35vn recon quite often. I did pop it apart right away and went to town doing some polishing. Now it's a pretty darn good edc for a lot of situations. I use my knives so they need to be pretty tough.........
Fast forward to the swift. Initially I was somewhat impressed but reserved due to the design. The scales are thin and should have more supporting screws in the spine. As I figured with in a day I could hear cracking sounds due to dust debris getting between the liners and the scales. Day two I had some fence to replace and kept the swift in the pocket for the day. Dust from sand / dirt, talking just light airborne dust, made it's way too the knife. My other folders don't seem to mind and if sand gets too them a good simple rinse in water clears any sand out. (I used the recon 1 to open bags of concrete which is well known for terrible dust, it never affected the knife and at the end of the day it got a simple rinse in the sink and was like new) The swift however, even when just carried in my pocket, didn't turn out so well. Assist wouldn't open anymore and felt weak. Rinsed it and first attempt to open caused severe lock freeze. Was able to get it to unlock but every thing was gritty by this point. Made the attempt to really rinse it out to no avail. Had to disassemble completely to remove about 6 very tiny particles out. Bearings are not sealed at all and come from factory with heavy grease caked all over. This turns it into a dust magnet trapping dirt or dust. Disassembly was not fun. The internal design is very poor. Bearings are as cheap as I've ever seen in a knife and open to debris. Either it just needs washers or an actual quality sealed bearing set. I was a bit set aside by how weak the design is given cold steel history. Liners aren't as strong as one would think and scales are very thin. Add just two very weak screw points on this massive handle and it will have issues as many will be reporting. Not to mention just how weak the stock screws are. Yes they were a bear to remove but I was able to get them okay. Too put a working m4 steel on this knife doesn't make sense as this knife is not a haysingurd use or really even an outdoor use knife.
Long rant but this is the first knife I've ever returned, reminds me of the old truck stop knives. There's probably a reason midway has a steady supply of blemished units in stock where they rarely have any other cold steel blemished knives. For edc it might be okay for a while if you aren't going to be near dust and dirt, but not a knife id really trust in an edc role. It's a fun knife to fidget with but not put into use for real world knife duty in my opinion
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