Cold Steel Swords?

22-rimfire

22-rimfire

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Nov 20, 2005
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What is the general opinion on the Cold Steel swords that they import from India?

I was browsing swords at the Blade Show and talked to one person who sold fantasy pieces about swords briefly. I mentioned that I always wanted a cutlass design (just because). He suggested I cruise over to the Cold Steel booth and look at their swords. He said they are real swords. I know next to nothing about swords although I have handled a number of Japanese swords when they were still fairly common at gunshows. A friend was buying them at the time.

Anyway, I walked over there and looked at the Cutlass. I picked it up and a big smile came to my face. It was just really cool! I felt like a kid again. I asked if they were selling them and he gave me a price which suprised me. ($100.00 cash) So I bought it. I have since looked at sites that sell them and nothing approaches the price I paid. Most are in the $200 area.

Here is a link to the sword from Cold Steel's web site: http://www.coldsteel.com/19serswor.html

Any opinions on their blades? This blade? They seem heavy to me but I really don't have much of a reference point. I still like my new sharp toy however. What do you all thinK?
 
I don't know what their other swords are like but their katana swords are tough (at the expense of balance)
 
Survey says that for the most part they are worth what you pay for them. However, there have been some rather spectacular failures of a few of their swords because of such I would personally never buy another one.
 
The most common complaint I've heard is that they're too heavy, but lately I've been hearing about the tangs snapping, especially on the hand-and-a-half.
 
I just have one favorite and that is the Cold Steel Chisa Katana.
 
Folk that own the cutlass seem to like it. What the majority of the reproductions lack is the same blade thicknesses and distal taper you will see on period pieces. This is not to include the Japanse and Chinese style swords coming from Fred Chen and associates of Huanuo Sword Art Inc. I believe some of the European medieval era swords also come from China.

The standing rumor is that Windlass Steelcrafts now supplies Cold Steel with a great many of their swords and there has been some good indication of this, in finding a blotted out Windlass mark on a Cold Steel shamshir. However, it is worthwhile noting that Windlass itself buys from more than one India manufacturer/shop and are as much an export broker/company as anything else. Somewhere along the line, someone is sharpening the Cold Steel offerings that are coming from India.

A look at www.indiamart.com (and similar sites for the rest of the world) can provide for hours of reading and trade sources/leads. One that comes up is this company www.weaponedge.com They do supply a few retailers with the reproductions of military swords we see out there. Note the cutlass and dirk:D
Is this the true source for some of these? It could be but also bear in mind that anyone with the capital can order a run of items to their own specification. Deepeeka is another comglomerate that moves a lot of product and I'd suspect that they shop around for sources/makers as well.

I have never handled a period klewang cutlass (which these are meant to represent) but can imagine that the reproductions have the thickness and distal taper issues so many of the modern made stuff do. They simply aren't goin to take the time to roll/pound and grind out 5/16" or 3/8" stock to taper to 1/8" or 1/16' at the points. Period sabers and culasses exhibit these extremes. Cheap reproductions will usually go with little or no distal taper, regardless of the size stock they sart with.

As to Cold steel calling it a 1917 cutlass, that is their right but incorrect. America did produce these in some numbers but it is more correctly callled an 1941, as the 1917 had a solid basket (no cutouts). Many more were produced for the Dutch, as it was their pattern anyway and dates back to the end of the 19th century.

Cold Steel. A missed blessing, if you can even call them that. I do like my Tai Pan but we are talking the swords here and not the knives (from many and varied sources as well).

Cheers

GC
 
My take on the Cold Steel Swords was that they were a bit on the heavy side too. This you'll find in most stock-reduction made weapons. Some of their knives are really nice and worth the price.

Best
Dwight
 
i own a tanto sanmai 12". It is a very well made piece and i would reccomend it to anyone looking for such an item. The price is high but so far i have no complaints.As far as swords go they look appealing but i cant comment on them since ive only ever held one for a few seconds.There are alot of reputable sword makers out there. research---thanks for the thread.
 
Dwight McLemore said:
My take on the Cold Steel Swords was that they were a bit on the heavy side too. This you'll find in most stock-reduction made weapons. Some of their knives are really nice and worth the price.

Best
Dwight
Click to expand...


Yep........


I have the Chisa katana. The handle seems a little big. It would be nice to know what the tang looks like and how the handle is put together.
Overall I like the design of the Chisa short and stout.

Some of there knives are nice and worth the money.
 
Their katanas and other japanese pieces are known to have some severe issues with tsuka cracking or fragmenting--the cores just aren't done right half the time and crumble away. In general their pieces are over-built, though they are making some of the best saber replicas on the market currently, and as such those pieces are worth consideration. For anything else, try Hanwei in terms of large-scale production companies.
 
I'm not sure about all of their swords but the Japanese style pieces are made in China (Not India) just like most Japanese style pieces from other companies. Cheness, Cold Steel, Paul Chen/Hanwei, etc. are made in China. I think Kris Cutlery is the only exception. Not that there is anything wrong with Chinese made swords. Many of them are very well made.
 
I have a CS Barong but don't know where it was made. The blade is good, the handle is a bit thick and the pins stick out a little bit (a little time with a file fixes this) and the sheath is too tight and the wrong shape. The sheath should be hooked at the bottom (AFAIK this is just stylistic so not that important) but it is supposed to get wider at the top with "hooks" on each side so it won't fall through your belt/sash. It is heavier than my Kris Cutlery barong and the barong I bought in the Philippines, but I have handled a barong of this size and weight in the Philippines, so I don't buy into the weight argument some FMA practitioners have made against it. I really don't think it would be too big proportionally to most Americans.

Overall it was a bargain at $60.00.

My Kris Cutlery barong is still the nicest barong in my collection. The balance on that one is close to perfect, it almost feels like you are not even holding it.
 
I've been fixating on their 1860 heavy cavalry saber for some time now, Can anybody shed some light on it for me ???
 
The genuine US 1917 does indeed have a solid basket. Horseclover is correct that it was a ripoff of the issued Dutch Navy saber. During the period between the wars we shipped many to the Dutch. I don't know if we cut holes in the baskets of those we supplied to them. The Dutch blade design was itself a rip off of the butcher saber England briefly used in the 1790s. I believe the Officer's model (extra long) Cold Steel Cutlass is purely their invention, but what do I know? Cutlass fighting on the decks of ships kind of went passe with the invention of cartridges and submachine guns. For a long time the USN still issued Cutlasses to Chief Petty Officers when they made grade. I believe they ran out of originals sometime in the 1960s. A genuine CPO cutlass (used to be) on display in the second floor halls of the Navy Annex in Arlington VA. My understanding is the last combat use of one was during the Korean conflict when a Corpsman in a tent found himself attacked by a ChiCom with a bayoneted rifle, the Cutlass was on a bunk so he used it and won.

Real swords break in practice. More than one maker manufactures special blades for practice that don't break as easily. They break in combat too. I can't fault CS if someone's CS sword broke when it clashed against anther sword or a metal pole. We all want to own Excalibur. Sword edge meets sword edge puts incredible stress on a blade. When Excalibur meets Excalibur, something has to lose.
 
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There was evidently an infantry sword that had the same pierced guard and a longer blade. I had thought the same, in that it might be fantasy but a forumite from the Netherlands had confirmed the long bladed version did exist.
If I can retrace to that discussion, I'll add it here.

Cheers

GC

Aha, it was cavalry not infantry. here is the thread. Unfortunately the image links are for the most part dead. the poster Paul Hansen knows these well.
http://forums.swordforum.com/showthread.php?t=79626
 
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