I think any discussion about Cold Steel here on BF is weird. Personally, when they were were making their bones I thought the knives as well as Spyderco's offerings were ugly. I grew up with stag/bone/rare wood handles on knives, even work knives. An exception was Delrin (I know there were many other scale materials, but too many to list here) and some kind of cousin of Bakelite/phenolic used by Buck on their folders. Hand fitted blades on folders, even in big production knives like Buck and Schrade were the norm. Put the knife together, fit it for operation, sand it to remove as many defects as the price of the knife could stand, polish it and ship it.
So along comes CS and Spyderco. To me and mine, we thought that a pile of riveted parts (before the Spyderco fanboys start, take a look here:
https://forum.spyderco.com/viewtopic.php?t=21508 ) was a pile of crap. FRN handles, rivets like the rest of the gas station/bargain bin sporting goods knives, soft stainless blades... what wasn't to like about CS and Spyderco? Everyone
I knew hated them. As construction guys that hunted, fished, and camped, etc., we still didn't get the idea of a carrying type "utility" knife that put use and utility over beauty. Our knives worked fine, they were carbon, they were pretty, had stag/bone/stacked leather handles, and we liked them that way.
Reading here, I never would have thought to buy a Cold Steel knife for work (or any) use. Who was that idiot pretending to make semi-marshal arts moves while chopping flesh, punching holes in metal, standing on his open folders, and on an on. I was on with the BF ethos... what a jerk! What a moron! I didn't understand at the time how effective his efforts were; people were posting LINKS to his videos on BF just so they could share their outrage together! Someone would try to top it and find a more outrageous video, and post a hot link to that one! Free advertising to show how sturdy and sharp his knives were, posted on a knife forum! Brilliant! I later talked to a friend of mine that met Lyn at a gun show, and he said Lyn got a kick out of doing those videos and sometimes it hard to keep a straight face while making them. His videos laying on a machine behind them in the CS booth while talking, he said Lyn would glance back at the video of him doing some nonesense and chuckle.
But I never would have owned a CS product except I was contacted off board by a maker/modifier. He bought an American Lawman, took it apart, cleaned off that miserable black paint on the blade, polished the TriAd lock pieces, modified the pocket clip a bit, and lightly sanded the scales. He sent me a bunch of pictures of his redo, and a testimonial from its good use on the ranch he was working on as a hand. Bought one, only did the pocket clip mods (figured the paint would wear off in its own) and took it to work. I was hooked. I have several now, all are the sturdiest work knives I own. They all have years of job site work in them now, the exception being the AD10 which is just too damn pretty to take out to cut gritty, dirty materials and get adhesives stuck to it.
I do think it weird though, with all the fiery disgust for Lyn, his products, his marketing and videos that there is kind of a melancholy wish for the "old" Cold Steel, pre GSM. Just posting "Cold Steel" here would get a lot of folks declaring they could NEVER buy a knife from a man that acted like Lyn to promote something as solemn as a knife. I am surprised that there are those that wish the for the old leadership, now take the old videos with a grain of salt, some even find them amusing now. VERY strange.
Change of ownership almost always means a change in direction of a company and a change in the way they do business. I hope CS can survive GSM and continue making great utility style knives without Lyn and Andrew, but that remains to be seen. Lyn was an innovator and had more bizarre stuff in his catalogue (blow guns... really?) than any other knife maker/seller/manufacturer I can think of. Seems like he always had something cooking, something new in the catalogue. No doubt that will go away as he seemed to still have a lot of genuine enthusiasm for anything with an edge on it. Selling to a conglomerate will probably at the least, shrink the CS catalogue.
Guys talking now about not buying CS now, at this time blaming GSM and the fact they didn't answer their phones after CS was sold probably were never going to buy them anyway, so no loss. Just another reason to complain about something. For now, I would think if you buy your CS from a responsible dealer, you will be fine. If you get as CS knife that works as advertised, I can't imagine one breaking under even "hard use". I bought some of my CS knives when they had a "limited" warranty, and have never had to think once about using
any warranty. Hopefully it stays that way.
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I used my Frontier Hawk last weekend to chop some firewood. What happens is the bit gets stuck in the wood, and you need to wiggle it loose before your next chop. In the past, my head would come loose easily. I can confirm that after fitting with a rasp, the head is much tighter on the handle, and it was pleasant to work with my hawk!
