A2 Steel Update

Well one thing 's for sure if you whack something with that 4034 stainless bladed trailmaster and it just bends like a pretzel you can just hammer it back straight again. Yep it'll be tough all right.
 
I find this response from Mr Thompson interesting. Let’s assume that everything stated about the A2 is accurate and it became more trouble than it was worth. Ok, I have no problem with that. However to go from A2, to 4034 and act as though it the next best thing is ludicrous. One of the main questions people have been asking isn’t about why the A2 isn’t being used. It’s about the multitude of other steel options available, some of which Cold Steel has already used (O1, SK5 etc) and why they have been discarded and replaced by a steel at the complete other end of the spectrum. I once again find myself wondering why my intelligence is being insulted by being sold 4034 as a great performing steel. There’s a reason it’s cheap and easily attainable. There’s also a reason why people were willing to spend hundreds of dollars on a Cold Steel Knife instead of a cheap stainless copy. IF by some chance Lynn is right, and 4034 turns out to perform better than the other carbon steels available, I will be the first one to admit i was wrong. It will be interesting to see the entire knifemaking world turned on its ear when 4034 is revealed as a great performer. Companies will have no need to use more expensive steel. Seriously Lynn, if you’re going to take the time to write a response, then you need to respond to the actual questions being asked. Not just give a sales pitch on the new steel choice.
 
d762nato said:
Well one thing 's for sure if you whack something with that 4034 stainless bladed trailmaster and it just bends like a pretzel you can just hammer it back straight again. Yep it'll be tough all right.
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It reminds me on mystery steel crappy knife I recently got from AliExpress.
I thought it's very good at first, at secondary inspection I noticed it's quite bent. So I stabbed it into piece of wood again and pushed it to side to straighten it out again.
I tested edge retention and it's edge retention is a joke.
I got pissed and then really used lots of force while batonning it into really hard wood - no damage, until I batonned it against the grain into a smaller but hard branch, and now there's some ripple on the edge.
That's how I imagine Cold Steel's 4034 will perform.
 
Cold Steel Knives said:
An Update From Lynn Thompson

Dear valued customer,

Thank you for all of your comments and concerns. I truly love my customers and your suggestions and criticisms are always taken into consideration.

I bought two different batches of A-2 steel overseas to evaluate for use in our big Bowie knives, Tantos and Kukris after getting good results with knives made out of American A-2 steel. After making a bunch of samples with multiple heat treatment “recipes' ', I couldn’t duplicate the performance I obtained from my A-2 knives made in our shop in Pennsylvania. Finally, after a lot of time and expense, we tracked down the problem and it turned out that my foreign purchased A-2 steel was substantially inferior to America A-2 steel, and no matter how good my heat treatment was, I couldn’t compensate for the faults in the steel. Now let me interrupt you before you say, “why don’t you just use American made A-2 steel?”. The answer is that it’s just too expensive to use without affecting the price of the knives drastically. By the time I buy the steel, water jet cut it, surface grind it, mill the tang for the guard and ship it overseas, the cost was prohibitive in light of the suggested retail price I was trying to achieve.

Now let’s get back to the criticism of 4034 Stainless Steel. While we were testing A-2 steel and trying to make it perform up to our standard, we received a new delivery of our Outdoorsman Lite knife, which is made from 4mm thick 4034 Stainless Steel. As is our common practice, Andrew Demko was asked to test a number of them picked at random. The results were very good, so I asked Andrew to increase the severity of the test and go all the way to destruction.

Andrew and I were both surprised and truly impressed as the 4034 knives proved to be very strong, tough and compared favorably to knives made of CTS-XHP and S35VN. This led me to believe that we could replace the faulty A-2 steel with easily obtained 4034 Stainless Steel from Japan. Yes 4034 costs less than A-2 and is even more reasonably priced when compared to very expensive powdered steels like XHP and S35VN which take up to 9 months to obtain and are subject to price increases every three months!

Yes most powdered steels have greater edge retention than 4034 BUT for long blades, like Bowie Knives, Tantos and Kukris where strength, toughness, and sharpness are paramount, 4034 proved to be a viable choice.

I made the above choice based on my experience of breaking hundreds of blades and went with a steel that I believe has the lowest probability of failing when your life is on the line. I made the choice to go with a steel that’s readily available even in 8mm and 9mm thicknesses and can be reordered in only a few months. I went with a steel that can be very accurately ground, heat treated, and polished at a reasonable cost and could be sold to my customers at an affordable price.

Believe me it’s very hard to obtain any of your favorite powdered steels in those thicknesses. It’s even more difficult to find anyone who wants to grind and polish a fully hardened 9mm thick blade made of powdered stainless steel as they are very difficult to work with and can be hard on equipment which increases the cost even more.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying I am going to abandon premium steels. I absolutely love 3V as a steel and I hope to bring out three more knives made of this wonderful steel in the near future but they are going to be expensive. Not as much as if they were made of S35VN or XHP but still, they will not be cheap. Please continue to be patient with me as I have a number of super high performance, high edge retention knives and swords in the hopper. And don’t believe for one minute that Cold Steel is a “sell out” for using 4034. It’s a great steel whose strength, toughness, and impact resistance are sure to impress you in the days to come as I personally demonstrate what big knives properly made from 4034 can do.

I hope you all are well, I honestly appreciate your feedback and concern, and I hope you will give me the opportunity to prove to you that this is the right course of action.


Sincerely,

Lynn C. Thompson
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Dear Lynn, nobody mentioned either XHP or S35VN so stop dancing around with that nonsense and admit real reasons why you chose 4034 over SK5 or 52100.

Also give me the answer why you did nothing about secure-ex sheaths dulling the knives. The sheath I made myself out of old denim and duct tape is unfortunatley better than one I got from mighty Cold Steel Knives Cold Steel Knives because no matter how good your knives are - they're useless if I'll need to sharpen them each time I pull them out of the sheath. I also plan to turn more to other manufacturers because:
1. They got the sheaths right
2. They have small fixed blades in decent carbon steels or stainless like 14C28N unlike cheap stainless you're selling

You at least knew to make wonderful knives and I adore my Warcraft Tanto but there's no way you'll convince me to buy a knife made out of liner material.

I'm looking forwards to those new 3V knives but then I remember that I'm a student and I don't need more knives, and I can't afford them right now either so I won't even buy any for a while.
Then I also remember that I as a student had to get out of my way to replace the crappy sheath you provided me with.

And if my GF wants to buy me a knife as a gift again I'll tell her to avoid Cold Steel since not only I'll yet again have sheath issues, but she'll also be risking buying me a knife made out of pot metal since the girl has 0 knowledge about steel so she wouldn't even look into it.

About your company wanting to save money, I believe that 100%.

Also, you ignored that one post with your D guard latin machete being bent in your video.

Best regards.
 
To sum this up:
Lynn and Cold Steel: *announces 4034 steel instead of A2*
Everyone: *starts roasting Lynn and Cold Steel*
Lynn: *chimes in to give some explanation*
Everyone: "Ohhhh..." *calms down*
...
Everyone: *realizes that Lynn didn't answer real questions, talked about steels we didn't mention and is still throwing sales pitch about 4034 being superior steel*.... *starts to roast Lynn and Cold Steel again"*
 
Smiling said:
To sum this up:
Lynn and Cold Steel: *announces 4034 steel instead of A2*
Everyone: *starts roasting Lynn and Cold Steel*
Lynn: *chimes in to give some explanation*
Everyone: "Ohhhh..." *calms down*
...
Everyone: *realizes that Lynn didn't answer real questions, talked about steels we didn't mention and is still throwing sales pitch about 4034 being superior steel*.... *starts to roast Lynn and Cold Steel again"*
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We roast because we give a damn lol. It’s painful to see a knife company known for awesome trucker knives to resort to 4034SS.
 
insta9ves said:
Cold Steel - World’s strongest sharpest knives
Cold Steel - Anytime anywhere
Cold Steel - Tone deaf cheap junks
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All I know is that I need to sharpen my knife anytime and anywhere if I'm using the Secure-ex sheath...
Only thing that's secure about secure-ex is that it'll dull your blade instantly if you touch it with the edge.

And about large bowies in 4034 stainless... reminds me of gas station knives. Winchester bowie and Mtech got some serious competition now.

Large 4034 knife for survival? Relying my life on that?!?!
Talk about crapshoot...
What a joke
 
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I just did googling about 4034 steel again...
Here's a quote for you:
" 420 or 4034 stainless steels are the softest and least expensive. The presence of these steels usually means the knife is mass produced and imported from China. These steels are not brittle, but they do not stay sharp for long either. Still, if you want an aggressively styled assisted-opening tactical knife but do not want to spend much more than $30, a 4034 steel Smith and Wesson M&P makes it possible."

And some other sites say that it's not even suitable as blade material, it's also listed as liner material on some sites.

EDIT - some of words lead to the site that sells S&W so I deleted words that were linked and wrote them back without the link.
 
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Forty years Lynn Thompson has spent designing, developing, producing, testing, and selling knives. Which of you has worked forty years in your trade? How much credence would you give to the recommendations, critiques, and complaints of people who hadn't spent forty years in your industry, who hadn't made their livelihoods in your career, telling you how things ought to be done?

Squawk all you like. I'll give Lynn the benefit of the doubt when it comes to choosing a steel that he believes will perform in his knives to his expectations.

-Steve
 
99% of the bitching and moaning is from people who are not using these blades for any serious application in the real world.

They are just commenting and griping on an Internet forum and aside from the occasional camping outing, or brushing clearing on their property, they never use the blades in any serious application.

It's pathetic.
 
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The Whip said:
Forty years Lynn Thompson has spent designing, developing, producing, testing, and selling knives. Which of you has worked forty years in your trade? How much credence would you give to the recommendations, critiques, and complaints of people who hadn't spent forty years in your industry, who hadn't made their livelihoods in your career, telling you how things ought to be done?

Squawk all you like. I'll give Lynn the benefit of the doubt when it comes to choosing a steel that he believes will perform in his knives to his expectations.

-Steve
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Attitudes like this are how you get the Star Wars prequel movies...

Too bad no one told Lucas that they were bad ideas :D
 
The Whip said:
Forty years Lynn Thompson has spent designing, developing, producing, testing, and selling knives. Which of you has worked forty years in your trade? How much credence would you give to the recommendations, critiques, and complaints of people who hadn't spent forty years in your industry, who hadn't made their livelihoods in your career, telling you how things ought to be done?

Squawk all you like. I'll give Lynn the benefit of the doubt when it comes to choosing a steel that he believes will perform in his knives to his expectations.

-Steve
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:) My heart agrees . I've been buying and using CS products from nearly their beginning . Most have been very good to excellent in performance .

I respect LT as a martial artist and knife designer and appreciate his many far out products that almost no-one else will dare market . Like huge fighting folders .

And nearly all are available eventually at a reasonable price point . :cool::thumbsup::thumbsup:

o_O But my head says that the 4034 steel has severe limitations for use in big choppers that no HT can overcome . :(

So I'm just gonna wait and see , I guess . :confused:
 
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