CS Recon Scout Fails Miserably

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Don't like Cold Steel too much before reading this. It's all marketing guys. there's a reason they are priced at what they are.

Move on and get another brand of knife.
 
OK, add me to the list of failures.
I've had a Desert Storm 'sterile condition' Recon Scout Carbon V in my gun safe since I purchased it new, years ago.
This past week I took it with me (first time out of the safe ever) to setup a deer stand.
I was using the RC to cut some beech tree twigs, ranging from tooth pick to pencil size.
I hit a pencil size twig with a slashing cut and the blade snapped cleanly apart, leaving 1/2'' of blade with the handle.
I would have thought that one could field dress a John Deere tractor with this knife (we've all seen the promotional videos).
Needless to say, this left me in the woods without anycutting tool.
The Scout was just sent back to CS for evaluation...
we'll see, cutting pencil size green beech tree twigs in not abuse in my book, especiall for a Recon Scout.... geeze...:grumpy::barf::eek:
 
did you take pics before sending it in? as was mentioned in this thread i bet it was more a deal with a bad batch of steel then it was a design flaw, I mean hell my mora could chop pencil sized twigs
 
geronimo.tn said:
OK, add me to the list of failures.
I've had a Desert Storm 'sterile condition' Recon Scout Carbon V in my gun safe since I purchased it new, years ago.
This past week I took it with me (first time out of the safe ever) to setup a deer stand.
I was using the RC to cut some beech tree twigs, ranging from tooth pick to pencil size.
I hit a pencil size twig with a slashing cut and the blade snapped cleanly apart, leaving 1/2'' of blade with the handle.
I would have thought that one could field dress a John Deere tractor with this knife (we've all seen the promotional videos).
Needless to say, this left me in the woods without anycutting tool.
The Scout was just sent back to CS for evaluation...
we'll see, cutting pencil size green beech tree twigs in not abuse in my book, especiall for a Recon Scout.... geeze...:grumpy::barf::eek:
Click to expand...


If you are going to make up a story at least make it some what believable...... :rolleyes:
 
Ankerson
I agree with you.
That one of these Recon blades would 'snap' under such light duty use is 'not believeable'.
At least hacking small tree limbs is light duty compared to their 'test video'.
That's what got me wondering if this might not have been a fluke experience, so I googled for Recon Scot failures, and guess what, not that uncommon.

Interesting that Cold Steel so far has not acknowledged receipt or disposition intent for the knife.
I find it interesting that the same day I returned the broken Scout to Cold Steel Returns, I also returned a three year old pair of LL Bean boots whose rubber bottoms I felt failed prematurely.
LL Bean emailed receipt acknowledgement within the first week and the next week I received a refund check (which I immediately cashed in on another pair of L L Bean boots)

I own three other Cold Steel knives of Carbon V, but I doubt that I'll ever purchase anothe Cold Steel.
My opinion now is they are a company based on hype.

From now on when I head for the woods with only one large knife to 'do all' with, the knife will have a hand forged carbon blade, probably one of my Randall's.

Cold Steel, you can K.M.A.
 
I didn't find much for recon scot failures on google.

In fact, this thread is pretty much the only one on the first page even if you DO spell it right. Maybe there are others. But it sounds a little farfetched to me, considering you've managed to put up yet another exaggeration, this one easily disproven. Add to that the fact that you decided to necro a thread which was last posted in 2 years ago...

I don't have a Recon Scout, but all of my Cold Steel knives, even the cheapo Kobun, have done just fine, even beating on hardwood. Haters gonna hate.
 
This is a mass-produced item. I find that the idea that it might fail on occasion more rational than the faith of the fans that it is incapable of failing.

Slashing into the top - open "V" - of where a branch joins a trunk or larger limb in not a good idea. In species, that area is more like rock than wood. Go at it from 180 degrees opposite for less stress on the tool. Better yet, baton so the impact is baton vs. spine and not edge vs. target.

(And I don't like LT's style, but that is neither here nor there.)
 
geronimo.tn said:
Ankerson
I agree with you.
That one of these Recon blades would 'snap' under such light duty use is 'not believeable'.
At least hacking small tree limbs is light duty compared to their 'test video'.
That's what got me wondering if this might not have been a fluke experience, so I googled for Recon Scot failures, and guess what, not that uncommon.

Interesting that Cold Steel so far has not acknowledged receipt or disposition intent for the knife.
I find it interesting that the same day I returned the broken Scout to Cold Steel Returns, I also returned a three year old pair of LL Bean boots whose rubber bottoms I felt failed prematurely.
LL Bean emailed receipt acknowledgement within the first week and the next week I received a refund check (which I immediately cashed in on another pair of L L Bean boots)

I own three other Cold Steel knives of Carbon V, but I doubt that I'll ever purchase anothe Cold Steel.
My opinion now is they are a company based on hype.

From now on when I head for the woods with only one large knife to 'do all' with, the knife will have a hand forged carbon blade, probably one of my Randall's.

Cold Steel, you can K.M.A.
Click to expand...

I'm guessing you either dwell under a bridge or the trees where you live are made out of titanium.
 
I've had my Recon Scout since 94 and have never experienced any problems with it chopping.Maybe they had a bad batch(heat treat)slip through.
 
In my experience, in cold weather there is no tool built for the splitting of wood other than an axe. You're asking for failure no matter which knife it is. The steel is just too brittle and the wood too hard, especially if there's alot of water content like the chunk of wood above. Maybe if you warmed the blade between your legs before you used it that may have been one thing, but in my opinion and in my experience growing up in Wisconsin and spending the last three winters cruising around the mountains, cold steel means brittle steel, cold wood means HARD wood, and the only tool built to withstand the abuse is a high quality axe. And in that situation, a Randall will fail just as miserably. Teaching young impressionable people techniques that are going to make them fail in the woods... get yourself a good axe, the are some great ones out there for real cheap right now, and use the right tool for the situation. This much is written expressly in the US Air Force SERE manual...
 
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In cold weather I find waterlogged wood easier to split. The expansion of the water in the wood puts extra strain on the connections between the wood fibers. An old-timer trick for splitting gnarly pieces of firewood was to set them aside until the temperature was below freezing and THEN have a go at them. Chop a straight-grained piece of frozen wood and it explodes like a bomb went off in it.
 
Yes, if you can apply enough force with out destroying your tool, splitting cold wood can make it explode. It requires a tremendous amount of impacting force. But that means striking it with enough force and not breaking your arm or your tool, and since there's a designated tool for the job, why not use it? Last year my designated winter blade was a 3/8ths inch thick 5160 Himalayan Imports Annapurna Bowie. The blade held up but it required so much force batonning it wasn't a practical choice for use. Especially a big thick chunk like the one in the photo. I stopped using it alltogether and bought a 26 inch Wetterlings. Problem solved. And a comon old-timer trick for cutting wood in cold temperatures was warming up the blade before using it.
 
funny, just noticed the OP was nutnfancy. dunno why this thread has lived on for so long, considering Carbon V RC are no more.
 
Honestly I feel that where batoning really shines is on small pieces of wood for the controlled production of kindling rather than splitting big pieces of wood that could cause blade damage. If you're going to baton a big hunk of wood, at least make some wooden wedges and just use the knife to START the split. :p:thumbup:

For what it's worth I've never had fragility issues with any of my knives or choppers in cold temps. I frequently use thin machetes in sub-zero temperatures without warming them (which wouldn't do much anyhow since they're so thin and would chill quickly) and have yet to experience any form of failure. :)
 
I love using a 14 inch Tram in cold weather to snap off low hanging dead branches of pine trees, though I never use the edge-I use the spine. It's just as efficient. There are places for knife edges in cold weather, I agree, but forcing a survival knife in those kinds of extreme conditions to expect the same result as they would get in warm weather... it's a no go. Number one the tool isn't made for the job, splitting a log like that with any kind of knife is going to be abusive and inefficient *including a Randall, Strider, what have you* and number two the conditions are just different. The blade acts differently, the wood acts differently and I can find a dozen leading sources of survival and bushcraft techniques that will agree with me-including the Air Force SERE Manual and Ray Mears. I'll tack on to this, I drew up the Dylan Fletcher Hatchula 2 and have the first produced. I designed it specifically for handling finer tasks in cold weather. It's a scandivex from 3/16ths 01 with a massive belly and very wide clip point. The blade profile is very wide to add weight, both to add control and to give me some gusto behind doing detailed tasks in cold wood, which is undeniably harder. The edge is thin so as to allow for efficient slicing, and convex to add sturdiness. Now with a knife like that, specifically designed and treated for the task, you can do some things like carving tasks and LIGHT batonning of thin wood. But to take a big bowie knife, which based on the blade profile alone puts it at a disadvantage for processing extremely hard cold wood, and to beat it through an 8 inch chunk of cold seasoned wood in a survival demonstration as if it were the right way to get the job done, and then complain when it fails? I tribute this to user error and would not put my expertly handmade, specifically designed knife through that task, when one quick chop with a decent axe will accomplish the same task and not render my tools useless in the process. In fact the edge cleanup would be negligible. There's the right tool for the job, and as I said... I pull this statement right out of the SERE Manual and it is GOLDEN...

AFR 64-4 2-3 C:Material.
"Once the survival episode has started, special attention must be given to the care, use and storage of all materials to ensure they continue to be surviceable and available. Items should be selectively augmented with improvised items."

Now IMO, 64-4 is the be-all end all reference when it comes to survival, because of the sheer amount of real world experience of POWs, E&E survivors, survival specialists and scientists that goes into the writing, but this above statement is simply common sense. Using a tool in a way that it wasn't intended for is asking for failure, and if it fails, it's not the tool's fault. If the OP paid special attention to the care, use and storage of his knife, he would not be in this position complaining about a perfectly useable tool. As you said, improvising a wedge would be a very simple and effective means to accomplish the task. Finding a rock wedge and battoning it could also work. There are a handful of improvised means to get the job done without abusing the blade, which would take more time to fix even if it didn't break than it would be to improvise something in the first place. The knife is a monster-it was designed to be and it can take all the battoning and abuse in the world when the temps are above freezing. But when you try to crack open a log almost as long as the blade is when the conditions are wrong, you are simply asking for failure.

Battoning is a very effective and practical means of accomplishing tasks, not just for firestarting but for crafting other tools as well. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything, and this was a wrong way-there is no excuse other than user error and the blade and those that manufactured it are not at fault. I don't know what Nutnfancy's access to knives is like, but I know it's much greater than mine. If he were to replicate this even with a warm blade, I'd be interested to see the result.
 
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I'm convinced that batoning properly has about as intense of a learning curve as mowing with a scythe or shaving with a straight razor. If you do it wrong you risk damage to the tool or yourself!
 
The blade doesn't fail because it is cold, it fails because it's battening through frozen wood (added resistance).
 
Micro-Bevel, that's half of my point. Cold steel IS more brittle-no pun intended. Cold wood is harder-not only more resistance in the process of splitting but also harder to initiate the split. Between the two of these factors common sense would tell you NOT to do it in the first place and that it is outside of the capabilities of the tool.
 
Fellow forum members, this post is just a month or so shy of being SEVEN (7) years old, really? I'm assuming this post was pulled up in light of other recent post concerning cold steel and failure. Well, lets think about this. If we had to go back seven years to find something about a Cold Steel knife failing on hands down the knife aficionados bible site.....Then dare I say given the volume of knives cold steel sells annually and has sold overall since the date of this post, I'd say unless your doing something really stupid or abusive your cold steel knife in all probability is not going to fail. Cue the beating a dead horse cartoon, that is all.

I stand corrected wait a minute, hold off on the cue the dead horse thing.

From geronimo.tn profile page here on bladeforums.com "geronimo.tn has not made any friends yet"

Shocker, I just went back and read some of the post in this thread more thoroughly. The individual that resurrects this thread from the grave yard is a member since 2006 and has 3 total post, 2 of which are in this thread. Then in the same instance this guy claims to have sent a pair of 3 year old boots back to L.L. Bean for premature failure, WTF? All the while hollering cold steel can KMA because of 1 bad knife, am I the only one sensing something is not right here?

G.tn do you have any idea how many of those knives Cold Steel made and sold? Oh, but wait doesn't matter because you got a bad one there all crap and Cold Steel are a bunch of shyster bastards that deserve to be drawn and quartered, right? One bad apple doesn't spoil the whole bunch, you simply throw out the bad apple and eat the rest. Even Mercedes Benz makes a lemon every once in a while, and no I'm not saying Cold Steel is the Mercedes Benz of the knife industry just an analogy. For all you know or should I say don't know a sensor could have been faulty on the oven used for heat treating and the heat treat was off, just one example.

L.L. Bean should told you to take a leap, but they didn't out of business sense. Knowing full well that if they sent you another pair or a voucher you would sing their praises far and wide but if not you would flame them for eternity every chance you got over a pair of worn out boots. We all know the saying good news travels fast, bad news travels faster, so they sent you another pair and wrote it off. The same way this whole thread needs to be written off as well.
 
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