Recon 1 XL in XHP!

Buy an old Cold Steel pre gsm Recon 1 or XL for $80-$150. Too many stories already of terrible customer service with the new GSM ownership.
 
Id rather have these xls in a 4.75" to 5.25" blade length. now they're really useful with less of the grossly oversized handle.
 
John Phillips said:
Buy an old Cold Steel pre gsm Recon 1 or XL for $80-$150. Too many stories already of terrible customer service with the new GSM ownership.
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I've bought and used many post-GSM products and haven't needed any customer service yet (and hopefully still won't). I rarely consider warranty coverage when buying a knife unless it's particularly expensive, which CS is not. As mentioned above, buying vintage CS won't get you much more warranty assistance than buying post-GSM.
 
oldmanwilly said:
I've bought and used many post-GSM products and haven't needed any customer service yet (and hopefully still won't). I rarely consider warranty coverage when buying a knife unless it's particularly expensive, which CS is not. As mentioned above, buying vintage CS won't get you much more warranty assistance than buying post-GSM.
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There have already been numerous examples of people calling with horrible experiences just from this forum alone. GSM is a large corporation that only cares about the bottom dollar not about the quality of the knives they are selling. They will sacrifice anything to make a quarterly number. Lynn Thompson was the opposite, he made sure quality came first. Gimmicky I know but old Cold Steel knives are strong, sharp and extremely tough.

How do you know GSM isn’t already using cheaper steals from cheaper sources without actually knowing the hardness of the steel they are selling? I’ll answer for you, you don’t.

I know what I’m buying when I buy old Cold Steel and I don’t know what I’m buying when I buy new cold steel other than the fact that they WILL cut corners to meet quarterly and annual numbers and numerous people have said their customer service is non existent/terrible.

You won’t win an argument with me when it comes to large corporations like GSM and what they will sacrifice to make their quarterly earnings. All you have is bean counters looking at a computer screen crunching numbers.
 
John Phillips said:
There have already been numerous examples of people calling with horrible experiences just from this forum alone. GSM is a large corporation that only cares about the bottom dollar not about the quality of the knives they are selling. They will sacrifice anything to make a quarterly number. Lynn Thompson was the opposite, he made sure quality came first. Gimmicky I know but old Cold Steel knives are strong, sharp and extremely tough.

How do you know GSM isn’t already using cheaper steals from cheaper sources without actually knowing the hardness of the steel they are selling? I’ll answer for you, you don’t.

I know what I’m buying when I buy old Cold Steel and I don’t know what I’m buying when I buy new cold steel other than the fact that they WILL cut corners to meet quarterly and annual numbers and numerous people have said their customer service is non existent/terrible.

You won’t win an argument with me when it comes to large corporations like GSM and what they will sacrifice to make their quarterly earnings. All you have is bean counters looking at a computer screen crunching numbers.
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Yup, no arguments there.

My broader point was that the numerous post-GSM knives I've bought have all arrived and functioned well for me and as expected. Therefore, I am generally not concerned about the poor quality of customer service. I was equally unconcerned by the quality of customer service from Old Steel.

Others may have different experiences, and past performance is no guarantee of future performance. So far, I'm not deterred from buying current CS products and I hope the quality does not diminish. I will stop buying if it does.
 
I've never once needed any warranty coverage / service for any Cold Steel product .

Either Old Cold Steel or GSM . I did have had some issues , mostly from the old days , but nothing I couldn't fix or break-in .

It is very aggravating , to not have any parts available from CS .

With knives, and most everything else these days , I mostly buy from places with easy returns .

I try to sort out the junk and get it returned to the seller ASAP .

I do factor in the lack of warranty service / parts in the price I'm willing to pay .
 
I'll be picking one of these up sooner or later. I found the 5 Max to be way more useful than I thought it would be. The Mayhem...not so much. Big and wide and chunky.
I have a gigantic clip point Voyager that I do like, so maybe this will behave like an upgraded version. I might hold out to see if they offer it in a tanto. There is something about a CS tanto that just works for me.
 
Looking at the listing again on their site, it mentions the coating isn't dlc. Guessing this is made in Italy, but anyone knows for sure? It doesn't list it on the page anywhere that I see.

Not sure if I'd believe it anyway considering all the problems with the specs.... Says PVD coating in the copy and "PVC" in the Specifications (some new low drag plastic coating??? :p), and also it's put in the 3-5" blade length category with a supposedly 5.25" blade.

Also wondering if 8.0 oz is right. Seems like a lot for linerless g10. Not that big Cold Steels are featherweights, but that's like a 60% weight gain for 30% more blade compared to the standard Recon 1
 
I have one of the older ones in AUS8…it’s been a great knife.

I’m tempted to go for one in XHP, but I’ll wait to see if Midway has it on sale. I’ve scored some great deals there on CS stuff in the past.

I’ve had a knife or 2 (out of maybe 10?) come not as sharp as I’d like since GSM took over, but the only real issue that I had was with customer service.

A few years ago I bought a Trench Hawk from Canadian Preparedness, and it was missing one of the special screws that it uses. So I contacted him and got no response. I then contacted CS and got a standard issue email about where to purchase another Trench Hawk.

But I got in touch with “Stick” directly through an email. He wrote back and then actually called me up asking for suggestions on what he could do to improve CS. This was right after Lynn sold the company, and I guess he was kind of freaking out or something. He didn’t know me from Adam, so I was pretty shocked that he called me. One of my suggestions was actually to bring back the Recon 1 XL. He also send me another complete Trench Hawk for free. So that was pretty awesome. I know this sounds like BS, but it’s true.

EDIT:

I just found the follow-up email with him after the phone call…

“Hello Stick,

Redacted here…Happy New Year.

I received the other Trench Hawk the day after we spoke on the phone, and it was perfect. I’ve put the original one through some pretty heavy use/abuse, and it’s holding up like a champ. Thank you once more for helping me out with that situation.

You had said to let you know if I had any ideas that might help you out. I’m not sure how much that involves actual knife design stuff, but I was thinking about the following:

A lot of the folders use T6 screws for the handle construction. I think these are fine for the smaller knives, but once you get to the big folders or heavy use knives, I know that a LOT of people would appreciate the use of T8 screws instead. Again, I’m not sure how difficult it would be for CS/GSM to implement this, but it would really help from the perspective that the new Cold Steel is doing quality tweaks as the company progresses.

Another thing is that for most of the back-lock knives (including the Triads), the place where you push the lock bar to disengage the lock goes straight across. If somehow that could be turned into a depressed semi circular area, it would make disengagement easier…Basically like a dip in the middle where your thumb could go into.
I personally never have issues with the locks, but I’ve read a lot of folks complaining about them being tough to unlock.

Overall, I really think that you’d score big points with the community by making some small improvements, and announcing that there will be more coming. Spyderco has what they call CQI (constant quality improvement), where they’re always trying to improve current designs. In all honesty, many knives never undergo any major changes, but the perception that they’re doing this CQI is a big deal to a lot of people. Maybe you could get CS to approve a program like that, and you could make a video series showing some tweaks.

I know that CS has updated their knives over the years, but I don’t know if they’ve ever made a push to promote something like CQI. I think that of you and Lynn showed up in videos talking about how the knives are getting better than ever, and explaining how, I think it would be a good marketing strategy.

Anyway, sorry to be so long-winded. If my ideas are useless, no worries. I get that this would cost money to implement. I was just watching a series of reviews of CS knives on YouTube, and the T6 thing came up a lot…And that got me to thinking.

I’m looking forward to the videos that you mentioned showing off the strength of the Atlas lock. That should be really cool.

Best Regards,

Redacted”

Here was his response, but it doesn’t seem like the larger screw idea or the QCI happened:

“Redacted, I love this. I’m sending your whole email off to Lynn and our engineers. These are great pieces of input. I asked and you delivered.
Thank you brother.”
 
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Boss Hogg said:
I have one of the older ones in AUS8…it’s been a great knife.

I’m tempted to go for one in XHP, but I’ll wait to see if Midway has it on sale. I’ve scored some great deals there on CS stuff in the past.

I’ve had a knife or 2 (out of maybe 10?) come not as sharp as I’d like since GSM took over, but the only real issue that I had was with customer service.

A few years ago I bought a Trench Hawk from Canadian Preparedness, and it was missing one of the special screws that it uses. So I contacted him and got no response. I then contacted CS and got a standard issue email about where to purchase another Trench Hawk.

But I got in touch with “Stick” directly through an email. He wrote back and then actually called me up asking for suggestions on what he could do to improve CS. This was right after Lynn sold the company, and I guess he was kind of freaking out or something. He didn’t know me from Adam, so I was pretty shocked that he called me. One of my suggestions was actually to bring back the Recon 1 XL. He also send me another complete Trench Hawk for free. So that was pretty awesome. I know this sounds like BS, but it’s true.

EDIT:

I just found the follow-up email with him after the phone call…

“Hello Stick,

Redacted here…Happy New Year.

I received the other Trench Hawk the day after we spoke on the phone, and it was perfect. I’ve put the original one through some pretty heavy use/abuse, and it’s holding up like a champ. Thank you once more for helping me out with that situation.

You had said to let you know if I had any ideas that might help you out. I’m not sure how much that involves actual knife design stuff, but I was thinking about the following:

A lot of the folders use T6 screws for the handle construction. I think these are fine for the smaller knives, but once you get to the big folders or heavy use knives, I know that a LOT of people would appreciate the use of T8 screws instead. Again, I’m not sure how difficult it would be for CS/GSM to implement this, but it would really help from the perspective that the new Cold Steel is doing quality tweaks as the company progresses.

Another thing is that for most of the back-lock knives (including the Triads), the place where you push the lock bar to disengage the lock goes straight across. If somehow that could be turned into a depressed semi circular area, it would make disengagement easier…Basically like a dip in the middle where your thumb could go into.
I personally never have issues with the locks, but I’ve read a lot of folks complaining about them being tough to unlock.

Overall, I really think that you’d score big points with the community by making some small improvements, and announcing that there will be more coming. Spyderco has what they call CQI (constant quality improvement), where they’re always trying to improve current designs. In all honesty, many knives never undergo any major changes, but the perception that they’re doing this CQI is a big deal to a lot of people. Maybe you could get CS to approve a program like that, and you could make a video series showing some tweaks.

I know that CS has updated their knives over the years, but I don’t know if they’ve ever made a push to promote something like CQI. I think that of you and Lynn showed up in videos talking about how the knives are getting better than ever, and explaining how, I think it would be a good marketing strategy.

Anyway, sorry to be so long-winded. If my ideas are useless, no worries. I get that this would cost money to implement. I was just watching a series of reviews of CS knives on YouTube, and the T6 thing came up a lot…And that got me to thinking.

I’m looking forward to the videos that you mentioned showing off the strength of the Atlas lock. That should be really cool.

Best Regards,

Redacted”

Here was his response, but it doesn’t seem like the larger screw idea or the QCI happened:

“Redacted, I love this. I’m sending your whole email off to Lynn and our engineers. These are great pieces of input. I asked and you delivered.
Thank you brother.”
Click to expand...

The "dip" you request in the lockbar would be very similar to a "Boye Dent." I'm pretty sure there'd be licensing issues that needed to be addressed there. Currently Spyderco & Byrd are the main knives <besides David Boye's knives, himself> that employ Boye dents.

There may also be the added issue of whether or not you could depress the lock bar far enough down to disengage the TriAD before your thumb bottoming out on the spine. Those locks have a pretty far travel-- much deeper than Spydercos.

Cool to see that LT seems to be called upon still for advice. Do you know if that is an official connection LT still has with CS or is it just an informal advice type thing?
 
PeteyTwoPointOne said:
The "dip" you request in the lockbar would be very similar to a "Boye Dent." I'm pretty sure there'd be licensing issues that needed to be addressed there. Currently Spyderco & Byrd are the main knives <besides David Boye's knives, himself> that employ Boye dents.

There may also be the added issue of whether or not you could depress the lock bar far enough down to disengage the TriAD before your thumb bottoming out on the spine. Those locks have a pretty far travel-- much deeper than Spydercos.

Cool to see that LT seems to be called upon still for advice. Do you know if that is an official connection LT still has with CS or is it just an informal advice type thing?
Click to expand...
It seemed as though Lynn was still pretty heavily involved when I spoke to Stick. But that was about 2 1/2 years ago. I could only speculate the scope at this point, but I’d guess that he still has some official position there.
 
I just emailed Stick (he goes by ‘Beamer’ apparently) again today to see if he’s still up for suggestions. I suggested to consider bringing back the Warcraft tantos in 3V, and he responded saying that he’d pass the idea to the top.

Would anybody be interested in starting a thread where we could come up with ideas/suggestions for Cold Steel products, quality control concerns, etc? I still have his phone number, and I don’t want to abuse that, but maybe I could assemble a list of the most wanted things we’d like to see and pass that along via email. Or just direct him to the thread if it’s easy enough for him to wade through.

Let me know…he says he’s swamped, but he doesn’t mind me suggesting things.
 
Boss Hogg said:
I just emailed Stick (he goes by ‘Beamer’ apparently) again today to see if he’s still up for suggestions. I suggested to consider bringing back the Warcraft tantos in 3V, and he responded saying that he’d pass the idea to the top.

Would anybody be interested in starting a thread where we could come up with ideas/suggestions for Cold Steel products, quality control concerns, etc? I still have his phone number, and I don’t want to abuse that, but maybe I could assemble a list of the most wanted things we’d like to see and pass that along via email. Or just direct him to the thread if it’s easy enough for him to wade through.

Let me know…he says he’s swamped, but he doesn’t mind me suggesting things.
Click to expand...

Nice that he responds to you, but pretty disappointing that they don't feel it's worthwhile to have a presence here.
 
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