Cold Steel

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See Alfred Hutton for the 1899 treatise. For the film, see Cold Steel (film).

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Cold Steel Scimitar

Cold Steel is a Ventura, California based company marketing knives, swords and other edged weapons and tools. Cold Steel was founded in 1980 by company president, Lynn C. Thompson. Their products are manufactured in various countries including Japan, Taiwan, China and India. ^[1]

1 Products
2 Marketing
3 See also
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Products

Cold Steel sells a wide range of products spanning from hunting and kitchen cutlery to tactical knives and swords. They also sell a variety of specialty self-defense items and training DVDs. Their most popular and famous steel is their San Mai III. In Japanese this means "three layers". It is a process of laminating a hard carbon blade between lower carbon steel. The softer carbon steel is used because a fully hardend blade would become brittle with continuous use. A majority of their knives use VG-1 steel which they claim is superior in its edge and strength retention to other types of steel.

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Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2007)

[edit] Marketing

Cold Steel has been at the center of significant controversy due to the marketing practices of company president Lynn Thompson. He has historically used bold claims (nearly all documented on publicly available DVDs) and confrontational tactics in order to gain publicity for his products.

Cold Steel is also known for its freely available marketing videos and DVDs. These presentations demonstrate the cutting power, edge retention and durability of many of their products. Featured tests include piercing car hoods, using folding knives as monkey bars, slicing through large free-hanging pieces of meat and bone, and shearing free hanging rope with a single stroke. Afterwards, the viewer is shown that the edge of the blade is still in good condition and none of the knife components are damaged or broken.