Beloved by some, maligned by others, Cold Steel is well known for its outrageous marketing videos showing its knives, swords and tools in the most outlandish of scenarios that the average person will never encounter. Bizarre and overblown though they may be, Cold Steel remains immensely popular with knife and tools users and collectors around the country.

For better or for worse, Cold Steel produces insanely tough, remarkably reliable knives, swords, axes and tools. You can love them or hate them, but when the chips fall, Cold Steel makes a tough product; maybe not the best, but then again, how can any given knife be the “best” of anything. No one is using a pen knife to baton logs or a camp knife to filet a fish. The devil is in the details here.

Enough digression; in this post, we’re going to take an in-depth look at a perennial fan-favorite Cold Steel tanto knife: the Cold Steel Recon Tanto in SK-5. Cold Steel has produced many knives over the years with Tanto-style blades. Some of them straight edged, some combo edged, and many of them folders. The tanto point is very popular among EDC practitioners and tactical users because it is extremely strong and can handle hard penetration like no other. It might even fare better in this arena than a drop point. They also have garnered some loyalists, no doubt, because the blade profile just looks cool.

But the knife you will find at the link above is far from good looks and suave style. It is a piece of iron (no pun intended) that you could probably push through sheet metal without so much as a nick or a scratch. It is a hard-use tool that is so weighed down with tough features and durability that it’s a marvel it only weighs nine ounces.

In the hand, this knife feels extremely comfortable, with no particularly noticeable hot spots. The grip, which is made of Kray-Ex, is extremely durable and has something of a tackiness to it. It indexes beautifully and carries like a charm. You can pierce with it, baton with it, and slice with it - it will perform all of these duties admirably, without a whistle of complaint, and won’t send a lot of shock up through your arm or cover your palm in blisters in the process.

As for the blade, this Cold Steel tanto knife is like a mod of the beloved Cold Steel SRK, something like that with a tanto blade. Indeed, the handles of both models look fairly identical. It is made in SK-5, which is a fitting steel for this model of knife, since both the design of the tool and the steel itself hail from Japan.

SK-5 steel, which is made with almost a full percent of carbon, is a very tough, very workable steel that can take an excellent heat treatment and is commonly used to make knives like this as well as razor blades and other tools. It also has about .3% chromium to increase its resistance to corrosion, as well as .25% nickel and .35% silicon to improve its strength and toughness, among other traits. This makes SK-5 tough enough to withstand hard work, hard enough to hold an edge but not so hard as to be brittle, and with just the right balance of additives to prevent surface wear and corrosion. We’re not saying it’s a super steel, but it certainly has the edge of popular stainless alloys like 440 and many Chromoly-vanadium alloys.

This Cold Steel tanto knife is finished by a Secure-Ex sheath that provides for an excellent retention of the blade as well as a lot of versatility in how you want to carry it. It’s naturally well adapted to tip-down OWB carry, but with a little bit of paracord or lashings, you can convert it to scout carry, pack carry, or pretty much anything else you could want. Like the SK-5 steel of the blade and the Kray-Ex of the handle, this sheath is basically bombproof and impervious to the elements.

The final bonus that comes with this knife has nothing to do with its ergonomics or other user friendly features; it’s the price. Here at White Mountain Knives you can add one to your bug out bag for less than 50 dollars. Let’s put it this way; the knife is a steal, that’s why it’s so frequently sold out, not only here at White Mountain Knives but elsewhere.

If you want to get our personal take on this Cold Steel beauty, get in touch with us at WhiteMountainKnives@gmail.com. We’d be more than happy to give you our personal insight into how this knife can be put to best use. It might be the perfect Cold Steel knife for you - if not, there are plenty more where it came from.