Pros: Weight, Handle Material
Cons: Finish, Blade Sharpness
Nice knife, but I was somewhat disappointed.
Overall I like the Cold Steel Master Tanto 6" San Mai: It is a good-looking knife (with one exception - see below), feels quite solid with its beefy, thick tanto blade, is well-balanced, and has a good grip. It arrived reasonably sharp, but not impressively so. The "Secure-Ex" sheath is serviceable and holds the knife securely even with the strap unsnapped. All it takes to draw the knife from the sheath is to grip the handle and push down with your thumb on a knurled area on the top of the plastic part of the sheath. The knife can rattle a bit when in the sheath, but only a bit. If this was billed as a tactical knife that looseness would be a legitimate complaint, but it's really just a nitpick. There is one thing that disappointed me about the knife: The bevel of the tanto point is visibly shorter on one side of the blade than on the other when looking down the spine of the blade. I don't think it is so severe as to impair the strength of the tip, nor is the tanto tip defective in any other way as far as I can tell. (Indeed, the tanto tip is sharper than the rest of the blade; a curious choice, if it was a choice.) The difference in the tanto tip's bevel is easily visible without having to measure it, and I think even a cursory QC inspection should have caught this.
(
