Pros: Blade Material, Blade Sharpness, Finish, Handle Material, Materials, Overall Quality, Weight
Cons: Sheath/Scabbard
An amazing product with 1 major flaw, but don't let that scare you off
I am going to be upfront about the flaw here and now: it's the sheath. I'll go into more depth further into my review, but I wanted to get that out of the way. The knife itself is wonderful, and I have very few complaints about it. Working my way from the base to the tip, the texture on the handle is nice and grippy, and the shape feels natural in my hands, even if I'm wearing gloves, though I have pretty average-sized hands (length of 7.5ish inches/19ish cm and width of 3.5ish inches/9ish cm when my hand is flat), so your mileage may vary if you have particularly large hands and/or wear very thick gloves. I wish the lanyard hole was a smidge larger, but that's just my personal taste; this is neither a pro nor a con. The fact that the finger guard only faces the edge of the blade is great because it means that you can still choke up on the spine when needed without any hassle, which gives you a lot of control over the blade. A missed opportunity here would've been to have some jimping on the spine for even more traction, but while it is a small con, it's not the end of the world; you can always use a file to add your own jimping, which can be a fun little project (albeit at the cost of losing the coating where you file). The center of balance for the knife is just barely above the guard and below the edge, at the ricasso, which means that it feels fairly light and agile in your hand. The blade is made of SK-5 steel—roughly equivalent to 1080—which, depending on heat treatment, means that it can take a respectable beating, is easy enough to sharpen, and holds its edge well enough, but it's not going to excel at any of those things. If you were planning to use the knife like a madman and stress test it to its limits, you'll probably be disappointed, but if you were planning to use it as a general-purpose outdoor/survival/self-defense tool, you'll find it can live up to those expectations; it's all about using the right tool for the right job. For example, you can baton through branches, roots, and smaller pieces of wood with no problem, but you shouldn't be trying to split large logs with this knife (or most knives, really). The knife was sharp enough to shave hair right out of the box, and the hollow-grind design means that it'll work well for slicing or carving. One complaint here, though, was that the bevel on the factory edge wasn't symmetrical (though the asymmetry was consistent along the entire blade), but that didn't impact its performance in a way that I could easily tell. Mind you, this isn't something that's unique to Cold Steel or the SRK—as even very expensive knives can sometimes come with this issue—and it can be fixed by sharpening the sides until they're symmetrical, but I figured I should include it in my review, just to let you know that it's something that can happen. The tip of the knife was nice and sharp, and both the clip-point design and the geometry of the swedge helped to get a lot of penetration out of it. Do try to be reasonable with the tip, though, as I've heard people talk about bending or breaking it by stabbing and/or prying into really dense, hard material, but I haven't experienced any problems yet; as I said before, it really is all about choosing the right tool for the job. Now, moving away from the knife, which was generally quite positive, we can get into something far less positive: the secure-ex sheath. And, really, it's funny to say we'll be getting into the sheath, because that's about all you can hope for; I am not joking when I say it borderline requires both hands to unsheath your knife. Even sheathing your knife is more difficult than it should be. As a small series of positives, the sheath is ambidextrous—since the belt loop is held in by screws that can be removed to swap whichever side you prefer—and it does have a small thumb ramp, but both of these are obviously overshadowed by how tight it is. As for why it's so tight, I have a theory: Cold Steel never took into consideration the changes they made to the SRK's design. At one point in time, the SRK had a much larger ricasso, a slightly different swedge, and used to sport a sabre-grind instead of a hollow-grind. From what I can tell from examining my sheath, it was designed with the old SRK in mind, and it REALLY doesn't like me trying to fit the newer design inside of it. Moving on, but only slightly, the next issue is the material the sheath is made from: glass-filled nylon. It's a much harder material than its contemporary, Kydex, and on its own, that wouldn't be much of an issue, but we keep coming back to how tight the damned sheath is. The tolerance for the knife is so jacked up that the blade scrapes along the inside of the sheath, and because of how hard glass-filled nylon is, it will slowly damage your knife's edge. Seriously, every time I unsheath the knife, there are little shavings of the sheath along the edge. From what I can tell, this was an issue even on the older sabre-grind SRK, but it's exacerbated by trying to fit the modern SRK into it. So, to sum up, I give the knife itself a 9/10; it's a good knife, and I like it. I refuse to give the sheath a rating because it doesn't deserve it; it only deserves my utmost contempt. Just do yourself a favor and use a different sheath; the SRK is popular enough that you can find people selling them made out of every conventional material, and failing that, you can even stick it in the sheath of some other knives.
(
