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Hey Everybody this is JJ. And right now what I have for you is a EDC Knife Review. You
guys may have heard me talk about this on a couple of other videos, but I recently got
a hold of a Cold Steel American Lawman. And I will put some pictures up here behind it
as well so you guys can take a look at it. This is a really cool knife. and to be honest
with you when I first got it I was not sure I was going to like it. because it was just
different from the EDC knife that I carried for so long. I carried the Gerber EVO for
I don't know like 3 years or something like that. And that knife always worked fine, I
didn't have any issues with it. But got this one and it is substantially more heavy duty
and just really pretty impressive. So what I am going to do is give you a real quick
tabletop look and then I am going to do kind of not really a field test i guess it is a
home test. Since it is an EDC blade, I want to basically test it on the kind of things
that I am going to be using it for, that is really the purpose of gear testing. I don't
think it would make a lot of sense for me to take any EDC knife out and do a lot of
wilderness survival stuff adn all of that kinda of stuff. Because that is really not
what it is for. But I want to test the edge retention and see how it works in every day
tasks. How it feels in the hand and all of that kinda of stuff. I think that would give
you guys a better evaluation of the knife than taking it out in the woods or whatever.
So that is kinda of what we are going to do here today. We're going to take a look at
cutting paper, just to see how sharp it comes from the factory. Then we are going to look
and see how it does with cardboard, how it cuts cardboard and all of that kind of stuff.
Maybe if I can get up enough of it, we will see how it will penetrate and that kind of
thing. We will look at cutting cord, different kinds of rope and cord, and that kind of thing.
Maybe, I don't know, we will have to see if i can come up with some other things, but
really just some common every day chore kind of things. That is kind of the way I am going
to go with these EDC type videos and reviews for the knives and that kind of thing. So
anyway with that lets go ahead and jump down to the bench and give you a good look at this.
Ok guys so lets go ahead and take a real quick tabletop look at the Cold Steel American Lawman.
We will start off by getting a quick weight and it is saying that it weighs 4.6 ounces.
So not to bad for as substantial of a knife as it is. Having the G-10 scales integrated
as part of the frame really lightens it up quite a bit. lets look at the blade length
and all of that real quick. Looks like it is just over, with the curve, probably looking
about 3 1/4 inches to about 3 1/8 inch something like that. Probably the overall cutting distance
is about 3 1/4 inches I would imagine. The blade material is AUS-8, Japanese stainless
steel. It comes with a Cold Steel TuffEx coating. As you can see guys this is after doing most
of the testing that you will see hear later in the video. And it is really, the finish
is holding up pretty good. I mean it it has some marring marks and stuff like that but
I have been stabbing it through cardboard and cutting all kinds of cardboard and rope
and stuff and it is really holding up pretty nicely. I am pretty surprised. Now one of
the things that makes this knife different from a lot of other knives on the market is
the Triad locking system. now I wasn't really familiar with the triad locking system until
i got a hold of this and started doing some research on it. But apparently what the deal
is is that Cold Steel has inserted a post that runs right here and all of the way through
the other side, and the blade comes up and hits against that post when it locks. Now
on a typical lock back knife that doesn't happen you normally go right to the lock back.
What this does is this helps to transfer all of the energy from that post that the blade
hits up against into the frame. And so it doesn't put all of the weight on the lock.
it helps spread it out. so that is what makes the Triad lock so effective and so strong.
and as you will see I test that later on in the video and it is pretty impressive it is
very strong. the knife does come with ambidextrous pocket clips. You can do it either way it
is only tip up unfortunately. One thing that you will notice if you get this knife, when
you first get it is that the lock back is pretty tough, you really got to push on it
pretty good to get it to unlock and one thing that Butch down at South blade kind of gave
me a hint on. He said go ahead and store that knife open overnight and that will help smooth
that out and make it a little easier to unlock and everything like that. And that is what
I did and it definitely made it a lot more smooth and a lot easier to unlock. You can
definitely do it one handed and that kind of stuff, now a lot easier than when you first
get it out of the box. Now I was pretty skeptical on having the G-10 Scales as the frame and
that is exactly what they have done with this knife. Now you do have the lock mechanism
and a kind of a pommel end down here but there are no liners in this knife. it is just the
G-10. And I was a little worried about that to be honest with you but, so far i mean it
is really really strong, really hard and firm in the hand. It is not like there is an flex
or anything like that is is really solid. So that is pretty cool. You do have a little
bit of jimping cut into the G-10 Scales there and it is enough I mean you can feel them,
it isn't super substantial. If I was going to recommend a change to it I would like to
see a little bit up on the blade a little. Not really aggressive stuff, but they put
the finger choil in here so that you can choke up on it and do that fine cutting work so
why not go ahead and have a little bit of jimping here as well to give you a little
better control. But not bad. Now the one downside I will say to the G-10 Scales is that when
you first get it, it is really rough. I mean pretty rough. There is some fine edges on
there that is not like sandpaper necessarily but, you can feel that. It has got a lot of
traction, gription, grab, I don't know what you would call it. It is very grippy. Putting
it into and out of like, dress pants and khaki pants and those kinds of things was kind of
difficult. But after I used it for a few days you know wearing it with blue jeans and stuff
like that something with a little bit more rough material it kind of smoothed it down
a little bit so it is not so terrible. The clip on it is definitely strong enough it
is nice and solid. It is actually a little difficult to get into some pants. this probably
isn't the knife for you if you are wearing a business suit everyday or whatever, it is
probably a little to heavy and is probably going to be *** your pants getting it
in and out like that, but if you wear khakis or cargo pants or blue jeans you know those
kind of things then it is fine. it isn't a big deal at all. Ok, so overall length on
the american lawman is probably, you have about 6 inches there, it is right around 8
inches or so fully open. Like I said really made very well ergonomically to fit in your
hand, I like that it has the 2 finger choils. It definitely gives you good control. I think
you will see that later on doing the feather sticks. But you can also grab it back here
and still get plenty of purchase. You know if you were fighting or something along those
lines or whatever. It does have a lanyard hole in here as well, and Like I said you
can switch the clip either way. The other thing is that the thumb stud is ambidextrous
as well. It comes set for a right handed person. You can slide it open that way. You can actually
loosen this up and swap it around so that it can be set for a left handed person too.
Alright guys so lets go ahead and get into some of the testing on this. Ok guys so the
purpose of this test is going to be, like I said to test the strength of the triad lock.
We are going to be basically hitting it on the back side of the knife and will also be
hitting it right here on the front side trying to see if we can get that lock to release
unintentionally. Basically without depressing this. We are going to start this way hitting
it on the back side of the knife. Cold Steel has some pretty impressive videos on this,
if you guys haven't seen it you can check those out, you know they do crazy torture
tests and stuff to these things. Anyhow, here we go. definitely wouldn't recommend doing
this to any other knife. Unless you have a good thick glove on or any knife really. Im
just trying to get it to fail and it is not failing. so now I am going to hit it up here.
Right up here basically in that finger choil. essentially just trying to get it to fold
forward just from momentum or whatever. As you can see it is tearing up the table and
that knife is still fine. so i don't think that triad lock is going anywhere. Ok guys
so i mentioned earlier that we would do a penetration test with the Cold Steel American
Lawman. And you know there is not a whole lot of practical every day reasons to do a
penetrating test but i really just want to feel how it felt in my hand, if I would need
to do that. and just kind of see how well it penetrates so what i have done here is,
in between clips, while I was doing this, I used this knife still and cut up all of
these sections of cardboard. and stuck it into this box and I have some plastic containers
down here to hold them all up tight and it is kind of packed in there about as good as
I can get it. Now there is plenty of penetration depth in there. So I am just going to go ahead
and take it and jab it down into the cardboard, see how it feels and make sure the lock doesn't
disengage or anything like that while I am doing it. This is really more for ergonomics,
I don't know that there is really any practical reason to do this but just kind of curious.
So here we go. That was pretty good. Almost up to the hilt, there on that one. Again same
way. Let me turn the knife around. Now that was with the fingers coming arounds this way.
kind of holding the knife backwards. Let me see what it feels like doing it this way.
Definitely not as comfortable with the blade facing the opposite direction. Still get pretty
good penetration though. What I worry about when i hold the knife that way is that your
grip is kind of close to the unlocking mechanism. So I think it is better to hold it this way
if you were going to to some kind of penetrating motion. But anyway it was pretty comfortable,
when you have it the second way you can kind of feel that edge a little bit under your
thumb, but not bad at all. I have been pretty impressed with how this has done so far. So
lets see after cutting all of that cardboard, you saw all of that cardboard I cut up and
put in that box. plus the stuff I showed you that rag, all of the rope, and all of that
kind of stuff. Lets see how the AUS-8 edge retention is and see if it can still cut paper,
I haven't sharpened it. I haven't touched the blade at all. So it is still cutting.
You can tell it is a little bit less sharp but I have done quite a bit of cutting with
this so it is pretty impressive. Im just curious to see if it will still shave arm hair or
not. Yep, It sure will. Don't know if you can see that or not but. Still Sharp. So like
I said it is pretty impressive. I think the Cold Steel American Lawman will do pretty
well for regular every day carry tasks. It is definitely strong enough to be a defensive
knife and I think that is what Cold Steel had in mind when they developed this knife.
Which is why it is called the American Lawman I suppose. But certainly tough and really
impressed with the G-10 Scales and surprised that it doesn't have a need to have liners
in there and all of that kind of stuff. Other than that it is solid in your hand. Anyway
guys that about wraps up the testing portion of this. Ok guys so that has been a look at
the Cold Steel American Lawman. I hope you guys enjoyed this knife review. I think that
it seemed like it performed pretty well. I have had it for a couple of weeks now and
I haven't had it really for that long but it has really worked out very nicely. There
are a couple of things that I don't like about it, but really overall, it is a pretty solid
knife. So anyway, I want to thank Butch down at SouthBlade for sending this out to me to
take a look at. And if you guys haven't been to SouthBlade.Com yet you should check him
out. He has really reasonable prices. You know this knife the Cold Steel American Lawman
is right around $60.00 and I think that is a super reasonable price for this knife. It
is a pretty good knife. Anyway guys I definitely appreciate it when you click the thumbs up
button, when you share it with your friends on Facebook, Twitter, and Google +, and Don't
for get to live the 6P's. Proper Prior Preparation, Prevents Poor Performance. Stay Safe Guys.