Cold Steel’s Survival Rescue Knife Takes Abuse
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The SRK® (Survival Rescue Knife®) by Cold Steel, Inc. is a tough knife for tough jobs under the toughest conditions. Cold Steel says that this knife is “able to withstand the most extreme abuse.” There seems to be little reason to doubt their claim. We get a nice review of this knife in the video below, made by YouTuber “BladeMaster369.” He gives an objective tour of the SRK’s components and compares them to similar knives for its pluses and minuses.
Some of the features that make the SRK special are its AUS 8A stainless steel blade with a “rich Teflon coat” and a handle that has a “single quillon finger guard and a deeply checkered Kraton grip.”
AUS 8A Stainless is special because it’s a high carbon, low chromium steel. Non-stainless steel has a higher carbon content. Carbon gives steel its strength, but rust can destroy it, which is why being “stainless” is a good thing. Cold Steel says that stainless is made “by adding Chromium and reducing its Carbon content during the smelting process.” But, they say, this makes stainless harder to sharpen, “and the edge-holding potential is seriously impaired.” Cold Steel says that their AUS 8A Stainless is a “high carbon, low chromium steel” that provides a good compromise “between toughness and strength, edge holding, and resistance to corrosion.”
