Kobun Plain Edge 5.5" Japanese AUS8A Stainless Steel American Tanto Shape Fixed Blade Tactical Hunting Knife, Ergonomic Kray-Ex Handle, Secure-Ex Sheath - Boxed

The blade: AUS8 in a enlosed full tang (handle goes over tang). Satain finish of decent thickness. It has clean lines and stock sharpness on par with cold steel knives. The Handle: cold steels standard rubber handle. It has checkering similar to that seen on gun grips on its sides. On the front and back there is cross line grooves. The knife provides good grip. People complain about it being small, but its supposed to be a conceal carry boot knife. The handle is a good balance between size and concealment. The Sheath: Good basic kydex sheath with sturdy clip. If your carrying IWB (inside waist band) if you want the blade edge down as is proper. If you want OWB (outside waist band) It will be on the left. The clip holds solid enough for a quick draw of the knife and the sheath stays put. Overall: Its a hell of a deal at $30, but of I paid cold steels retail of $60 it would be average. Thank you Amazon... The blade is a good tool that I use for carry so it is easier to live by cold steels "never unarmed" motto. I know lots of people who open carry their larger knives. I have an ontario SP-50 that is 15 inches. It looks fierce, but people can see it. And as often as people made a point to clear my path it was just as frequent it would attract a bad element. The Kobun carries tight to my hip and the handle is just below my ribs on my right when I IWB carry. Some people say they carry below the navel, but I find that on my hip when its in line with my arm i can cover it slightly (it does show a bit when wearing just a t shirt) and being in line with my arm when I walk the grab is quicker. I know some people say they carry blade up and attempt a japanese style sword draw, but after 6 years of Military Japanese sword training I can say this is not practical with a small knife. This knife is nothing like a traditional japanese tanto that a samurai used and bayonets or daggers were issued by the military in WW2 japan. A smart user should treat this knife system like a pistol with a thumb break holster. Practace, draw smooth going straight up and out. I keep the tip pointed center mass as any smart knife fighter will. I would advise people to keep this knife tight to the body at rib level with elbows in. Final Word: The knife is a very concealable self defnse tool. When considering the $30 tag its worth it to have something that will increase your odds of living in a self defense situation. Once you get used to the feel of it in carry (takes a day or two) you can take it anywhere. The best tool is no good unless you have it on you at all times so that its leverage can be applied when needed. It would not be an ideal woodscraft blade or a survival knife. But if you carry it everywhere and have it in such a situation your odds will be worlds better having a passable fixed blade than a $10 folding knife. Simply put its a $30 knife that could save your life. Provided you train your skills, always remember to carry, and develop a self preservation mind set.

This is a fantastic knife. Sheath is great, blade is very sharp. The clip is very strong and retention is amazing. The only thing I don’t like is the cheap rubber handle and the size of the hole on the handle. Wrapped the handle in paracord and I’m good to go. I conceal carry this bad boy everywhere. Cold steel does great with their larger knives, not so much with the smaller ones. This was only $50 but still, needs a better handle. Sheath fits a tek lock for open carry. Love this knife! Can’t wait to buy the more expensive ones.

For the price point ($30-$35), this knife is nothing short of awesome. If it was $50, I’d call it 4 stars, for $100 I’d give it 3, but for $30, I’d give it 6/5 stars if I could. It’s very light, nimble, and usable. The blade is thin (1/8”), but not thin enough to feel cheap. It’s not a “Japan level” good Cold Steel, but it’s a solid knife. It’s a Taiwan cold steel, one of their “junk knives”, made of AUS-8 steel, which means it’s about the quality of a SOG or Gerber production knife. I own a Cold Steel San Mai iii Recon Tanto, which is a big, serious knife, worth every bit of the $115-$135 you’d pay for it. You’ll pay $50-$60 for a SOG seal pup or SOG tsunami, for the same thickness of the same steel as the Kobun, with a junk sheath. The secure-ex sheath is good quality. The retention is great, maybe too good. If you try to use the metal clip that comes with it (junk!!!!!!!), the sheath will come with the knife if you try to draw it. My knife came with the newer shesth that only has holes on one side, not both. If you buy this knife, buy a tek-lok, tek lok mini, or a spyderco G Clip to go with it. I’ve had one kobun for several years. It holds an edge well for breaking down boxes, gutting and skinning deer, and other basic knife uses. With minimal upkeep on a spyderco sharpmaker (a must have for any owner of goood blades) mine stays shaving sharp all the time. The handle is too thin for my big hands. I remedied it with a paracord wrap. The cord wrap is done with OD green paracord with the inside strands pulled out, called a “flat wrap”. It’s done by wrapping it as simply as it looks, then pulling both ends through the lanyard hole and burning them together into a “knob” so they can’t pull back through. The grippy rubber handle keeps them perfectly in place with no adhesive, even with hard use. I recently bought a second one to mount 2 opposing sheaths to one large tek lok. Mounting them together required trimming the pointy ends of the sheath off with a dremel, which didn’t hurt the sheaths functionality at all. The double sheath is totally impractical, and totally unecessary but also totally awesome. See my pictures. BUY THIS KNIFE!!!!!!

The Cold Steel 17T Kobun Tanto Fixed is another great Cold Steel knife. The blade is well-made for this price - it came out of the box very sharp. The handle is rubberized and well-textured - the butt of the handle is squared off - allowing for a thumb grip. It also has a hole for some sort of retention string or rope - I will never use this and not sure why it's there. The sheath is some sort of plastic, with a belt clip. The top of the sheath is beveled out, in order to catch on the flanged grip. The tanto is very tight in the sheath, and it does require a bit of a tug to pull the tanto out of the sheath. The problem I have with the sheath is that when you pull the tanto out, you're somehow rubbing the edge against the hard plastic, dulling the edge of the tanto towards the tip. After a few times in and out, that part of the edge was no longer as sharp as when it came out of the box. I used a strop and was able to bring the edge back for the most part, however it is frustrating because I don't want to put the tanto back into this sheath now. My only options are to leave the tanto out of a sheath or find/make a different sheath. Overall for the money, fantastic tanto - awful sheath. I wish Cold Steel sold a wooden scabbard for this tanto.

This is a great knife. Its blade is not too thick like the typical Cold Steel blades, but is just right. In my hand, I feel it is the right amount of weight, not over heavy duty, and the thin blade make it a nimble, and sharp knife. The blade is 5.5", long enough to easily slide things, but not too long to scare people. I also felt this knife is more solid built than the Mora's I have and I like it much better than Mora knives. And it is very pleasing to my eyes! This is a knife I would use and worth to collect.

Yet another stupefyingly good product from Cold Steel. Extremely light and agile, mine came with a pretty sharp edge but definitely not shaving quality. No worries; a little love from some ceramic followed by some stropping and it was, indeed, a razor. I'm not sure how long that will last but based on its AUS8 material I have no doubt that it's going to be pretty easy to get back into awesome shape. I'm not going to measure and weight this for you; people have already done it and you can find the results on the CS website. However, a couple of notes that are not necessarily criticisims but maybe things to think about depending on your planned use: -The handle: great kraton stuff if you've never seen it before. performs flawlessly wet or dry and your hand will PROBABLY not slip down onto your now razor-sharp blade. God help you if it does. My issue is that it's a bit small in diameter, so if you've got big hands like me, you may have a problem... I did a de-cored 550 cord flat wrap on my handle (wet), and will try to post a couple of pics here showing the results. If you have bigger hands, you are going to absolutely want to do this as it makes all the world of difference and the grip is exponentially better. (please do not confuse my wrap with the 'other' handle wrap on this page. That is what looks like a tradional 'ito' wrap and I don't know how to do it. It's beautiful, and I offer my sincerest congrats to whoever did it! However, please don't ask me to show you how!) -Sheath: as usual, an awesome CS Secure-ex sheath and the blade does not shake, rattle or roll. AND, despite what other reviews may have mentioned it DOES have a drain hole. Will mention that it is very hard to see and personally am going to drill mine out as it doesn't seem very useful in its stock shape. Mounting: I have seen good and bad reviews on this sheath and it's mounting capabilities. Bottom line, it has a REMOVEABLE clip so it can obviously be mounted anywhere. Personally, would try to mount it with that clip wherever you want but back it up with either 550 or zip ties. Not trusting that clip... -Blade retention: uhhh.... For most normal uses I would have to say that it is fine; blade is retained in the sheath via tension on the handle guard. And don't get me wrong, it is good! However, if you happen to be using this knife in an upside down configuration and are running with it I think I'd consider looking at modifications to the sheath. Not sure what just yet but will post an update with I figure it out.

This is a nice solid multi-purpose knife for ~$30. It is not a ~$90 recon tanto like some people seem to think it is when they order it. This is a knife designed around the idea it would be used as a boot knife. If you want a heavy duty blade with similar design check out the Cold Steel Recon Tanto. I just had to get that out of the way after reading other reviews. Moving on the knife itself, first the blade. It is a modified tanto (ie American tanto) design. The design incorporates just enough belly on the blade to make it multi-use for food preparation, hunting, camping and other general cutting tasks. The strong tanto tip will come in handy if you ever have to cut into a can of beans :) The handle is fairly thin, not conducive to long duration use like bush crafting would required. That said I would gladly use this knife to field dress most any medium to large sized game. The handle is long enough to accommodate my XL hands well, but as I mentioned the handle is thin and doesn't fill my palm well. The blade steel is AUS8A Japanese stainless steel, it is a good "value" steel that is in my experience comparable to a good 420 stainless steel like Buck uses. And I did mean a good 420, there are some knife makers that use garbage 420 steel. The blade has a hollow grind that cuts a lot of stuff well like meat, but not so good with bread. And last but not least the sheath. Honestly this is were I debated giving this product as a whole 4 stars, instead of 5. The sheath itself is great. It is a good design, light weight, and made of plastic. But the sheath clip is pretty much useless beyond clipping it to a boot. You can clip it to your pants or belt, but the design does have an annoying lip on the base of the clip you will have deal with when mounting it. And it isn't ambidextrous so the design is lacking at best. Most people would be much happier with a Tek Lok attached instead. The sheath design is well suited to mount a Tek Lok on either side, which I'm sure was due to some foresight by the designer. Summing it all up, it is a great knife for the price. Best suited as a multi-use light weight camping and hiking knife.

This thing is SWEET!!! First I must say I'm a little bit partial to the tanto design not for functionality so much as for its strikingly good looks. I own a Kabar 8" Tanto which is one baaaaad mutha blade, but unfortunately it truly is a dedicated combat knife as it is a little too unweildy to be good at much else. This knife, however, is surprisingly nimble despite its tanto design. The handle is VERY thin, as it is intended to be a concealable knife, but the kraton handle is VERY high quality and the nice checkering allows for solid purchase in hand. I've never felt unsteady with it even though it is thin. The blade itself is BEAUTIFUL. The edge came very clean and almost hair cutting sharp. After a 5 minute appointment with some 2000 grit sandpaper, i was shaving my arms like it was a Mach 3. The bare stainless steel is nicely finished, kind of in between matte and polished. The pictures really don't do it justice. However, being the tanto, lover that I am, I couldn't just let the blade sit in between matte and polished. So I broke out the sandpaper, starting with an 800 grit and working my way up to 2000 grit and finishing it off with a dremel felt polishing wheel. Now I can look at myself in the mirror finish while I shave test the blade. I can't say enough about how elegant this knife is. But amid its good looks it still begs to be used. The razor edge is perfect for chopping veggies and cutting steak when I'm feeling a little bored with my standard kitchen knives. It also comes with a fantastic hard plastic sheath which holds the black securely in place. It also has a clip on the back for belt holstering or boot concealment, although the latter proved somewhat difficult. A nice touch nonetheless. Overall, what can I say? For $30??? Buy it. you won't regret it. There's not another sub-$30 blade out there that can compare.