Cold SteelG.I. Tanto 7" Durable 1055 Carbon Steel Fixed Blade Tactical Outdoor Throwing Knife, 5" Handle w/ Polypropylene Scales, Integral Quillon Guard, Resistant Secure-Ex Sheath

...so I believe I can speak with a bit of authority on knives, and you can be sure this review is an in-depth review of my informed take on this knife. This review is admittedly verbose, but accurate. I don't really know where to start, so I'm just going to jump right in with this. This knife is 100% worth buying, that's the gist of what you need to know, however...If you don't like reading and you don't mind missing a few pointers, go ahead and skip to the end for the "TL;DR" version.As I stated, I'm an avid knife collector with an extensive collection of various brands, types, shapes, sizes, and qualities of knives. I've done extensive research over the past five or so years into what makes a knife a high-quality knife in an empirical sense, with all opinions aside. I'm extremely picky about what knives I'll buy or keep, and I would say that this knife is most definitely a high-quality knife, according to facts and not just my opinion. It isn't the highest quality you'll ever find, that's gonna run you hundreds of dollars, but it's probably one of the greatest, highest quality knives you'll ever find for this price, that's for damn sure, and not only that, but this price is honestly almost too low for the quality here. After holding, inspecting, testing, and getting to know this knife personally, I've decided I'd gladly pay in the $50-$60 range for this knife.Some proverbial "bells and whistles" are sometimes nice to have on a knife, at least for a "tacti-cool" kind of knife, but in my opinion, the utter minimalist simplicity of this knife is a big part of what makes it so great, and it's a strikingly good looking knife as well. The GI Tanto is most definitely a no-nonsense tool/weapon that isn't here to impress or play games, it's here to serve a few purposes, and it serves them 'very' well.The knife came razor sharp out of the box (literally- I was able to shave a patch of my arm smooth with around five swipes, and slice through a sheet of 8.5" x 11" sized, 24-pound paper with one.) This knife's one-piece construction, full-length tang, and 1055 carbon steel mean I wouldn't be afraid to use this knife to chop, dig, pry, et cetera.The polypropylene hand scales are pretty smooth, that might be one "downfall," depending on who you are and how picky you are...if you can even call it a downfall... I suppose if the handle got "wet" then your hand may slip, but I have two responses to that issuance of complaint which I have seen a few times in these reviews... The first is that the notch you see between the blade and the integral quillon guard is useful for removal of a blade with a "wet" handle... Just wrap your hand around the handle as usual, only just a bit higher, enabling you to place your index finger in that notch, and you'll have no problem with slippage. Second, if you want a more textured, "grippy" handle, you can go pick up 100' of nylon 550-lb test paracord (the real stuff, no Chinese knockoff stuff, folks..it's out there...) and spend a few minutes wrapping the handle with that if you don't like the way it feels. Alternatives include removing the hand scales, placing them flat-side down on newspaper, plugging the holes for the screws with wads of newspaper, and coating the surfaces of the scales that your hand touches with something like the spray-on Rhino truck bed liner or something textured of that nature that can take a beating, although I personally WOULD NOT suggest that route, but it's up to you. Paracord is not only a reversible fix, but you can remove it in a survival situation and use it for myriad other emergency applications.The knife is 'perfectly' balanced as well, which means it could function great as a thrower if that's what you'd like to do with it. I tested the balance using the sheath; I set the knife on the thin edge (spine) of the sheath, with the the quillon guard lined up exactly with the "spine" edge of the sheath, and the knife balanced there as perfectly as it possibly could have.The sheath has the same personality as the knife; simple, good looking, functional, and not at all convoluted. I would recommend using paracord to tie the "tip" or bottom portion of the sheath around your thigh for faster, easier removal, and to keep the blade/sheath from bouncing around when you run. Also, as with any solid sheath, try your best to keep the spine of the knife pressed against the inside of the sheath as you insert of remove the knife, so as to reduce the blade contact with the sheath upon insertion or removal. This knife will retain an edge for a VERY long time, even through rigorous use, but any blade rubbed repeatedly against the inside of its solid sheath (plastics, etc.) will begin to dull slightly with time, however, I imagine it would take a very long time for that to really be much of an issue with this knife. This method of removing the knife from the sheath is more of a formality with a knife of this quality. The $19.19 price it was going for when I bought it was an absolute STEAL!!!The bottom line for all of you "too long; didn't read" folks out there: if you're looking for a survival knife, or just a heavy-duty knife that looks good, functions well, and lives for a long time, but you don't want to spend around $200 on a "tool-steel extreme" knife that you could "kill a bear" with, (catch my drift?) this is one of the few knives I'd be fully confident in staking my pride as a collector on by telling you to go ahead and buy without worrying about any of that "latent buyer's remorse" I think we've all probably experienced at one time or another... If you know knives the way I do, you won't regret buying this guy. The knife is strong, heavy, durable, razor-sharp, perfectly balanced (worthy of throwing,) intimidating, simple, functional, and it looks awesome to boot. Don't let the minimalist simplicity and low price of this knife and sheath fool you into thinking it's a "cheap" knife. The GI Tanto is by no means "cheap," unless, of course, you're speaking strictly of price. I definitely consider this knife one of the best knives I own, and I myself own some of those $200 "tool-steel extreme" kill-a-bear knives.

How to start, this knife is big, as big as described, but also thick and heavy. About 1/8th inch thick steel kind of thick and heavy. It is also completely coated with a black finish to prevent rusting except for the very edge bevel of the blade, which came with a vigorous coating of grease on it when shipped to protect it.The knife is a simple tanto design with a nice plastic handle and secure x sheath that snaps in place and holds well. If you don't like the handle, you can upgrade/dress up the handle rather easily with your own as it is a simple allen screw on attachment in 2 places to a thick full tang making it nice for customization, but if you go too far the sheath's strap will not snap in place around it, which to me would be acceptable as it snaps in well as is and doesn't come dislodged by vigorous shaking without it. That leads me to the other part, the belt loop with hilt snap is removable attached by 2 screws through the sheath into a plastic hanger with pim nuts in it, it is also a nice split loop with velcro and a snap holding it, so that you can remove the sheath without unbuckling the belt, which is nice when leaving the woods and going into a place that may not like a 7 inch blade on your side. It also can be adjusted to hang the knife higher or lower compared to the belt loop with 4 possible mounting points the same width in the sheath. Over all there are 14 holes (7 per side) in the sheath that could be used for cord type tying off of the blade or hanging of it, sized for small sized cord or paracord, also 4 strap slots (2 per side) making your imagination and other gear the only limits on how to attach/carry this tool.OK, but enough of how it looks and the basic description of the knife as shipped, what about how it is used? Well, it ships literally at a near razor sharpness, at least my 2 did, I have a bare spot on my forearm from testing them with the really silly "will it shave my arm" test. It did. It also cuts unsupported paper with ease. So I was itching to try it out on other things. IN mundane tasks around the house, I cut up some 1/4 inch nylon cord I had to the lengths I needed for a project, easy simple cutting through it like butter. Then I decided I needed something more to test it, so I went out back to try battoning some wood. It excels at this task as well. Had some small branches in the 4-6inch diameter range I decided to split, and the only limit seemed to be keeping the branch diameter smaller than the blade length so I had something to hit with the batton.Haven't taken it out camping yet, and probably won't until the spring as I don't have any hunting planned this year sadly, but I will definitely be adding this to my camping gear as well as my GTFO pack. Only downside really is the coating means it can't be used with a fire steel to make sparks unless I remove a section of it, but I also usually carry at least 3 knives when camping/hiking anyway "just in case" so I can carry this as my main knife, and just make sure one of my smaller backups is not coated to use for fire if the matches get wet/fail.