Cold steel micro recon 1

Cold Steel has a deserved reputation for making quality knives at a price that you have to consider as cheap for the specification they possess. The Recon 1 is a firm favourite in the Cold Steel stable and it comes in three blade sizes. The smaller brother is the limited edition Micro with a 45mm spear point blade. It is limited edition due to its colour(s) – available in pink, zombie green or orange and really stands out. You will never lose it if you drop it, that’s for sure.

Tuff-Ex

The blade is made from Austenitic Stainless Steel to 8A grade but has been coated in what Cold Steel call the Tuff- Ex™ finish. Their testing has shown this coating offers three major advantages for tactical blades. First, it helps the blade to resist rust. Second, it eliminates glare and light reflections, which you may or may not find useful. And thirdly, Tuff-Ex is a very good lubricant, which causes the blade to slip through even tough material with less friction. This means you can cut deeper and far longer than with a non- Tuff-Ex™ coated blade – so they claim.

The lock on the blade is one of the best I have seen on a small knife. Typically Cold Steel have a name for it and it’s called the Tri-Ad lock™. With the lock undone the 47mm blade has an ambidextrous thumb stud. There is no blade wobble and it has 6061 heat-treated spacers. Because it is so small a pocket clip will not really fit onto the knife so it comes with a key ring loop that fits into a 3.5mm diameter hole in the rear of the synthetic handle, the sides of which are textured in a ‘brick’ checkered pattern. The handle itself has a distinctive shape, with curved sections underneath to fit the first and middle finger with the first finger curve having five grooves cut across the slabs for added grip. Four more are cut into the slabs on the top curve for the thumb. The top lock section lies behind the thumb curve.

Conclusion

This is a well-made small knife and not expensive for the specification. Regular Micro Recon 1 models come in black with the pink, zombie green and orange handle knives as limited edition. As well as the spear point they do a Tanto blade for the black standard version but I prefer the spear point for everyday use

PRICES: £33.60
DISTRIBUTOR: BA Blades 0800 862 0411 www.coldsteel-uk.com