Knife Deep Dive: Cold Steel Trailmaster VG1 San Mai III

Knife Deep Dive: Cold Steel Trailmaster VG1 San Mai III

When you think of big, tough knives, it's not strange to think of Cold Steel. The entire company is built on building the strongest and most durable knives in the industry. The Trailmaster VG1 San Mai III is a very good representation of this.

This bowie-type knife has an impressive 34cm overall length and an equally astonishing 8mm thick spine. It's a full-tang monster, complemented by a grippy Kraton handle and a secure ex-nylon sheath. Lynn Thompson designed it to be the best all round bowie knife in the world. So as an all-purpose knife, the challenge was to choose steel that could retain its sharpness for a long time, but could also be used in wet or humid conditions. That's quite a challenge, because when people look and stay focused, they often look at carbon steel. The challenge, of course, is that the higher the carbon content in steel, the less corrosion resistant it is. Which brings us to the San Mai steel.

San Mai means "three plates", referring to the three layers of blade steel from which the knife is made. The core is VG1 carbon steel and is sandwiched between two softer, but still tough layers of corrosion resistant steel. 420J2 is rumored to be used for the outer shells of VG1 San Mai III models produced by Hattori.

Born in 1939, Ichiro Hattori is a renowned knife maker in the city of Seki, Japan. Seki is known for its knife making heritage, just as Solingen is in Germany. Hattori also produces the knives for some series of Fällkniven, such as the Thor.

The Trailmaster was originally introduced in 1987 and has been legendary ever since. Several changes have been made in design and production over the years. The early Trailmasters had a convex grind, but were eventually changed to a flat grind.

In 2015, Cold Steel ended most of the production of their VG1 Core San Mai model in Seki, Japan. While the blade has been revamped to some extent in Taiwan in early 2018, the VG1 San Mai Trail Master remains the only Cold Steel blade still manufactured by Hattori in Seki.