Extrema Ratio knives News 2016, HF1, HF2, Shrapnel SanMai, Nightmare Karambit 

have to agree here as well, plus a move away from European produced raw materials, ie San Mai instead of N690. I think on such a small blade, San Mai offers no benefit other than, "you can make it" Their T4000 series would benefit from San Mai or even the original Task.

I wonder if these new heavy folders have a stronger locking system compared to the RAO and did a workaround of the problem displayed by Coldsteel that the RAO lock can be damaged even if the pin is securely holding the blade. That is the blade will rattle with the pin inserted and will not stay open after removing the pin. Most probably a total abuse of the knife was done during these tests effectively destroying it. However somebody suggested that a hole be made in the blade itself and lock pin could go thru. Cold Steel made a big fuss about the lock of the RAO compared to their 4-MAX, implying that the ER is just a poor knife, but still, the RAO should be a good knife and it is not needed to have a strength of unreal values. Maybe the lock was not intended to be abused, but used sensibly... Above a certain limit, all knives fail. The moral, respect the knife for what it is.

I haven't yet seen this lock strength test. To be honest their sensationalist advertising demonstrations prove nothing (most if not all of their tests use one knife, ie an "n" number = to one- this has got to be about the most unscientific way to prove anything)-but I give them credit as they attract many and maybe their sales are great simply because of this and nothing to do with the strength of their knives.. Irrespective of that, I've used my RAO II so many times now both with pin in and without and I have total confidence in it not collapsing on me while batoning or actually using it to hack into large branches, something I have never dreamed upon doing with a folder, as it 's asking for trouble. I mean do we all race out and buy a Humvee just because we can beat the sh%t out of it and it will outlast your average car? No we don't. The weak point of the RAOII like all folders is that it consists of small parts which can clog with mud or dirt or sand and need to be treated accordingly. Just to repeat here what i've said elsewhere. If indeed your knife (any knife for that matter-folder or fixed blade) encountered such forces as they show then your arm or whatever appendage/digits/fingers-whatever one wants to refer to them as; would be severely damaged from this impact and the last thing one would be worried about was whether their folder or knife was in one piece LOL. But as I said CS know how to pull the crowds with these sorts of demos. For me, the real enjoyment of (the rare times when I do) watching them is seeing how dangerous the filming set is since the MD is mostly carrying side arms! WOW! The film crew or the area or something on or near the set must pose a real risk to life.

Yeah, absolutely true. Thanks for this great writeup! This info is something the forum users should do with...

Well I think the problem is for some reason there are a lot of ER haters out there and I'm not going to waste my time posting there anymore. It's mostly biased towards US products. But on that other note, ER should be seriously addressing these public challenges I feel. I used to work for a V big USA firm and we always challenged (when challenged) the competition but not in slagging way but fair and fair tests comparing like with like otherwise the tests are meaningless.