Cold steel is a knife company headquartered in Irving, TX. The knife company has recently been acquired by GSM Outdoors.
Founded by Lynn Thompson the company is widely known for outrageous product testing videos which often find Lynn using his knives and swords to hack at meat.
Long before anybody was asking “Will it cut?” on Forged in Fire – Lynn was cutting hogs in half with broad swords.
Harnessing this marketing, he was able to build one of the largest brands in production cutlery.
Before he strapped on his meat boots and started hanging cinder blocks to test locking mechanisms, Lynn was teaming up with American Cutlery Manufacturers to produce a high quality balisong. That balisong was the Cold Steel Arc Angel.
While they are no longer making Balisongs stateside the effect of Lynns marketing on the knife industry will echo for long to come.
Cold Steel Balisong Models:
Cold Steel is now for the most part manufacturing their knives abroad which means the they no longer can legally market and sell Balisongs.
- Cold Steel Arc Angel – Titanium Channel Balisong
- FGX Tanto – Plastic Bali (not recommended for flipping)
The Arc Angel has similar dimensions to the venerable Benchmade 42. It features channel handles with a tang pin and kicker mechanism. The handles are just a smidge longer than the Benchmade 4X series and many folks believe it to flip even better.
While the Arc Angel balisong did bring a pocket clip to the balisong market, it lacks a spring latch mechanism like the model 42 from Benchmade.
One very common complaint about the Cold Steel Arc angel is that the balisong featured a carbon blade rather than a stainless steel blade. The Carbon V steel blade is much more prone to rust or patina. This means that today there are few examples still in pristine condition.
This rarity has made the price of Arc Angels higher on the secondary knife market.
If you own a Cold Steel Arc Angel - I've written up a quick article on How -To Perform Basic Balisong Pivot Maintenance head over and give it a read.