Cold Steel Bolo Machete Review

[Jonas]

My friend bought a Cold Steel bolo not too long ago because they are inexpensive (close to 8 dollars) and Cold Steel is a quality name in knives. He dinged the blade on a nail on and decided he was going to destroy it instead of fixing it. After 45 minutes he managed to bend it in half. He wanted to throw it away so he got the idea that he should saw it into pieces with a hacksaw, 15 minutes later with no results he decided to just put it in his basement and forget about it. I found out about it and was like SCORE! FREE MACHETE!!!!!!!!!!!!! I was able to fix it with a vice and a hammer in roughly 10 minutes, So here's my review...

Dimensions
The blade is close to 16 3/8" long, slightly over 1/16 of an inch thick and 22" overall and
has a full tang.

Feel
I find the grip to be absolutely incredible. It's actually the reason I was so happy when my friend gave it to me. It's slightly contoured on both sides which acts as a kind of ambidextrous thumb rest. It’s got a textured finish and a hole in the end that you could attach a lanyard to or use to hang it on a wall. I’ll note that the grip is a tad thick and may not be that great for someone with smaller hands. The knife has pretty good balance due to the thickness of the handle and the short thin blade. Which leads me to my next portion...

Function
Judging from the chunk missing from where my friend hit a nail and how easy this was to bend back into shape this isn’t the hardest steel. Cold Steel is known for their cutlery’s thoroughness but these machetes are actually manufactured by a private company in South Africa and sold to Cold Steel. I tend to think the quality isn’t exactly what you’d expect from them but more than you’d reason from something that costs under 10 dollars. My next issue is with it is the thickness. 1/16th of an inch isn’t what you expect from a bolo. Bolo’s are meant to be heavy. They should practically be able to be used in place of a hatchet and the weight of the knife should be in the front. This knife’s weight is well distributed, which would make it great for swinging at brush but nothing thicker. My father has an old bolo knife in the basement. It’s blade is 1/8th of an inch and offers everything you’d expect from a bolo.

The Cold Steel bolo is great machete for under ten dollars but don’t buy it if you have seen another bolo and assume that this is anything like it.

I would not give this my seal of approval for use against zombies however it’s fine and dandy in place of a regular machete for chores/camping.

[Jonas]

[ProZombieHunter]

Not at all like the bolo I use.

[jamoni]

The average machete (which this is, despite the blade profile and the name) is made of softer steel than most knives, to make it more flexible and less likely to break. This means it doesn't hold an edge as well as it might, but it also means a lightweight brush-cutter that won't shatter the first time you hit a tree. Nice find.

[ProZombieHunter]

The Filipino bolos I trained with in escrima were full tang with wooden handles.

There was one that no one trained with, because it was handled with Filipino mahogany (the tree is now extinct).

They were pretty heavy but well balanced and could be used like a hatchet.

[NICEPORCH]

the only thing i hate more than filipinos, are fatties.

[ProZombieHunter]

How can you hate Filipinos, man?

We've never hurt anyone! (Except Magellan)

[Jeff]

the only thing i hate more than filipinos, are fatties.

What the hell is with the trolls lately? Jesus.




Thank you for the review, Jonas

[jamoni]

Ignore it. It's gone.

[Jonas]

Just an update. I've reprofiled the blade as I have changed my recent standards on how sharp "sharp" is. Utility edges have to now cut paper and blades that could cut paper before now have to be shave sharp. This means the bolo is sharp enough to slice paper effortlessly.

I've also given in and took off some of the grip to improve the fit for my smaller hand.

I've done some preliminary chopping on a downed maple limb. My goal was to use just the bolo and prepare enough wood to start a small fire. It was able to chop the wood into sections, split it into kindling and I used it as a draw knife to fray some wood to actually start the fire. It worked out, I did end up with a fire.

Once I'm done restoring and rehandling an old hatchet I picked up I'm going to test it against this bolo, an actual heavy weight hard steel bolo, a field saw and maybe my large bowie style buck...and possibly a carbon steel skinner I acquired.