All of the knives featured in our Battle Ready Classics Series have been made by Cold Steel for many years and are well proven in the field as well as in hand to hand combat. Frankly, we have been scratching our heads trying to figure out how we could improve them without drastically raising their price. The answer was to offer them in our famous San Mai III steel. Made in Japan according to our strict standards since the mid 1980"s, San Mai III has proven unsurpassed in strength, toughness, sharpness and ease of re-sharpening. Over the years, other "super steels" have come and gone but San Mai III remains as the most proven high performance stainless steel in the world.