If I was forced to pick just one style of knife to use for everything, it would probably be a Scandinavian style fixed blade with somewhere between a 3.5 and 5 inch blade and a Scandi grind. After a lot of years of using and testing knives, that’s the size and grind I’ve found I prefer for most general purpose work.
I own a number of traditional Scandinavian knives, but I’ve always liked modern interpretations of the design too. They retain the simple, practical nature of the originals while taking advantage of modern steels and materials. Cold Steel has played around with Finnish influenced designs for nearly two decades now, and I’ve owned most of them at one point or another.
The latest is the Finn Hawk II, and Cold Steel has taken a different approach with this one. Rather than another inexpensive working knife, the Finn Hawk II takes the basic Finnish inspired formula and upgrades it with premium materials and a much more substantial build.
The Finn Hawk II
The Finn Hawk II is a collaboration between Lynn C. Thompson and custom knifemaker Andrew Demko. Andy has a long history of design work with Cold Steel, and I’ve always liked his stuff. I’ve known him for years too, and he’s another Pennsylvania guy who lives only about an hour away, so I was glad to see his name attached to this one.
The Finn Hawk II uses a 4 inch CPM 3V blade with a Scandi grind. The blade is 2.8mm thick, which gives it a little more substance than the typical lightweight Scandinavian utility knife while still keeping the geometry appropriate for the style. Overall length is 8.6 inches, with a 4.5 inch handle. My sample weighed an even 6 ounces on my scale, or 8.5 ounces with the leather sheath.
Cold Steel uses Micarta handle scales rather than the molded synthetic handles found on its earlier Finn series knives. The scales have a traditional looking profile with a slight palm swell and a flared butt to help keep the knife secure in your hand.
The Finn Hawk II comes with a leather belt sheath, another departure from the inexpensive utility knife approach of the earlier Finn models. Between the CPM 3V blade, Micarta scales and leather sheath, this is clearly intended to be a more upscale take on the Finnish influenced working knives Cold Steel has offered in the past.
The upgrade comes with an equally substantial jump in price. The Finn Hawk II carries an MSRP of $279.99, although street prices may be a little lower. That’s still a substantial jump from the inexpensive Finn knives I’ve used over the years and puts the Finn Hawk II in a very different category.
Almost 20 Years With Cold Steel’s Finns
I’ve been using Cold Steel’s Finn series since they first came out. I picked up the original Finn Bear not long after Cold Steel introduced it in 2007. It was an inexpensive fixed blade that borrowed heavily from the lines of the famous Tapio Wirkkala puukko, a knife I also own.
The Finn Bear wasn’t made with exotic materials. It used German 4116 stainless steel and a simple synthetic handle, but that was part of its appeal. It was an inexpensive working knife that performed well above its pay grade. It reminded me a lot of the Swedish Mora knives I’ve used over the years. They weren’t fancy knives, but the simple Scandinavian blade geometry worked, the steel was tough and easy to maintain, and you didn’t have to worry about beating them up.
Cold Steel continued playing with the Finnish theme over the years. The Finn Wolf brought the concept to a folding knife, while the original Finn Hawk returned to a fixed blade format. I picked up both of those as well and thought highly of them. They cost a little more than the original Finn Bear, but they were still reasonably priced working knives built from good, practical materials rather than premium ones.
Fast forward to 2026 and Cold Steel has gone in a different direction with the Finn Hawk II. This isn’t simply the original Finn Hawk remade with more expensive materials. Put the two side by side and the family resemblance is obvious, but the Finn Hawk II is a substantial redesign.
The blade is broader with a different profile, while the molded handle of the original gives way to full tang construction with contoured Micarta scales and hollow rivets. Deep jimping along the spine adds another functional change to the new design. What hasn’t changed is the basic idea. The Finn Hawk II is still a compact, Finnish inspired working knife built around the kind of blade geometry that made me a fan of these knives in the first place.
Putting the Finn Hawk II to Work
I’ve had the Finn Hawk II since early summer, so I’ve had a fair amount of time to get acquainted with it. I don’t carry a fixed blade every day like I do a folder, but the Finn Hawk II has seen enough use for me to get a good feel for it.
Despite the modern materials and appearance, at its core the Finn Hawk II is still everything that has made Scandinavian knives one of my go to styles over the years. A 4 inch blade is plenty for most of the things I use a fixed blade for. At the same time, it isn’t so big that it becomes unwieldy to carry or use for more detailed work.
The Micarta handle isn’t huge at 4.5 inches long, but it fits my hand well. The shape and contours provided a good, comfortable carving grip. There are dished out sections on either side of the handle that your fingers naturally settle into. It’s not really a feature I can recall seeing on other knife handles, but I like it. Since they’re on both sides, they work equally well regardless of which hand you’re using.
The spine jimping is fairly deep and gives your thumb a solid purchase when bearing down on heavier cuts. Cold Steel rounded the edges of the jimping, though, so it doesn’t feel sharp or start biting into your thumb as you apply pressure. Fit and finish on the scales was excellent too. There were no sharp edges or raised spots, and the Micarta was flush with the tang as it should be.
Wood, Fire and Vampire Stakes
The Scandi edge is where I spent most of my time, and as expected, it did a great job on carving and whittling. Whenever I camp, one of the first things I do around the fire is carve a vampire stake. My buddies have scoffed at this practice over the years, but we’ve never been attacked by vampires while camping, so who’s laughing now?
More importantly for knife testing purposes, it gives me a pretty good baseline for how a knife handles wood. I knock off any small branches or shoots, strip away the bark, carve one end into a sharp point and round off the other. There’s enough work involved that you quickly get a feel for the edge geometry, control and how comfortable the handle remains as you work.
The Finn Hawk II was right at home doing that kind of work. The Scandi grind bites nicely into wood and gives me the control I want for both removing material and making finer cuts. The 4 inch blade also hits a nice middle ground. There’s enough blade for heavier work without giving up the control that makes this style of knife so useful in the first place.
I also used the Finn Hawk II to split kindling and prepare tinder. The sharpened spine adds another useful tool without touching the cutting edge. I used it to scrape fatwood into a fine powder for fire starting, then struck a ferro rod with the spine to get the fire going. Both tasks worked well and are exactly the sort of details I like seeing on a knife intended for outdoor use.
The edge has held up extremely well through everything I’ve done with the Finn Hawk II so far. After a summer of carving, whittling, splitting kindling and general use, I haven’t seen any chipping, rolling or other edge deformation. Just as importantly, I haven’t noticed any appreciable loss of sharpness. If the edge has lost anything from when it was new, it hasn’t been enough for me to notice in use.
That’s about all I can ask from a working knife. I haven’t needed to touch up the edge yet, so I can’t comment on sharpening the CPM 3V from firsthand experience. So far, its combination of toughness and edge retention has been impressive.
Carrying the Finn Hawk II
I’m a fan of traditional dangler style sheaths on puukkos, but Cold Steel went with a more conventional Western style leather belt sheath for the Finn Hawk II. The sheath is set up for right hand carry and its belt loop will accommodate belts up to 3 inches wide. That should cover pretty much anything you’re likely to use, including a wider gun belt if you wanted to add the Finn Hawk II to a hunting rig.
The sheath carries the knife with the handle roughly at belt level, which keeps it out of the way when sitting or bending over. It doesn’t move with you the way a dangler does, but the Finn Hawk II is compact enough that it really doesn’t need to.
About half of the handle remains exposed when the knife is sheathed. That along with the shape of the pommel, gave me plenty to grab when drawing the knife. I never felt like I needed a lanyard to help pull it from the sheath. If you prefer one, though, the Finn Hawk II has two hollow handle rivets, including one near the pommel that provides a convenient attachment point.
Retention is provided by the molded leather, and it does its job well. I shook the sheathed Finn Hawk II upside down and couldn’t get the knife to shift at all, let alone pop free. Leather can stretch with enough use, but the sheath starts out snug enough that I’m not particularly concerned about that happening anytime soon. Honestly, if I spend enough time in the woods to wear out a quality leather sheath, I’ll be more than happy to replace it someday.
The Finn Grows Up
I’ve been happy with all of the variations in Cold Steel’s Finn line over the years. The Finn Bear fills that inexpensive Mora type niche, and it does it well. The Finn Wolf is its own beast, taking some of that Finnish influence and adapting it to a folding EDC knife. The original Finn Hawk was a solid step up from the Bear in strength and brought a different design to the fixed blade side of the family.
That makes the original Finn Hawk the most direct comparison to the Finn Hawk II. Put them side by side and they clearly share the same basic DNA, but you’re getting more with the Finn Hawk II than a simple materials upgrade. The broader blade, full tang construction, contoured Micarta scales and redesigned handle give it a different feel in the hand and different handling in use.
There’s also a big jump in price between the two. Some of that obviously comes from premium materials like CPM 3V and Micarta, along with the quality leather sheath. After using the Finn Hawk II, though, I don’t think the difference ends with the materials list. There’s a noticeable step up in overall build, fit, feel and handling.
None of that takes anything away from the original Finn Hawk. It’s a good working knife, and I’ve been happy with mine. The Finn Hawk II just feels like it’s playing in a different category.
Despite the upscale treatment, Cold Steel didn’t lose what I’ve always liked about Scandinavian knives in the process. The Finn Hawk II is still a practical 4 inch fixed blade with a Scandi grind that worked equally well for fine carving or tackling heavier camp chores. It just does those things in a considerably more refined package.
More than anything, the Finn Hawk II feels like an heirloom grade working knife. It’s not something I’d buy to put away and keep pristine. It’s a knife I can see using regularly, putting some honest wear on over the years and eventually passing down to one of my kids. With the materials and construction Cold Steel used, I expect it’ll still have plenty of life left in it when that day comes.