Manix 2 S110V review / Cardboard cutting 101

[Evil D]

I've wanted to do a video like this for a long time. It's real simple, and might be common sense..I dunno. I've watched a lot of people cut corrugated the way I would consider to be the wrong way, so I thought I'd make a quick video since I was doing some more edge testing on my Manix.

[video=youtube;6Up6q6WiHXs]https://youtu.be/6Up6q6W ... ure=gp-n-y[/video]



Here's the box that gave up it's life for the cause (had a full size self propelled lawn mower in it...a grown man could curl up inside there...it's a big box).


The whole box and inside dividers are a very heavy weight double wall corrugated (C and A flute if I remember right..it's been a while )



The aftermath (can you find the Manix?)





All together, I made 1990 cuts.

Some observations:

1. The sharpening choil. After about a dozen cuts, I immediately regretted the sharpening choil. I'm not sure why but that thing snagged on almost every cut. I've never had one snag as much as this one. I'm gonna have to sharpen the notch into a serration or something to correct this. After this I can't in good conscience recommend adding a notch on this knife. It could just be how I did it...who knows. As I've said before on this topic, I have several Spydercos that have them from the factory, and I've never had this issue so it may just be how I cut it...it is a little on the big side.


2. The FRN handle. Maybe it's just been a long time since I used a FRN handled knife this hard/long, but this thing was very rough on my hand. It isn't the knife itself, not the design or the ergonomics, it's all that texture and grip. Grip is a two way street...this knife is unlikely to slip out of your hand even if you're processing a deer and you're covered in blood and fat, but at the same time it's gonna leave an impression in your skin after a few hard spirited cuts. After a couple hundred cuts I put on a glove, which eliminated the hot spots except for my thumb when using saber grip, from pressing into the thumb ramp. If I had a need to use my knife this much on a regular basis (not sure who would), I would be very tempted to do a G10 blade swap, but I don't think this will be an issue for general purpose use.
(my hand was quite red in this pic but the camera didn't show it very well)


3. Edge retention. The edge is now what I would consider to be dull. It'll still slice cardboard, but when you look closely at the cut, it's pretty frayed and fuzzy looking. It'll probably go on cutting cardboard for a good number more cuts, but it won't slice printer paper at all. If you do it just right it'll sort of shred it's way through but not in a way that I would accept. The knife also wasn't freshly sharpened before this, so there isn't any real test data going on here, just me with some spare time and a big box that wouldn't fit in a trash can, and my own curiosity.

4. Lockup and pivot play. The lockup is still solid as a rock, and there isn't any side to side play at all. The blade does drop noticeably easier by gravity, so it definitely has broken in some.

5. Edge wear/damage. Nothing new here that Ankerson and others haven't told you, this one is mainly for Cliff Stamp! Yes Cliff, the edge did chip in this test, I think. Not much if at all, not enough that I can see it with my naked eye, but the edge feels "gritty" when running your fingernail down it. Micro chips? Call it what you will. I don't have a way to take good magnified macro shots (how do you guys do that anyway?) but looking at the edge under my 20x and 60x loupes, the edge looks more worn than chipped. There aren't any big nicks taken out of the edge that I can see even with the 60x loupe. The damage/wear is very uniform looking throughout the entire edge and the edge reflects like pretty evenly (meaning there aren't any single spots that are shinier/brighter than the rest of the edge, which would indicate a chip). You can tell me what you think this is, chips or whatever, maybe just typical wear from this kind of use? I can't see reflections from looking at the edge from the side when under light like I normally do when (what I would consider) a chip is present. At any rate, it still isn't anything even close to what I've experienced with other steels, including S30V and 20CP.

In the end, almost 2000 cuts through heavy double wall corrugated (now that I think of it, I probably made more than the extra 10 cuts when I broke the box down into smaller pieces to cut up, so it's really over 2k), and the knife was still making cuts. I was half tempted to look for other boxes to cut up, but honestly I just got plain old sick of cutting cardboard. Didn't break the blade off (lol), didn't get any blisters (though I may have if I hadn't put a glove on). I would still prefer this knife with solid G10 scales with the same minimalistic "8 shaped" liners that the FRN version has, but otherwise I couldn't be happier. Can you say "$100 cardboard conquerer"?

[Ankerson]

Nice write up and video. :)

At the hardness that the S110V is on this knife 62 RC it will reduce the amount of deformation of the edge because the compression strength is higher than it would be at lower hardness.

[angusW]

Nice write up. Good tip on cutting cardboard or any thicker material with the knife on an angle as apposed to 90° to the cardboard.

I was cutting cardboard at work a couple weeks ago and my colleague was amazed at how easily it went through it. I let him try it and he was just laughing and cutting. I told him he was getting a bit creepy and to give me back my knife :)

I did notice last week though that there were a couple chips in mine but that wasn't from the cardboard. I was stripping some #6 stranded wire that had been out in the elements for years. The casing was very hard.

[bdblue]

That's a lot of cuts!
I did a test with my Gayle Bradley cutting similar very heavy cardboard. I was making straight cuts through long pieces and I estimated about 100 linear foot of cut before it got dull. If we assume that each of your cuts is 4" than you made 660 linear foot of cut, very much more than my 100'.

[DougC-3]

Thanks for the effort and information. Sounds good. I'm still very pleased with mine, not to say stuck on it

[Surfingringo]

Thanks for the test and comprehensive write up! Well done.

P.S. Sharpening choil....hehehehehehe. Sorry, you know I can't help myself! :D
Anyway, I think sharpening the choil into a single serration would work fine. At least it would cut instead of snagging.

[Johnnie1801]

Thanks Evil, I'm interested in getting this knife and this info is very useful.

[chuck_roxas45]

Evil, it would be nice to see a head to head vs. the BD-1. :D

*cough* hint *cough*

[TheFactor]

Great review Evil ! I enjoy all your reviews and again well done sir .

[senorsquare]

Nice review D.

[Evil D]

Evil, it would be nice to see a head to head vs. the BD-1. :D

*cough* hint *cough*

If I had one I'd do it but I passed on BD1.

That's a lot of cuts!
I did a test with my Gayle Bradley cutting similar very heavy cardboard. I was making straight cuts through long pieces and I estimated about 100 linear foot of cut before it got dull. If we assume that each of your cuts is 4" than you made 660 linear foot of cut, very much more than my 100'.

Most of them were actually 6-8 inches, or at least the length of the knife. I made an effort to use the whole edge so I made long sweeping slices.

[WireEdge Roger]

Good work! S110V is certainly an interesting steel, I'm really enjoying it.

[Brock O Lee]

Good tip on cutting at 45 deg to prevent binding, I have discovered this a few months ago and it works really really well .

[Cliff Stamp]

After this I can't in good conscience recommend adding a notch on this knife.

The notch should be forward sloped and rounded to prevent snagging. There are some pretty decent threads/YT video's on this showing various designs. The basic idea is that it is just asymmetrical and rounded forward so material easily slides out of it.

You can tell me what you think this is, chips or whatever, maybe just typical wear from this kind of use?

It isn't something which is opinion, you either know or you don't, but like onions vs potato, you either know which one is the potato or you don't, people generally don't debate it - here anyway.

S110V will wear by fracture around and through the primary carbide aggregates (all high carbide steels do as the aggregates are extremely brittle and the matrix bond is a weak point). How much of it is dependent on the material and how you are cutting, it is normally on the scale of the size of the carbides which in this case is ~10 microns.

As the force increases and the material gets harder you can force a crack through/around several aggregates at which point they will start to become visible. Damage beyond that is influenced by, but not strictly dependent on the micro-structure, i.e., run the blade right into a staple and it is more about the gross hardness/ductility .

In regards to cutting until you can't cut cardboard, this takes a long time. I normally do 250 meter runs and blades will still slice paper at the end, just with varying degrees of ease. Because blunting is highly nonlinear, the difference in sharpness at the end is <5% for any steel (as they are all very dull) and you can cut much more material with only a small additional blunting, as again it is non linear.

Chris (who posts here) attempted to do dulling runs until the point he could not cut paper with very simple steels (as in 420HC class), he could not do it even with tremendous amount of material, again it is because the process is nonlinear. This is why people like Boye could literally slice up huge mounds of natural rope, at some point the rate of dulling is so slow it is difficult to even tell it is changing.



That is a Cold Steel Twistmaster : 50100-B/59 HRC

Note the extremely slow rate of wear after just 10 meters, going out all the way to 250 m only does a similar amount of blunting as to the first 10, and it gets slower again from that point on.

Of course the great thing for a user is if you are willing to let you knife go just a little duller you can cut tremendous amounts more material. This is why you can see people claim they can skin 40-50 large animals, use a knife for weeks/months without sharpening, etc. . they are in that long plateau region and are willing to work there with their knives. If you are then sharpening can be very infrequent.

[Donut]

David, check out the sharpening notch on the DPx HEST fixed blade and folder. The notch is angled to let the edge overlap the notch.

It might be worth trying to do.

[Ned]

Great information, thanks for sharing.

[Evil D]

My notch is a bit angled but apparently not enough. At this point correcting it is gonna cost me ~3/16 of edge Oh well, good thing they're standard production huh :D

[Cliff Stamp]

Before you try the forward slope, try fully rounding it like Reeve does with the spine of the Sebenza's and just putting a slight round on the leading edge, even 1/16" long. That alone will make a significant difference.