MKC fails to meet advertised Magnacut hardness?

[Svivian]

They do now in their new facility. Note: I have no connection to them, but I did watch the video. This one talks about their equipment including their screw making machine, and all of their workstations to fully assemble/make their knives.

I could understand not hitting their rated hardness if they sent their knives out. But in house makes it even worst

 

[Fowl Play]

So.... I have no affiliation with MKC and don't own any of their knives. I just want to point out, that this person is taking their hardness measurements from random points like handles and top of the blades -- at least all of the tests I opened on their youtube channel. (could not find videos of MKC blades).

It is 100% possible to only quench the blade edge to that full hardness and in many cases desirable, as you actually want the increased ductility in the bulk of the blade for robustness. Nowhere in any of his videos did I see him test a blade near it's edge.

Just want to point out it could be a flawed test, and not necessarily a bad heat treat on the blade edge. Cause he never tested the blade edge.

 

[jimh406]

I could understand not hitting their rated hardness if they sent their knives out. But in house makes it even worst

I guess we don't know when/where they were made, or if their machine is dialed in now or not.

 

[ckt3]

So.... I have no affiliation with MKC and don't own any of their knives. I just want to point out, that this person is taking their hardness measurements from random points like handles and top of the blades -- at least all of the tests I opened on their youtube channel. (could not find videos of MKC blades).

It is 100% possible to only quench the blade edge to that full hardness and in many cases desirable, as you actually want the increased ductility in the bulk of the blade for robustness. Nowhere in any of his videos did I see him test a blade near it's edge.

Just want to point out it could be a flawed test, and not necessarily a bad heat treat on the blade edge. Cause he never tested the blade edge.

Overall, seeing his tests.... I'd call into question all of his results as he does not account for the possibility of variable hardness in a blade.

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For a lot of these fancy alloys like Magnacut, you are heat treating the entire piece of steel uniformly, not doing differential hardening. The recipes are pretty complex... something like "whole blade into sealed foil pouch, bring up to XXXX temp for YY min, then rapidly cool between plates, and cryo freeze in liquid nitrogen for ZZ minutes". Any part of that piece of metal will have the same hardness.

Also to get a good hardness measurement, you want to be applying pressure perpendicularly on flats, so testing the edge itself is not accurate.

 

[Fowl Play]

For a lot of these fancy alloys like Magnacut, you are heat treating the entire piece of steel uniformly, not doing differential hardening. The recipes are pretty complex... something like "whole blade into sealed foil pouch, bring up to XXXX temp for YY min, then rapidly cool between plates, and cryo freeze in liquid nitrogen for ZZ minutes". Any part of that piece of metal will have the same hardness.

Also to get a good hardness measurement, you want to be applying pressure perpendicularly on flats, so testing the edge itself is not accurate.

Good to know. I was not familiar with the heat treat process for magnacut, so there cannot be any variability along the blade in how it is heated or quenched?

Would be at least nice and probably easier and faster to just skate the blades against files of known varying hardness. But I guess if you have access to a fancy digital tester it can be fun.

 

[Svivian]

It’s really not that complicated unless you want to make it so. I just follow the makers recommendations on blades I’ve made and the few I’ve sent to be tested have came back in the range listed in the charts

 

[Ratamahatta]

 

[Fowl Play]

It’s really not that complicated unless you want to make it so. I just follow the makers recommendations on blades I’ve made and the few I’ve sent to be tested have came back in the range listed in the charts

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Ok yeah, not doing that to a portion of the blade. Appreciate the education.

Alright, I tried to play devil’s advocate. The hate can continue

 

[butcherboy]

I have a Blackfoot. Used it a few times breaking down elk. It didn’t do anything amazingly different than my cheaper knives. Had to sharpen it after doing the first elk which isn’t a big deal to me since I sharpen knives everyday. I’ll probably buy an Ironwill knife next. I had to laugh when they introduced their boning knife with the Bearded Butchers. A glorified Victorinox 6” boning knife.

 

[TheTone]

Make sure to buy one at full price on a semi pretend limited drop so they can send a few hundred to influencers and also have money to spend on marketing hunts and campaigns

 

[WoolyBugger]

I fell into it a couple years ago when you could sell the knife more than you paid for it because of the manufactured scarcity. I do actually like the blade I have but the marketing and influencer stuff has pissed me off. But that’s nothing compared to the fanboys on the Facebook group that attack you for saying anything negative and blindly buy up anything these guys put out, slap an MKC logo on anything and they will buy it (honestly genius marketing by Josh). Call me crazy, but I don’t need my knife company to put out a technical clothing line.

Also the $400 folder is dumb.