mad dog mirage X composite

[hopethisisnttaken]

Does anyone here have one of these or know anything about these at all? I have only held one once and thought it was pretty nice, good feel and all, but the claims made about this ceramic composite are really pretty hard to believe. The company says it will shave steel off one of their ATAK knives. It is also said about that it really will never need any sharpening as this composite is almost as hard as diamond? Oh and it also has flex in the blade. Being a ceramic composite I find that really hard to believe..

 

[thaddeus]

I have one and it is everything they say it is.
I am told it is a bit brittle and could break, BUT, MD does demos where he throws them in the air as high as he can, having them land on cement, and they generally hold up very well time and again (I certainly would not want to do that with any of my steel knives). In that regard (brittleness and flex), they seem to have the resilience about that of a metal file.
The edge is everything he says it is. It shaves steel, and cuts glass, including any plates or jars you come in contact with while preparing food.

It will never corrode, and the edge lasts forever. And, it takes a bit of patience to hone, but it can be done (or you can send it in and he will sharpen it).

 

[Steelwolf]

Thaddeus, haven't seen you around for a while.

hopethisisnttaken, I have a MirageX EOD. As you can tell from the wink that Thad gave you, he isn't being totally serious. Since you have held the knife in your hands, you know that it is incredibly thick. I have not been able to flex that blade by hand, nor do I want to put it in to a vice to test it. But what I have personally done with it was chop up a wooden pallet, whittle a branch with the same edge (but that wasn't very well done as the edge was quite thick), and repeatedly puncture food tin cans. It could slice paper quite well, but I stopped short of cutting up meat with it (unfortunately). The edge held up well and there was no visible damage, nor was any resharpening needed in between each excercise. I have not tried shaving metal or glass with it and do not intend to, but maybe when I get home for the holidays, I'll pull it out again and try slicing up meat. But be warned, such hardness comes at a price. When I bought the knife 2nd hand from someone (I think it was Thaddeus), there were 3 small chips in the edge (how it got there I'll never know). So I tried sharpening it to get rid of the chips. Using a Lansky Deluxe Diamond system, I took about 6 evenings (about 2 hours each) to work the blade to a point I was satisfied, though not entirely happy, with.

If you want to know more, go to Cliff Stamp's webpage and look for his review on the Mirage, or do a search in the Knife reviews column. This knife has been discussed quite extensively in the past. You could also head over to knifeforum.com and look there. Mad Dog has (had?) a forum there where this knife was also discussed extensively.

Happy hunting

 

[Cliff Stamp]

hopethisisnttaken:

it will shave steel off one of their ATAK knives.

Off the back of it which is tempered soft, any hardened steel knife will do the same and unlike the Mirage-X does not have a good chance of fracture unless done very carefully.

never need any sharpening

Similar to CutCo, it is true as long as you don't mind using it blunt.

this composite is almost as hard as diamond?

Nothing is almost as hard as Diamond. This is simple hype. Diamond is twice as hard as Cubic Boron Nitride and four times as hard as Silicon Carbide, a common sharpening abrasive.

Oh and it also has flex in the blade.

So does glass, just not very much.

While a lot of claims are made about the Mirage-X, none of them are warrentied. After I bought one I repeatily tried to find out what the durabilty limits were, I got lots of claims about throwing them around but no specifics about what the expected damage was to be - except to say "not to worry if anything happens MD will take care of it" (paraphrase).

Needless to say I was a little less than 100% on that. Ceramic composites are far tougher than ceramics, they are still far more brittle than steels.

-Cliff

[This message has been edited by Cliff Stamp (edited 10-10-2000).]