Mantis Knives MT-5 Kunitza - Picture Heavy *Updated with reply from Mantis Knives*

wait hold on apiphone time. you stripped out the screws TRYING to dissassemble it. therefore you never took apart the knife
 
A bit of an update here. Let it be known I am a glutton for punishment.

The original knife in this thread I sold off shortly after my last post. But since I love browsing knives on ebay, I recently saw a used LNIB Kunitza with the bead blast finish for lesss than $40, so I bid on it and actually won.

So shortly after getting this new one, of course I did disassemble it, being careful to heat up the screws with hot water to remove the locktite so nothing would strip. Using a Wiha torx bit also helped keep the screw heads intact.

One of the downsides of the knife is the solid steel backspacer. Luckily, the backspacer pops right out and is not required at all in the knife. This thing alone weighs over an ounce, so the weight savings are nice, and now the knife is flow through construction. Why it has a steel backspacer in the first place is beyond me.
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Second, the g10 on this knife is very coarse, and this causes the pocket clip to rip and tear at pants fabric. So for this is dremeled away at the g10 under the clip, and now it slides in and exits pants smoothly.
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Some things that cant be remedied are that the flipper is still awkwardly designed and REQUIRES wrist action to utilize. But for ~$40 dollars, not a bad deal for a sharp 154cm blade and very soling lockup with no play whatsoever. I just know that warranty is now nonexsistent, but I can live with that.
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Just from as it is advertised. I haven't had any need to sharpen it yet though, and it has been fine for kitchen tasks. Could it be something else? sure, but who knows. You either trust em or you don't.
 
Being a Mantis owner I promptly e-mailed them asking if they sold a tool to disassemble the pivot screw.

Gary replied that they do not, and that I should buy an adjustable spanner wrench.

I then replied with this question "will disassembling the knife with said tool to give it a cleaning void my warranty?"

Gary then replied with, as long as you know what your doing there shouldn't be any issues effecting the warranty, however I would caution you to not disassemble the knife if you do not know what you are doing.



I tried to be sly while inquiring about thier warranty, just to see what the reply would be.

Do you all feel this is a dodgy reply or straight foward?


I would encourage you all to send an inquiring e-mail just to feel them out a bit, and see if we get similar responses.

E-mail response time from Gary was less than a 1/2 hour, pretty quick IMHO.
 
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Just to clarify, I own a Pit Boss and a Chaos 2 fixed.

Both seem to be of great steel quality one being cpm440v and the other 154cm, they get sharp and stay sharp. I have had zero problems with either knife. In fact the Pit Boss is my number 1 knife when it comes to cutting drywall, shingle felt, or carpet.

So I am not really sure that Mantis is as bad as lots of people on here seem to make them out to be. Am I missing something here?
 
jeffsenpai said:
Just from as it is advertised. I haven't had any need to sharpen it yet though, and it has been fine for kitchen tasks. Could it be something else? sure, but who knows. You either trust em or you don't.
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I was not clear. The company has a reputation for lying about the steel they use.
 
It's well documented and known what Mantis is all about. I would never buy one in a million years. Even if you gave me one for free id probably throw it away.
 
I had honestly never heard of Mantis until this point.

I googled them and couldn't even make it to their homepage. Their tagline of "The edge you've been preying for" is just way too terrible that I couldn't bring myself to continue.
 
i am truly interested in a tool to disassemble the pivot but any spanner wrench i find looks like it's too big. and any small ones are upwards of $100
 
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