I have used my MPK Beta Ti in the kitchen mostly. I have both the A2 and Ti version of the MPK. The MPK is the lightest knife I have seen for its size. According to Mission Beta Ti is 40% of the weight of steel. This is great if you need to carry it along with a lot of heavy gear or doing a lot of cutting. It is not so great if you want to chop. The handle is well designed. It is comfortable and the textured surface gives a secure grip, even with wet and slimy hands. The handle swells out near the butt and has a slight hook at the butt this helps to prevent the knife from being flung during chopping. The molded sheath supplied with the Beta Ti MPK is well designed and thought out. It allows the knife to be put on a belt without taking the belt off. There are also a lot of holes and slots for attaching the MPK sheath to the body. Also straps are included with the knife. The most disappointing thing about the sheath is that it does not securely retain the blade without using the rubber keeper or nylon strap. The only thing holding the knife in the sheath without using other securing features is friction between the bead blasted finish and the grooves molded into the sheath. I fear the rough finish will be worn smooth and the knife will slip out at the worst moment. The smooth finished MPK A2 would slide out in the molded sheath. Except for this problem I would prefer the molded sheath to the kydex sheath. It is more compact and versatile than the kydex sheath that comes with the A2 knife. I considered the problem so serious that I would prefer the kydex sheath.
The knife I bought was used and the previous owner had sharpened it. The edge would not shave have but felt very sharp and cut well. At first I used an ez lap diamond hone to sharpen initially. This required flipping the knife over to work on one side then the other quite a bit before the burr was removed. Rick (Mission Knives) mentioned using a ceramic stone. I used both the fine ceramic stone from Spyderco (white) and Lansky (pink) free hand and both worked equally well. The edge was sharp enough so that it would easily shave hair off my arms.
It has been very corrosion resistant and is not stained by chopping up onions. I left the knife sitting in onion juice for a 3 hours and this did not cause any staining or spots on the blade. In use the hair shaving sharpness is lost very quickly but because of the blade profile it would still cut quite well. My pocket steel easily brought the edge back so that it would shave hair from my arm.
I had to tackle about 30 LB of chicken wings. Two cuts were required on each wing. One to separate the thigh from the wing and another to separate the joint of the wing. The trick is to cut along the joint so the bone does not have to be cut through. Being relatively new at this I had to go through the bone about every fifth piece. Sometimes the MPK would be able to slice through the bone if I did not catch it squarely. If I did catch it squarely a blow to the back of the blade drove it through. I could go through about 30 wings before the edge would need steeling. After steeling the knife would shave hair again. As I worked for a while I found that I had to steel much more often. Eventually it got down so that I had to steel after 7 wings. At junction between the straight section of the blade and where it start to curve could not be returned to hair shaving sharpness regardless of how often I steeled. This is the region of the blade where I did the most cutting in bone. The edge on the MPK A2 did not remain as sharp far as long doing this type of cutting. It was also often driven into the chopping board by striking the back of the blade often.
So far I really like the knife especially when I can leave it dirty and clean it when ever I feel like it and not bother to oil the edge. It is easy to carry due to the compact scabbard, and weight.
