More Cardboard Carnage!!!!

Buzzbait

Buzzbait

Joined
Feb 25, 2001
Messages
6,675
I had a rather unique opportunity today. My mother was cleaning out the basement of her house, and needed about a zillion and one cardboard boxes cut up and hauled off to the dump. Well... :D I was into that job in a heartbeat!!!! There’s nothing like spending your Saturday actually doing something useful with a knife. So I slipped my new Benchmade 710 into my pocket, hoping to give that M2 steel a good workout. I also slapped the Mini-Talon onto my belt for my wife to use.

So the wife and I get to my mother’s house, and we head down to the basement. I whip out the 710 in an amazing feat of Axis speed and start at the first of a zillion and one boxes, when my wife looks at me with her pretty eyes. You see, my wife is no wimp. See was actually on her college woodsman’s team, doing crosscut saw competitions. She likes to cut stuff!!!

So I tell her, "I’ll be using the Benchmade 710, with an enormous high speed tool steel blade." And she says, "But what do I get to cut with?" So I pull out the outrageously tiny Mini-Talon, and say in my best Tommy Lee Jones impression, "The Noisy Cricket." You had to have been there. It was quite hilarious. And if you don’t get the joke, you missed the movie ‘Men in Black’. Get off your butt and go rent it out. It’s a great movie. Then reread this paragraph and laugh you’re a$$ off.

So the wife and I spent the afternoon cutting up an entire pick-up truck load of cardboard; me with my gigantic 710 and her with the Noisy Cricket. I probably cut more boxes than her, just because I had a bigger knife. I’d say that I made around 500 cuts, where she made around 350. But if you factor in the length of the blades, each inch of blade on both knives probably cut relatively equal amounts of cardboard.

Both knives did very well, and made quick work of my mother’s crowded basement. But the big surprise came when we got home. I took both knives upstairs to sharpen. The Benchmade was beat. It was dull in a big way. I actually had to use the SharpMaker’s coarse stones and roll an edge. This wasn’t any "few quick swipes on the SharpMaker" experience. It took a little work. All of that cardboard had just rounded out the edge completely. All is well now though.

So how bad was the condition of the Mini-Talon? It was dull too. It had put up a good fight, but the cardboard eventually won. And how did I get the edge back to shaving sharp you ask? Thirty seconds of stropping. You heard that right boys and girls. A quick thirty second strop was all it took to get Talonite back to peak cutting efficiency.

That’s the power of TALONITE!!! :D :eek: :D :eek: :D

It shudder to think of the cardboard damage I could have done with a full-sized Talon or EDC.
 
Nice review, Buzzbait. Very impressive performance! The only burning question left for me is: Did you hit any of those big staples with it? Have you formed any opinion of the durability of talonite in real-world everyday use? (I'm mostly concerned with "chipping out", and the degree of difficulty in repairing the damage afterward.)
-Dan
 
Fortunately for me :) , yet unfortunately for you :( , I managed to miss every single staple. I'm not too worried about chipping though, as the hardness of the matrix falls somewhere in the 30s, I believe.

Overall, I'm very satisfied with Talonite. The stuff is sooooo darned convenient, it's unbelievable. I think that Talonite is a very "real world" option to using steel, as log as you're not using a chopping motion. My bet is that Talonite is just a bit too soft for chopping.

I'd venture to say that Talonite is the ultimate small to medium sized blade material. At least I'm convinced enough to have purchased a Camillus Talonite EDC today. :) I should have a big giant review of that baby soon!!!!
 
I thought that stellite was a lot harder than steel.
I belive they coat the contact points of valves in combustion engines with it to help the valve surive the pounding it takes on the cylinder ports for a longer time.
Is it not harder than the other steels mentioned in these two threads???
 
Don't confuse "hardness" with "wear resistance".

M2 and other "High Speed Steels" will reach an RC of 58 to 62 in most applications after a proper heat treat. Talonite and Stellite run in the low 40's if memory serves.
 
Sid is right.

Talonite is a soft material with roughly half the strength of steel. It won't chip, BUT it WILL roll its edge or pick up dings, nicks and notches easily when up against hard surfaces. As long as Buzz avoided the staples and as long as other users avoid nail, staples, stones, even large bones and hardwoods, a Talonite blade cuts VERY well and a little stropping brings the blade right back.

But avoid those hard anomalies or you'll do surprising damage to your blade. I have a Carson #4 with textured CF scales and a Talonite blade. It's a great cutting/skinning knife and will cut veggies all day long, but it's NOT a general purpose camping knife by any means.
 
Buzzbait, as usual another excellent review. Yours are some of the best out there.

Cardboard cutting (and other abbrasive materials like fiberglass and drywall) is one of the areas that Talonite really excels at.

How did the M2 blade compare to your previous work with other steels like your 52100 marbles and bg42 sebenza?
 
OK, now I don't get it... If Talonite is so soft, why would you prefer it to say titanium? You get (roughly) RC 48 with Ti, and its pretty durable stuff too... Should also come back with a little stropping (though I have no personal experience with Ti blades)... Just curious. I always thought Talonite was somewhere between steel and ceramic in hardness. Didn't realize it was so soft.
 
Hehehe....... Reviews coming back from the grave. :)

Talonite is a rather soft medium, but has very hard carbides mixed in. The carbides act almost like a chainsaw when cutting, and hold the edge for a very long time. You just don't want to cut anything hard enough to rip the softer areas.

The M2 did very well. I'd put it right between BG-42 and D2, in terms of edge holding and ease of sharpening. 52100 sharpens much more easily, but is of course much less stainless. Different steels that excel in different areas.
 
Great review. I will go on record as saying that I dont care what steel is used, cardboard cutting is going to dull your knife. Fairly quickly too. Sounds like the M2 did better than a lot of steels though.
 
It surprises me that Talonite did hold up so well...isn´t it supposed to show inferior edge retention abilities than steel? Or what are its drawbacks?

I think after the extended work you and your wife put those knives thru, one shouldn´t expect great sharpness from any steel, so I´m sure the carbon steel performed quite well (I mean, at least it held up to the task as long as you went on cutting those cardboard boxes, right?).
 
Talonite loses its "scary scalpel" sharpness rather quickly, but further loss of sharpness is actually quite slow. It must be the hard carbides suspended in the matrix that keep it from dulling out further. Talonite also has a nifty "slickness" to it, for lack of a better word. The stuff really glides through meterials that would normally create a lot of friction.

And yes, there is a downside to talonite. I have had some chipping issues with it, that I normally wouldn't have had with steels like D2, BG-42 or 52-100.

As far as how the M2 held up, let me think. If you look at the original post, it's been awhile since that day, and my memory isn't what it used to be. I believe I remember the blade still cutting cardboard quite nicely, but would no longer cut paper worth a darn. That isn't a big deal though. I would expect most steels to act the same way after that much cardboard cutting. My guess is that mass heat treated ATS-34 and 154CM would have given up the ghost long before the M2 did. That's just a guess though.
 
I did a significant amount of cardboard cuttting today. I used my BM710HS and a Mora #1 that I was wearing around my neck.
I did not really keep track of how much each one cut, but toal I broke down around 70 boxes, stcked them flat and sent them to be bound and recycled.

THe M@ steel really holds an edge well, I find it to be better than any of the stainless teels I have used.

Hoodoo is fond of Benchmade's 154CM. While I like it on my Nimravus, and a few other folders (970,722, etc) if I have a choice, I'd go with M2 everytime. For me, it takes a keener edge, that lasts longer. Whether I want a polished edge for wood work, or a course slicing edge, the M2 steel seems sharper.
 
M2 really cranks out the cardboard stacks! I have used my 730cfhs to cut an estimated 500+' of the stuff one day and it still cut relatively easily. The black coating on the blade no doubt helped a little in the ease at which it cut but the edge is what made the difference. I haven't used a blade yet that came close to to matching it although a differentially heat treated O-1 blade from Ron Clark came awefully close. M2 seems to retain a good toothy edge long after the shaving edge is gone. I would rank it as a pretty aggresive cutting steel, as are most non-stainless blades. Good stuff to say the least.
 
Great review Buzz!
What kind of strope did you use on the Mini-Talon?
What kinds of stuff were you cutting that caused the chipping?
Thanks.

- Frank
 
Not to disparage your blade craft old chap but where I come from we hire mostly women to drive haulpacks (giant dump trucks) because they are easier on the machinery and have less down time per day.
Could the difference in wear on the two knives have been from a difference in masculine and femenine working styles?
 
In a word, "No." Even though I'm speaking out of turn for Buzzbait. But, I have compared directly a Nimravus Cub in M2 to a Talonite Talon, in cardboard. Talonite is that good. In cardboard. It is limited to more stuff due to the soft cobalt matrix. But in abrasion resistance, it is the champ, I do believe.

Great write-up Buzzbait. I thoroughly enjoyed it. :D
 
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