My Manix 2 Maxamet Just Snapped !!

Status
Not open for further replies.
SubMicron said:
I made my conclusions about the topic before scoring any drywall and they're based on what I've observed when some people cut drywall and what I believe to be true about Maxamet, a steel that I love.

As stated in this thread, over and over, some people use their full strength, with their bodyweight behind it to score drywall. That kind of force, or any kind of significant muscling of the knife versus Maxamet combined with the inability to prevent lateral forces, will break Maxamet. That should obvious for any scoring application when that much force is used. The topic of drywall isn't entirely relevant whereas the amount of pressure used is.

If you look, I've already pointed out that it does not require a lot of force to score drywall. Just because you do things one way doesn't mean others do it the same way.

I don't necessarily care what the right or wrong way is to score drywall. The point is that some people seem to use high pressure and I can see the advantages.

People who are newer to all of this end up searching Google about Maxamet toughness and breakage, they'll stumble into threads like this and read posts about the strength tests done by some, or the anecdotal feedback of others, and they assume Maxamet is bulletproof. They then end up pushing Maxamet or others to the point of failure and cant figure out what went wrong. Had Spyderco replaced the knife without hassles those same people would then expect the same when they break their's.

Again, I love Maxamet, that's why it's in my user rotation and why I used it as my avatar photo for this site. Maxamet is in fact very strong, just not against lateral side-to-side forces.
Click to expand...
They say love is blind

Roy Batty said:
That the end user was simply “scoring” drywall is an assumption. I’m not calling anyone a liar, but no one would get on a knife forum and say “I hammered my maxamet into a 2x4 and used it as a springboard for my swimming pool”.

The plight of the customer always has a certain flavor of innocence you can count on, and a purposeful evasion of revealing the things they did wrong.

Again, not calling anyone a liar, but only one person here knows what ACTUALLY happened.
Click to expand...
Actually you called bullshit and did suggest he may have put in in a vice and broke it on purpose earlier in the thread.

Eli Chaps said:
This is Sal's house and given the tone this thread is now taking, out of respect for him, I'm out.
Click to expand...
Out with you. Too many people speaking opinions rather than facts.
 
SubMicron said:
If you're careful, scoring drywall is no problem. A lot of people, I think, are not careful and it seems to be somewhat common for some people to use more pressure than necessary.

Due to the thickness, a knife is not an efficient tool for scoring drywall, which can invite even more pressure from the user. Past the paper backing, the mechanics of the "cut" seem to be more akin to a V-shaped snow plow in action.

The pressure and angles are the variables, not drywall, just pressure and angles.

While it's true high pressure is not required, it's also true that many people use way more than necessary. For that reason, and because of the inefficiency due to geometry, the general guidance should be to not use a knife for drywall, especially a steel that's vulnerable to lateral stress.

Obviously if you need to you can, but you need to be careful, especially because you might be doing it at your own risk without warranty support.

Maxamet is incredibly strong, just not against side to side pressure.

I'd also recommend a heavy sharpening to get behind any possible fatigued steel on the factory edge. I'm thinking in terms of crack propagation, perhaps to the point of being paranoid, but I didnt want any potential weak areas where a crack could get started.

My personal experiences with Maxamet have been 100% positive.
Click to expand...

You had never scored drywall until you did one test here after posting and now you are an expert on how it should be done or how "many people" do it with too much pressure? You need to stop being a right fighter and stop acting like you have knowledge in this case just because your Maxamet experience has been 100%.

Most of the posters in this thread have not bad mouthed Spyderco at all and even say they have many Spydercos they enjoy but would have liked a better explanation of this was not covered under warranty.

And if someone needs to give a new knife a heavy sharpening (as you put it) to correct "fatigued steel" from the factory ... that is a HUGE issue. And you are one of the "few" that own abrasives that can sharpen Maxamet?
Wait ... What small.jpg
And what does that have to do with this subject anyway?

I think Spyderco is one of the best brand out there but I think they owe the OP at minimum a better explanation. I have worked with my hands most of my life and I am an avid outdoorsman using knives for work and play ... I used more knives and steels than I can count and broken exactly ONE blade in my life ... Maxamet.
 
Last edited:
JJ_Colt45 said:
You had never scored drywall until you did one test here after posting and now you are an expert on how it should be done or how "many people" do it with too much pressure? You need to stop being a right fighter and stop acting like you have knowledge in this case just because your Maxamet experience has been 100%.

Most of the posters in this thread have not bad mouthed Spyderco at all and even say they have many Spydercos they enjoy but would have liked a better explanation of this was not covered under warranty.

And if someone needs to give a new knife a heavy sharpening (as you put it) to correct "fatigued steel" from the factory ... that is a HUGE issue. And you are one of the "few" that own abrasives that can sharpen Maxamet?
View attachment 1381422
And what does that have to do with this subject anyway?

I think Spyderco is one of the best brand out there but I think they owe the OP at minimum a better explanation. I have worked with my hands most of my life and I am an avid outdoorsman using knives for work and play ... I used more knives and steels than I can count and broken exactly ONE blade in my life ... Maxamet.
Click to expand...


On this doll, I want you to show me EXACTLY where Maxamet hurt you:

8471514_fpx.jpeg

Dont tell me what I can and cant post about and what I am or am not qualified to talk about.

You are missing the forest for the trees if you think some drywall had anything to do with the breakage of Maxamet.

Drywall is irrelevant. Pressure is the factor.
 
I did not have to tell you what you weren't qualified to talk about ... you made that clear from your posts. And most ... including me have been saying all along that the drywall was not a factor here, but you keep saying Maxamet should not be used to cut drywall ... among most anything else by your posts.

And you go further by assuming "most" don't have the abrasives to sharpen Maxamet or the brains to cut things without doing it wrong, which have nothing to do with this whatsoever. All most folks have said is they think Spyderco owes the OP more clarification and explanation as to why they sent the letter they did stating ... They are glad to see their product put to good use ... but that good use isn't covered by warranty.

And I still hope the OP gets that explanation and lets us know what it is. That's all this thread is about.
 
Last edited:
"Thank you for submtiting a warranty claim. Upon examination we did not find a defect in the blade. Unfortunately, we determined that the blade broke due to misuse and therefore we cannot cover a replacement under warranty. We would like to offer you a discount of..."

Something like that would be better, IMO.
 
It is disappointing to me that Spyderco responded in this manner. They're my favorite knife company overall in terms of what products they make, but I don't recommend them to most people because of their warranty and CS experience is often less than those of their competitors. I hope that they reconsider their position here.

I think it's abundantly clear from reading the description of the OP's incident that his knife just had a preexisting issue. There have been all sorts of issues with getting Maxamet right which Spyderco have detailed in their forums. I've personally had two earlier Maxamet Spyderco blades which were warped badly from heat treatment, and Spyderco refunded me on the one I bought directly from them. A number of early reports of Maxamet snapping, or the edges breaking off during sharpening, seem to have been linked to these difficulties in executing the heat treatment and not necessarily due to inherent properties in the alloy itself. It is rare nowadays that you hear that somebody had an edge on a Maxamet knife just flake off like a wire, or that their Maxamet knives are impossible to sharpen properly. Yes, Maxamet and similarly extreme high speed alloys do not fare well in impact/notched toughness and this is well documented in the steel industry. But it seems that many forget that high hardness steels typically have significantly higher strength than typical knife steel alloys in tandem with that extreme hardness, and that scoring drywall is not an activity that relies in any particular way on toughness. Unless you hit a hard object while scoring the drywall quickly, there's no loading applied to the knife on any short timescale where impact toughness would matter.

We've already seen fairly good demonstrations by BBB and others that production Maxamet blades can withstand flexural loads (placing compression/tension on the sides of the blade, which for some reason people think is substantially different mechanically than cutting), severe edge abuse, and even reasonable impacts against materials significantly harder than gypsum. It has been my experience with Maxamet and other similarly extreme alloys that if you don't do anything stupid with them, like chopping or batoning, then they handle cutting tasks acceptably just like any other steel.
 
Amazing. There has been a lot of discussion about what materials can be cut with a $200 knife without breaking the blade in half, all of which are materials that I would cut with a Buck 110 without giving it a second thought. And if I did manage to break the blade, Buck would replace it for $10. Yeah I know, I couldn't cleave the earth in twain with it and still shave hair. That's okay, I'll just resharpen it from time to time.
 
But Spyderco dares... and he who dares, wins. Fortune favors the BOLD.

Spyderco is the frontiersman of the knife world, exploring new steels for production knives.

Even if maxamet is a “failure” as far as being suitable for tasks by the average knife user, they still tried.
 
marrenmiller said:
This reminds me that I have a Maxamet PM2 with lock slip that I am reluctant to send in for repair, as Spyderco will likely claim it's not covered under warranty...
Click to expand...

Are you currently using this knife? If not, I don't see what you have to lose by sending it to Spyderco. Either they fix it, or they don't. If they do, you're back in business. If they don't, then you're no worse off than you are now - stuck with an unusable knife. I hope you send it in and they fix it, and then you're able to share a positive customer service experience on here.
 
CarsonWayne said:
Are you currently using this knife? If not, I don't see what you have to lose by sending it to Spyderco. Either they fix it, or they don't. If they do, you're back in business. If they don't, then you're no worse off than you are now - stuck with an unusable knife. I hope you send it in and they fix it, and then you're able to share a positive customer service experience on here.
Click to expand...
Considering that I've since kept it, used it, and replaced the scales, I sincerely doubt it would do anything other than waste my time and money if I sent it in. They'd just state that I voided the warranty and move on. I've had a number of lock issues with major US brands, including from Spyderco, and I've not once gotten a satisfactory warranty repair despite 5 or so attempts. If a knife has a bad lock, at this point I just write it off or return it if it's new. I kept the PM2 because who on earth knows when you can get another one.

Anyway, didn't mean to break from the OP's discussion.
 
Last edited:
Bastler said:
Amazing. There has been a lot of discussion about what materials can be cut with a $200 knife without breaking the blade in half, all of which are materials that I would cut with a Buck 110 without giving it a second thought. And if I did manage to break the blade, Buck would replace it for $10. Yeah I know, I couldn't cleave the earth in twain with it and still shave hair. That's okay, I'll just resharpen it from time to time.
Click to expand...
You can cut metals with a Maxamet blade, assuming it isn't damaged from the factory. I've done it. It seems pretty clear that there was just an error on this blade, something that isn't sacrilege to suggest and that has been confirmed to have occurred with Maxamet by Spyderco.
 
Replace it with M4-
RE: California folder length, Ritter reported each of Califoria's 58 counties can call out their own blade lengths, when I wrote kniferights asking what to do about a eggregious county folding knife reg compared to state regs quoted above.
-hey, which Buell buellrider?
 
AF said:
That's clear just from a brief description and a few photos?
Click to expand...
It's clear that the options are either the OP (a Spyderco enthusiast, it appears) lied and posted this entire falsified story for illogical reasons, or that a Maxamet blade had preexisting issues (as are known to happen to that alloy) and the blade snapped without abuse. I'm picking option 2, considering I've had issues with 2/3 of the Maxamet knives I've owned. You may approach this question differently.
 
marrenmiller said:
It's clear that the options are either the OP (a Spyderco enthusiast, it appears) lied and posted this entire falsified story for illogical reasons, or that a Maxamet blade had preexisting issues (as are known to happen to that alloy) and the blade snapped without abuse. I'm picking option 2, considering I've had issues with 2/3 of the Maxamet knives I've owned. You may approach this question differently.
Click to expand...
Why would it be illogical to lie? Lying, when it benefits the person lying, is perfectly logical. You think this would be the first time someone clamped a knife down in a vice and snapped it off as either a way to:
1. Smear the company or
2. Get a new knife blade?

I’m not saying that’s what happened, but in the world of consumer products we can’t be so naive as to think just because we like knives that it’s one big tight knit community of people with impeccable character. I know for a fact that isn’t the case. All walks of life wander these halls, and a certain objective approach is valued above “trust everyone at their word”.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top