Spyderco CPM Magnacut Hardness

[Twindog]

The ideal hardness for MagnaCut really comes down to the application.

Personally, the magic of MagnaCut to me is its toughness in the 60-61 Rc range, where it's tougher than M4, A2, CPM D2 and about like Vandais 4E.

Stretching for extra hardness gives up a lot of that toughness, and you don't get that much in return. At 65 Rc, MagnaCut has about the same abrasion resistance as S30V at 30 Rc.

But if you dropped the hardness from 65 Rc to 60.5 Rc, you almost double its toughness. That's why, on paper, I like it run at a lower Rc.

The new Benchmade 710 LE in Magnacut is either 59-61 Rc or 60-62 Rc, based on seller reports. So, maybe 60-61-ish. That's the hardness where I expect MagnaCut to really shine. You can use it pretty hard without worry about chipping or cracking. And at that hardness, I don't expect you'd have trouble with edge rolling, either.

 

[shinyedges]

I used a magnacut blade today to cut what I thought was thin stranded wire around one of my mower spindles, whoa buddy was I wrong. It was a rats nest of different very tough hard wire, no clue what it came from. I couldn't cut it despite a very sharp knife. I put a small chip in my edge. For as aggressive as I used the knife and the ridiculous nature of the steel wire I don't think it took to terribly a lot of damage. Yea some of us use what's on hand to deal with what we got. Ended up needing my leatherman when I realized my inkosi bit off more than it could chew.

 

[Synov]

The ideal hardness for MagnaCut really comes down to the application.

Personally, the magic of MagnaCut to me is its toughness in the 60-61 Rc range, where it's tougher than M4, A2, CPM D2 and about like Vandais 4E.

Stretching for extra hardness gives up a lot of that toughness, and you don't get that much in return. At 65 Rc, MagnaCut has about the same abrasion resistance as S30V at 30 Rc.

But if you dropped the hardness from 65 Rc to 60.5 Rc, you almost double its toughness. That's why, on paper, I like it run at a lower Rc.

You get a good tradeoff at 62-63. And that's where Spyderco's Salt knives have tested.