I guess it is just regular cast stainless - it just looks so grainy, but let's be honest, I'm no metallurgist, welder, or anything of the like. When I've occasionally broken cast pieces I think they've mostly been common steel and I'm not accustomed to the grainy looking interior. Regardless, they seem to suit my needs! Out of curiosity who uses cut tool steel?

All heat treated steel will looks like that on the inside, what you see the grain of the steel. On properly heat treated steel will looks satin gray but no visible individual grains.

Multitasker tools (the 2.0 version, not earliest) use billet cut tool steel jaws, but it's made to service AR15 mostly so not particularly useful for everyday use.

I have a Colt match target rifle, so I suppose that may be some justification, but probably not enough!

Heat treated steal looks like that! Interesting. I guess I've mostly (only?) broken untempered stuff then!

Thanks for the interesting info.

I bought a Skeletool CX a while ago. Very cool tool, no question. But I don't find it comfortable to use, and I'm scared to push it too hard. So I'm going to sell it.

I still have a couple of the old SideClips for occasions where I need to go thin and light. Otherwise the Wave II is pretty much the minimum for me.

Yeah, there is always the feeling when using the blade on the CX, that a slip of the hand could prove to be very nasty. The CX is also pretty slippery with or without sweaty hands.

The cast jaws of the pliers on the CX breaking in the way they have doesn't surprise me either. The crack propagation seems to have originated at the bottom of lower surface cut out (serves nothing to lower the weight of the tool but seems to weaken the tool considerably). I had a similar issue with one of the tips of the long nose pliers on a LM Core (apparently their toughest tool) breaking off.



It was surprisingly easy to snap (break off) the top of 3-4 mm opposing tip using a vice then file up the broken tips to give the modification shown above.

I still have my sideclip and like it, however, the one hand quasi-locking opening blade on the CX makes it the prefered knife for me. Despite some solide negative publicity here I'm sticking w/my high praise, if and until it fails me under normal use.

R

I recently had a chance to try a variety of multi tools for the only task I need them: wire cutting (everything else is on my swiss champ). All but the ones with rounded edges were nearly worthless. I struggled to get through even a soft metal coat hanger with them because the edges cut into my hand.
Clear winner was the SOG where the gearing meant it could cut through 3 coat hangers at once. Even stil fitting barbed wire into the cutter is going to be tricky.
A BIG advantage of a bayonet is the wire cutter.
The Sock

Interesting! I don't have this hand digging in problem personally - but I never cut barbed wire - so I may just be cutting wimpier stuff.

I've had various Leathermans from an original PST to a top end Charge with the S30V blades.

They are not my first choice of tool. That honor belongs to the Victorinox tool range. I use one day in, day out for work. Various tasks including wire cutting. They take a licking and keep right on ticking.

I know that some people are fans of the Gerber range, but I have not, thus far, been impressed. To me they come into the better than nothing category.

As for Leatherman tools, well, they ain't bad but they are let down by a lack of hardening on the pliers and most of the knife blades are poor quality steel. I know that a multi-tool blade is supposed to be a secondary blade, but that is, to me at least, a poor excuse. Victorinox put a decent quality blade on theirs so why cannot Leatherman follow suite?

>A BIG advantage of a bayonet is the wire cutter.

On that note; any bayonet with a wire cutter could people recommend as general purpose knife?
The Sock