Magnacut Spyderco Mule Team edge retention testing with a discussion about the steel so far. 

I enjoyed the testing results

I appreciate your work immensely you do the community such a service thank you so much for your attention to detail and dedication

To me.....you are the best....tester..... You help me a lot.....with these videos...thank You Sir.

Really good video G!! Thanks for all your work testing and thanks for sharing brother 👊

Great advice on the sharpening, that's pretty mind blowing more feet plus the stropping. Really appreciate your work overall, this is great stuff.

Thanks again for the testing results.You have helped me make some very well informed buying.

Will be sending you 2 blades in Magnacut... Spyderco Mule Team and White River Model 1 Pro. Looking forward to seeing how they do. I appreciate your work immensely. Thank you for doing the hard work. : )

Great video. Thanks for the data and analysis.

My magnacut knife doubled in performance after the first edge too. i did have to correct the slightly uneven bevels and adjusted the overall geometry for better cutting quality. The edge itself feels tacky like m4, and id guess its at a 62. No issue with rolls, chips, i just struggle trying to carry a fixed blade with higher frequency. i only paid 300 bucks for a hand forged custom in magnacut so 62 hrc is still very enjoyable.

Appreciate the videos as always. Hope you get to share more often.

Appreciate the discussion as always. Now that I’ve had a good chance to work with the spyderco 4V I feel like it’s reinforced that it and Magancut are very similar in how the edge breaks down. Sharpening experience is astonishingly different from my very small sample size though. The higher hardness on the 4V really benefits the front end sharpness and for me pushes it into a higher likability for that level of carbide.

I've been holding out for the manix ltwt in magnacut. I wanted to try the new deka but figured I'd give them some time to figure out the heat treat before buying one. Thanks for the magnacut testing 👍

Appreciate the effort for this video. Would love to see some bushcraft profile blades doing bushy things. I have a Survive! Knives 5.1 in Magnacut on pre order and will certainly run it through the paces when it arrives.

Interesting video Gerald! Very cool 😎

Can't wait to see hogue's deka tested. Especially because their 20cv was considerably softer than other in my opinion. I would send you mine for testing whenever they're released.

How does this fella not have 30k subs yet. Cmon people help my friend out

8:27 for hardness testing. You are welcome.

Good video ! 👍

Gerald as always I appreciate your objective point of view based on what you've accumulated in data so far. Like you the jury is still out for me. I have not acquired a Magnacut knife yet; waiting for perhaps a Stretch XL? ;)

Thank you for all the work you do for the community. Much appreciated. You've inspired me to start doing cutting tests on my own knives, start using them more, and getting a better idea on how my knives and certain steels perform. Do you keep count of the total cuts you make for the fine edge and working edge tests? Would that be something you can include along with the total ft. cut? I've just been going off of total cuts made, but it'll take me awhile before I have enough information for comparison. Do you have any tips on when to call a test done? I know that's going to be different per person, but since I'm just starting out and getting a feel for it, I wanna make sure I'm not over testing, especially for the working edge test.

So I took my mule and put it right to use in the kitchen as soon as I got it. A ine had a asymmetrical grind and even a bit of a smiley towards the heel. It was very sharp out of the box but I went ahead and put one edge on it trying to basically match up factory bevels. It was 17°/19°. I could feel a difference on my diamond stones in comparison to all the other stainless steels I've used being "smoother" and had a very fine burr that came off easily. I used it as my primary utility knife everyday for 3 months on everything from general kitchen chopping and cutting to package opening, box breakdown, hard plastic. During the entire time it maintained a very good edge with no issues at all on multiple types of cutting boards. I threw it in the dishwasher and basically abused it. I only stopped it back once on 3 micron not because I really felt like it needed it but I just wanted to see if I could detect a change on cutting newsprint. And I did get an incremental increase in cutting ability both with and across the grain on the paper. Sal has said they were looking for 62 as their sweet spot on the mules And it seems to me they've been pretty consistent. Clearly there's room for improvement on raw cutting performance with a custom HT but I wonder if there would be a adverse effect on toughness and corrosion as a result?

For me Magnacut really does everything well. In my example of a custom knife it's edge retention is about he same as good 20CV, but it's even more corrosion resistant, much tougher, and not very difficult to sharpen. I am hoping to see a lot more of it on production knives. I hope one day it's the next S30V of EDC.

I wonder if we're already seeing near-optimal results for Magnacut, since it attracts makers who are already data- and performance-oriented, and since they know that many of the early customers rushing to buy custom/small-batch Magnacut knives are going to be very picky about results. It has already exceeded Larrin's original performance targets (unless he dialed down his public predictions about that, which seems like his style).

It's amazing that Larrin came up with the steel and got it to be stainless. I think it's a good steel if you look at it compared to LC 200n. I would prefer that in a Spyderco salt series knife for the edge stability. I don't know if it's from the niobium but it reminds me of how you would think s110v without cut s90v but it usually does not. Maybe that is the case with this not performing to the same level as 4V.

Thank you for that. Very interesting. I wonder how much the toughness suffers at those greater hardness levels (64 and 65)? That might be important for outdoor fixed blade knives like the type John (BGM) makes.

I'd love to see Demko's 3v test. Its a knifecenter exclusive

Which hardness tester do you use? I've been wanting to purchase my own.

Gerald, did you ever get an HRC reading on the ZMax mule?

I was reading somewhere that the composition has occlusions from the factory. Can't remember but think I heard this on dbk. Maybe it was a different steel.

Let me know if you decide to test another Mule in Magnacut. I've still got 1 I wouldn't mind lending out.

Would you be interested in testing the relatively new Gerber Fastball in 20cv? I can send ya mine for testing. Lmk.