MTECH XTREME USA MX-8027A TACTICAL FOLDING KNIFE 5 CLOSED

First - for the doubters - this knife has '440C Steel' stamped right on the blade, so I believe it truly is 440C steel. It came to me very sharp, but once I spent about 10 minutes going over it with my Spyderco Sharpmaker, the blade is now spooky sharp. It doesn't just cut paper, I can shave off layers of paper. I then gave the blade a good workout over the course of the weekend. I cut up some boxes (several dozen heavy crate type boxes) as well as some outdoor work - shaving kindling, debarking and a little ham-fisted whittling. I checked the blade I got home and its still very very sharp. A little touch up and it was right back to where it was. It held the edge as good as knives that cost me 50.00 and more. The markings on my knife are fairly dark. My blade is very dark grey with some darker diamond grid patterns as shown in the illustrations. The lighter grey areas in the photos are not as prominent on my knife fyi. So overall, my blade definitely looks darker than the photos, which is fine by me - its a tool, not a trophy. I did Loctite my knife as I definitely noticed the screw backing out (I put a small indexing mark with whiteout on it to see if it moved - yeppers, it did). But this is a $7ish knife with a 440C blade and an aluminum handle and some very useful tactical features. I'm not going to cry over it. Anything worth owning is worth tweaking. One thing to note - the liner lock release is slightly serrated and any serious cutting may irritate your index finger - plan on wearing gloves like I do. Regardless, this is a fine fine knife for the price. I was expecting to say "Oh well, it was just 7.00, no biggie." I assumed it was not going to impress me. But it has and I definitely recommend this knife. EXTREME VALUE -EXCEEDS EXPECTATIONS I gave it 5 stars even with the little issues. Its that much of a bargain. Read more

I have a lot of love for the high-quality, ridiculously lowpriced knives sold by MTech. Anyone wanting to know the full story of how much I admire their products is invited to read my other knife reviews. As far as this particular model of knife is concerned, all I can say is that I have folders made by Boker, CRKT, Spyderco, Benchmade, and some custom-manufacturers for which I paid a ridiculous amount of money. Yet the knife I clip in my pocket every day for use at work and otherwise is this model of MTech folding knife. Why? That's easy. The design is excellent and it is easy to open and use, and feels good in the hand. It's all-metal, tough, yet light enough for everyday pocket carry. It has an edge geometry and steel grade such that running it through my Smith's sharpener once or twice a month is enough to keep it shaving sharp (I've cut myself on this thing so many times I almost have to carry a tube of superglue around with me). And best of all, I paid less than ten bucks for it. Meaning, if I damage, break, ruin, or lose it I don't have to lose a minute's sleep over it. I can replace it for a little more than the cost of a good hamburger. I am, in fact, on my third one of these in less than two years. Not because they break--I've yet to succeed in breaking one--but because I've forgotten them on one job site or another. I do believe if I lost one of my expensive Spyderco folders by forgetting it on a job site, I'd have a nervous breakdown. But not my MTechs. They're so cheap they can almost be considered disposable, yet designed and manufactured well enough to be 90% of any one of my Benchmades or Spydercos in daily use. Read more

The MTech Chainlink Tactical Folder arrived quickly, well packaged and very sharp, all pluses. It did, indeed, fold and after some test cuts on packing material and other likely sorts of material such a knife will get used for, I put it into the EDC category for tryout. One of the first problems I noticed with the knife is that its blade was loose, which required me to use a Torx T8 on the pivot screw to get things tightened up. And within a week I was repeating the process. Still not a bad value, but poor construction and design leading to maintenance isn't what I wanted in an EDC sort of knife. With that said I decided to give it a far test-out period in which I was able to get the wobble to the point it took every two weeks to retighten the screw. Two days ago I took the knife out to open a couple of boxes and it fell apart in my hand. The knife blade stop pin was the most prominent part of the failure, as well as the falling out of the main pivot screw. What was less enticing was two of the missing screws for the spacers, which had truly gone missing until I felt the pocket lint of the pocket and found them nestled in it. As the knife was at 80% disassembly I did the rest of it (requiring a T6 for the small screws), examined the pivot pin for wear (none to speak of), the teflon washers for any problems (thin but satisfactory), all of the screws and spacers. There was no mis-threading or other problems with anything which means that normal stress of pocket carry caused enough slow flexing of the frame to work at least the main screw out if not two of the four smaller screws. After thorough strip-down, minor cleaning and check-over the only cure for this problem that I could see was Loctite. I use Loctite 262 for rimfire sights as that is human breakable not requiring heat, which puts it above the purple Loctite but below the higher classes of red Loctite. Reassembly to make sure of good fit all the way around was done, then each screw, starting with the pivot screw, had a drop of Loctite 262 put on it and carefully screwed back in one at a time. As the 262 has a 15 second set time, if you mess up you just have to clean the stuff off with a phosphor bronze brush and start over. Now it is put back together, relatively tight, no blade wobble at all and going back for another round of EDC testing. I still carry my father's old Boy Scout multi-blade knife from way back when, as it is suitable for EDC in its own pouch, but not so well suited to tearing into larger boxes. Hopefully that will cure the MTech knife of its problems and teaches an important lesson on the uses of Loctite. UPDATE: 11 SEP 2014 This has transitioned to my EDC slot in my small carry pouch. This knife has held up well after the Loctite treatment and I have had zero problems with it since then. After an initial sharpening soon after the initial review this knife has gone through many boxes, packages, getting shavings from wood and meets my EDC criteria and only now needs another sharpening. Luckily I have sharpening set-up from Worksharp (their 2000 model with bells and whistles) and that sharpening should take more than a couple of minutes. I still don't like the initial build quality, which was off-putting. With that said the simple removal of screws, cleaning the entire thing and using a good threadlocker has done the job. Recommended if you need a knock-around EDC knife for utility purposes. Read more