jeffsenpai
Gold Member
- Joined
- Feb 24, 2010
- Messages
- 1,069
This review is for the Mantis Knives MT-5 Kunitza. This is a knife that sells at retail for around $110 to $125 dollars, which has been the main reason I never bought one in the past. This particular knife I found for sale NIB on a popular internet auction site for $76, so I decided to take the plunge and snapped it up.
Now I will say that I have experience with Mantis Knives, I own three other of their knives, the MT-1 Sliver, the MT-2HC Class Act, and the MT7.2 Folding Pry. These other knives were reasonably well made and a good value, so I wanted to see what Mantis higher end offering had to put forward. MSRP on this knife is a whopping $200.
For the first specs, the size: This thing is 9 inches in length, and weighs 9.2 ounces, which is HEAVY for a folding knife. It is obvious the intended use for this knife is a hard-use tactical folder. Pocket clip is reversible for left and right hand carry, but only tip up.
The G-10 scales are 3D machined and very grippy. They are grippy to the point that they will likely shred my pants pockets right where the pocket clip is. I may sand down the G-10 under this pressure point.
One of the first things I do when I buy a folding knife is usually disassemble it and remove any factory gunk and re-lube and reassemble. Unfortunately, out of the four screws on the scales, three of them stripped out and made it impossible to remove them. This was unfortunate.
Stripped out screw:
The pivot uses a strange six-hole pivot screw, which luckily I had a tool which was able to allow me to unscrew and remove the blade:
Due to the awkwardness of this pivot design, I ended up inadvertently scratching up the black finish on the screws, so, no longer pristine but OK
The recurve black coated blade is 154CM, and 3.5 inches:
The blade has no side-to-side or vertical play, its lockup is solid. The blade is sadly, not centered:
and while it is not directly rubbing on one of the liners, there is an obvious wear mark on the black finish where it rubbed on one side while I was adjusting the pivot:
Blade came razor sharp out of the box and was shaving hairs easily.
I noticed is that the handle is HUGE in comparison to the blade size
The handle shape is somewhat reminiscent to me of the Cold Steel Spartan. The handle shape along with the aggressive G-10 makes the grip very secure in hand. The handle isnt all great, as
even though the G-10 is heavily machined, the edges are sharp and could have been a bit more rounded off:
It has thick, wide jimping along the top of the blade:
The knifes flipper works well and requires a slight flick of the wrist to fully and reliably deploy the blade
There are bronze washers on the pivot and here you can see the liner lock as well:
Using the opening hole is more awkward and not very intuitive, perhaps because my hands are not that big. I've kind of figured a way to place my thumb in there to start the blade, and then flick it open.
Here is the MT-5 next to the ZT 0350, you can see the size difference, and looking closely, you can see the cutting edge is nearly identical in size:
and comparing the width between the MT-5 and ZT 0350, notice that the ZT has a polymer backspacer, while the Mantis's is steel (could have had some weight savings here!):
I like this knife, but I am glad that I did not pay full retail for it in fact I am considering returning it to Mantis due to the stripped out screws, that was disappointing. Mantis has a pretty good lifetime warranty policy and they have done me right in the past. Ill carry it some more and see. Thanks for reading my review, I know Mantis doesn't get praise on these forums, but I really wanted to share my experience. I feel that Mantis' lower budget offerings actually have more bang for the buck than this higher end folder. All that being said, this is a tough knife, and I think it will stand up to hard use just fine. I can definitely be picky when it comes to spending much $$$ on a knife.
One thing that does bother about Mantis is that on several sites this knife is mentioned as being made in the USA, while others say made in Taiwan. I wish the blade was stamped with this information, as consumers like to know this kind of stuff.
Now I will say that I have experience with Mantis Knives, I own three other of their knives, the MT-1 Sliver, the MT-2HC Class Act, and the MT7.2 Folding Pry. These other knives were reasonably well made and a good value, so I wanted to see what Mantis higher end offering had to put forward. MSRP on this knife is a whopping $200.
For the first specs, the size: This thing is 9 inches in length, and weighs 9.2 ounces, which is HEAVY for a folding knife. It is obvious the intended use for this knife is a hard-use tactical folder. Pocket clip is reversible for left and right hand carry, but only tip up.
The G-10 scales are 3D machined and very grippy. They are grippy to the point that they will likely shred my pants pockets right where the pocket clip is. I may sand down the G-10 under this pressure point.
One of the first things I do when I buy a folding knife is usually disassemble it and remove any factory gunk and re-lube and reassemble. Unfortunately, out of the four screws on the scales, three of them stripped out and made it impossible to remove them. This was unfortunate.
Stripped out screw:
The pivot uses a strange six-hole pivot screw, which luckily I had a tool which was able to allow me to unscrew and remove the blade:
Due to the awkwardness of this pivot design, I ended up inadvertently scratching up the black finish on the screws, so, no longer pristine but OK
The recurve black coated blade is 154CM, and 3.5 inches:
The blade has no side-to-side or vertical play, its lockup is solid. The blade is sadly, not centered:
and while it is not directly rubbing on one of the liners, there is an obvious wear mark on the black finish where it rubbed on one side while I was adjusting the pivot:
Blade came razor sharp out of the box and was shaving hairs easily.
I noticed is that the handle is HUGE in comparison to the blade size
The handle shape is somewhat reminiscent to me of the Cold Steel Spartan. The handle shape along with the aggressive G-10 makes the grip very secure in hand. The handle isnt all great, as
even though the G-10 is heavily machined, the edges are sharp and could have been a bit more rounded off:
It has thick, wide jimping along the top of the blade:
The knifes flipper works well and requires a slight flick of the wrist to fully and reliably deploy the blade
There are bronze washers on the pivot and here you can see the liner lock as well:
Using the opening hole is more awkward and not very intuitive, perhaps because my hands are not that big. I've kind of figured a way to place my thumb in there to start the blade, and then flick it open.
Here is the MT-5 next to the ZT 0350, you can see the size difference, and looking closely, you can see the cutting edge is nearly identical in size:
and comparing the width between the MT-5 and ZT 0350, notice that the ZT has a polymer backspacer, while the Mantis's is steel (could have had some weight savings here!):
I like this knife, but I am glad that I did not pay full retail for it in fact I am considering returning it to Mantis due to the stripped out screws, that was disappointing. Mantis has a pretty good lifetime warranty policy and they have done me right in the past. Ill carry it some more and see. Thanks for reading my review, I know Mantis doesn't get praise on these forums, but I really wanted to share my experience. I feel that Mantis' lower budget offerings actually have more bang for the buck than this higher end folder. All that being said, this is a tough knife, and I think it will stand up to hard use just fine. I can definitely be picky when it comes to spending much $$$ on a knife.
One thing that does bother about Mantis is that on several sites this knife is mentioned as being made in the USA, while others say made in Taiwan. I wish the blade was stamped with this information, as consumers like to know this kind of stuff.
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If disassembling a knife voids a warranty, then I don't think a single knife I own is still under warranty anymore then At least I know now not to spend any more money on their products. A disappointing result, to say the least. I am considering letting this knife go and investing in a knife company that honors its warranty.
I have a Mantis Chaos fixed blade and a Vuja De. Zero issues with either, but I don't think I'll be picking up any more from them, especially if this is how the senior West is going to treat customers. Say what you will about Jared, but I've heard numerous accounts of how he'd bend over backwards to take care of customer service issues, and in the few emails I've exchanged with him he was very gracious and helpful in answering questions. Oh, well. C'est la vie, I guess...
