Mnandis Through the Years - A History in Pics

The powerful LW with a great post!

Just curious about the inlays. Are there specific time periods that CRK offers the inlays?


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I'm going to go into a little more detail about the transition from the old nick style to the current. It took a bit of time to get all the variants, but here they are. First up, all 5 design variants of the production Mnandi. As you can see 4 have the old nail nick, the last one has the new. But only the oldest has the older, larger pivot.

5Variants-Front-.jpg

5Variants-Back-.jpg



Now, the 4 steps of the transition in more detail.....

As I said before, the first thing to change was the pivot. The newer is smaller, and sits slightly below flush with the surface of the inlay....

5Variants-Pivots-.jpg



The next change was the most subtle. While still using the old style clips, CRK allowed themselves to run out of the solid head body screws in anticipation of changing the clip..

5Variants-Screws-.jpg



Next the clip itself was changed...

5Variants-Clips-.jpg



And lastly, the nail nick was changed. At the same time, the bladesteel changed from SV30 to S35VN, and CRK changed the finish on the blades, got away from the polished flats.

5Variants-NailNicks.jpg



The transition began in mid 2011. I have one from early 2011 that entirely the old style, but the next 2 shown are all late 2011 to early 2012. Here's the line-up that volunteered for todays pic session

African Blackwood/gold/diamonds, entirely old design, Mid 2000's
Desert Ironwood, Old nail nick & clip with solid head screw/new pivot
Macassar Ebony , Old nail nick & clip with allen (open) head screw/new pivot
Box Elder, Old nail nick/new clip/new pivot.
Honduran Rosewood, entirely new design.


Both transitionals, Bocote and Macassar Ebony.

BocoteMacassarTrans.jpg

Old style with Black Palm, transitional Mammoth Bark.

2Mnandis.jpg

And just because. 3 are the new style, the rest are older versions. No transitionals.

Mnandis1.jpg
 
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Excellent update, I've noticed one more change.. the detente indent in the old nick blades went from a divot to a hole drilled completely through.
 
greg c said:
Excellent update, I've noticed one more change.. the detente indent in the old nick blades went from a divot to a hole drilled completely through.
Click to expand...

Yep. All part of a pretty big change overall to the blades.
 
For clarity, I meant that the drilled through detente was also a transitional feature on some of the old nick blades.

 
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Photobucket trashed this thread, but I still have the pics. I'm going to upload them elsewhere, and replace the links in this thread, It won't happen right away, but I'll fix this thread.
 
I moved toward making the size of my pics smaller and just uploading them directly. If you have Android get the QuickPic app then edit photos and reduce the size.
 
WOW, Wow, wow! Thank you so very much for sharing your superb Mnandi knowledge & all the great pictures. I've Never seen anything this good & comprehensive on any knife before. My hat is off to you Sir.
 
Does anyone own a Mnandi or does Lone_Wolf own them all? ;)

Thank you for sharing the history of these beauties!

The 2nd run proto i owned for a short time was one of my biggest sellers remorse items, right behind the decorated Umn.
 
If you don't mind, I'd like to contribute to the history just a bit with my #176 of 200 production with the Ziricote inlay. Sorry, but I don't have the camera skills of LW. It occurs to me that since LW owns most of Mnandis ever created, that makes my #176 worth even more, right?!?!

IMG_0516 (Large).JPG IMG_0518 (Large).JPG IMG_0524 (Large).JPG IMG_0525 (Large).JPG IMG_0526 (Large).JPG
 
Nice one! My #163 shares a birthday with yours!

2001Ziricote_163-Inbound6.jpg
 
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