Which Utility Knife Blade Is Best? Let's find out! DeWalt, Irwin, Stanley, Husky, Kobalt, Lenox

so it comes to utility blades think it pretty expensive especially if you go through them as fast as hi - so the question is can you just pick a brand that's actually going to deliver on both sharpness and durability and maybe save a little bit of money along the way today we'll be testing 12 different types of blades some of them claim to be 10 times better than the competition some have carbide some say titanium and others are just regular utility blades we're gonna see if any of these blades stand out as the best once we measure the sharpness of the new blades we'll see which blade stays the sharpest after cutting through cardboard we'll test resistance to abrasive wear on drywall we'll test the strength of the cutting edge of each utility blade by making a direct pass over copper pipe we'll really put the blade edge durability to the test when they come in contact with a staple I don't think we'll get very precise information if I just use regular newspapers so I went ahead and purchased a best certified sharpness tester to measure sharpness I'll be cutting through a piece of test media that runs from the left to the right side of this cliff door the amount of downward force applied is measured on this scale I've got a couple of clips to work with the sharpness tester measures the amount of grams of downward force needed in order to cut through the test media a butter knife is about mm and a utility knife is supposed to be somewhere between 150 and 200 a double edge razor blade is supposed to be somewhere around 50 costing only 15 cents per blade are these hyper tough utility blades these are the least expensive blades we'll be testing the second least expensive blades we'll be testing are these stanley blades costing only 19 cents per blade the third least expensive blades we'll be testing are these Husky blades costing only 20 cents per blade satisfaction guaranteed made in the USA for general cutting purposes costing only 21 cents per blade are these cobalt utility blades heavy-duty carbon steel two facet blades for greater precision at 24 cents per blade are these Milwaukee utility blades claimed to have an iron carbide edge last five times longer up to two times sharper utility blades are made of finely dispersed carbide in a steel matrix which gives the blade longer life in more durability and tough applications these Master Force blades cost 26 cents each they're made of high carbon steel 30 cents per blade are these craftsman blades which are proudly made the USA with global materials at 39 cents the Irwin brand is more than twice as expensive as the hyper tough and some of the less expensive brands but is it worth it it claims to offer three times more cuts high speed steel edge for longer life shatterproof spring steel body made in Mexico costing 42 cents per blade are these Stanley fat max heavy duty utility blades they stay sharper ten times longer made in the USA with global materials laser deposited carbide edge delivers a long-lasting blade for the jobsite costing nearly five times as much as the least expensive blade is this Lennox gold titanium edged utility blade claims three times more cuts made in the USA with Galba materials costing 79 cents for just one blade for more than five times as expensive as the least-expensive blade are these Dewalt carbide edged blades ten times longer lasting made in USA with global materials laser deposited carbide edge delivers a long-lasting carbide blade for the jobsite Milwaukee claims to be two times sharper than the competition and at it proved to be the sharpest the Huskie wasn't too far behind coming in second place the cobalt master force tied for third utility blades are often used for cutting cardboard so in the first test I'm gonna use this test jig that I've put together to apply five pounds of weight on top of the blade drag it across the cardboard from the first black line to the second I'm at a total of five passes across the cardboard and then we'll measure the sharpness of each play testing the hyper top so the budget blades did terrific for initial sharpness but can they maintain their edge over the more expensive blades after light use on some cardboard cutting through a length of 12 feet of cardboard told the hyper tough blade from 160 to 245 which is still pretty sharp stanley was a little sharper than the hyper tough at 225 at 220 husky is sharper than both the hyper tough and the stanley and takes the lead at 230 cobalt wasn't quite as sharp as husky at 170 Milwaukee kept a really sharp edge and takes the lead from husky master force did great at 190 but Milwaukee stays in the lead 245 for Craftsman so Milwaukee stays in the lead Erwin did great at 215 but Milwaukee held on to the lead stanley carbide did great at 185 Linux also did great at 185 do Walt start off at 190 and drop to 200 there are a couple of ways to look at the results Milwaukee started off as the sharpest utility blade and maintained the sharpest edge after cutting through a 12-foot lengths of cardboard however the premium blades which did not start off as sharp aren't too far behind another way to look at the results is to consider the sharpness loss after light duty the more expensive blades didn't start off as sharp and experienced far less sharpness loss compared to the budget blades with the Lenox the wall and the Irwin experiencing less than 10 percent sharpness loss while the Milwaukee cobalt hyper tough and husky all lost over 30 percent up next when to test these blades on try wall drywall is extremely tough on utility blades and make two passes down an eight-foot section of drywall for approximately 16 feet so let's see just how well they perform new utility blades were used for the drywall test to figure out the type of materials that cause the most abrasive wear with each brand quite a bit of drywall caked on each one of these blades I went in and cleaned up the blades with a little bit of acetone and a paper towel well the drywall caused quite a bit of wear with the Stanley doing slightly better than the hyper tough the Stanley blade held on to the lead over husky the Stanley also beat the COBOL Milwaukee and Stanley are now tied for the lead with a score of 300 Master force moves into the lead craftsman really struggled with the score of 415 Irwin did great at 320 but nasty force is still in the lead stanley carbide did great at 260 and takes the lead from master force Linux is pretty good at 315 but stanley carbide stays in the lead at 245 Dewalt takes the lead away from stanley carbide drywall is highly abrasive in the DeWalt stanley carbide Master Force and Linux did great the drywall really wore down the cutting edge of the Husky Koba hyper toughened craftsman in order to provide a fair and standardized test I built this piece of test equipment the way this works is this assembly is on a slide this is in a fixed position as I slide this back it's gonna drag the blade across a fixed object I can easily swap out the blades that we'll be using in this utility knife also I'm going to use a set amount of weight for each test I'll measure the downward force that we'll be applying to the blade just a little over two pounds so not a whole lot of force utility blades are oftentimes used to remove the insulation off a copper wire so I'm going to drag these blades across this copper pipe three times and we're going to see what kind of impact it has on the blade new utility blades were used for the copper test the next test is designed to measure the impact of applying force and friction on a cutting edge using a copper pipe we just used a new blade on the copper pipe test so let's see how much damage it did to the hyper tough the hyper tough achieved a 335 sharpest rating Stanley takes a lead from the hyper tough with the score of 305 Husky struggled a bit with 380 Stanley holds on the lead with cobalt scoring 345 Milwaukee did very well at 320 but Stanley stays in the lead masta for struggled a bit so I measured the sharpness twice just to be sure that the score was accurate craftsman struggled a little bit as well Erwin takes the lead with the score of 255 Stanley carbide did great at 275 but Arwen held on to the lead Lenox did terrific at 225 and takes the lead from Irwin Duvall it did an amazing job at 230 but that wasn't enough to take the lead away from Irwin Linux Dewalt Kerwin and Stanley carbide all did an amazing job with a sub 300 finish demonstrating terrific blade edge integrity Stanley did great for a budget blade and the Milwaukee did a respectable job as well if you do a lot of box cutting sooner or later you gotta hit a staple and when you do what's it gonna do to the blade we're gonna test each one of these blades making just one pass across a staple and see how much damage it does to the sharpness to make sure this is a realistic test I used a long staple out of a cardboard box and I stapled it onto this piece of wood I'll drag he's played across his staple one time starting off with a new set of blades the metal staple is likely to cause a lot of damage to a utility blade at a score of 575 the staple did a lot of damage to the blade edge on the hyper tough at 530 Stanley takes the lead from hyper tough Husky really felt the pain at 735 cobalt didn't do much better at 635 Stanley holds on to the lead as Milwaukee scores 605 master for scores 550 with Stanley holding on to the lead craftsman scores 610 Herman takes the lead with a very impressive score of 380 Stanley Carbide did great at 485 but not enough to take the lead from Irwin Linux felt the pain with the score of 660 12 did an amazing job at 245 taking the lead from Irwin if you need a blade that's tough enough to handle coming in contact with the staple or other hard surface that do all really stood out but it is about five times more expensive than the least expensive blade the Irwin finished second Stanley Carbide third and the regular Stanley blade finished for factory edge wasn't quite as sharp on the DeWalt as some of the other brands but it experienced the least amount of sharpness lost compared to the competition just like the dwell the factory edge on the Irwin wasn't quite as sharp either but at two did a great job of holding a sharp edge after coming in contact with the staple unfortunately the two blades with the sharpest factory edges the Milwaukee and the husky both experienced over 80% loss in sharpness while there may be some benefit to having a utility knife with a super-sharp factory edge there's aa squamous downside when the going gets tough Stanley makes a great case for being the best value blade costing only 19 cents each the second least expensive and finishing in the top five in most of the different categories however the DeWalt makes a really strong case is the best overall blade totally destroying the competition on that staple test that is a really durable blade but it's also really expensive costing five times as much as the hyper tough so the question is what do you really need in a utility blade all my video ideas including this one come from viewers so if you have a video idea I hope you'll take time to leave a comment just want to say thanks so much for watching the video please take care and look forward to next time

Channel: Project Farm

Views: 1,543,425

Rating: 4.9469814 out of 5

Keywords: Seafoam, project farm, utility, utility knife edc, utility knife kitchen, knife sharpness test, knife sharpness competition, knife sharpness tester, sharpest knife, sharpest knife ever, sharpest knife in the world, sharpest utility knife blades, sharpest knife showdown, sharpest utility knife contest, sharpest blade, utility blades review, utility blades, box cutter, box cutter blades, box cutter sharpness, milwaukee, dewalt, irwin, stanley, kobalt, lenox, husky, craftsman, masterforce

Id: 711IWHCljVk

Length: 11min 26sec (686 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 16 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

I just use my fingers... If they bleed, it's sharp enough. If they don't, I get a new blade.

[u/fartmech]

Wow, that’s a pretty comprehensive test

[u/Tha_Munk]

I've been following this dude for a while and it's a pretty cool channel. He test a lot of products that pretty much everyone buys to see which is the best and which is best for the money.

[u/MyDogFanny]

I use a utility knife blade almost every day. I keep it sharp with the Worksharp medium grit sanding belt. A very light touch on both sides of the blade to the sanding belt and I've got a very sharp blade.

I constantly hit a nail or staple and this dulls the blade. A light touch to the Worksharp and I'm good to go.

Yes it wears the blade down over time, but using the same blade for months saves a few bucks.

Thanks for the link. I was not aware of this guy's videos.

[u/crashtrez]

That laugh in his first sentence makes me want to punch him.