The state of being mildly chuffed about carbide box-cutter blades
AND a brief characterization of the recycling and safety iconography on their packaging
Yep, like it says in the title, I’m moderately chuffed (i.e. UK/Commonwealth lingo approximately corresponding to pleased
or enthused
) about having acquired some Stanley FATMAX tungsten carbide utility-knife aka box-cutter blades. Tungsten carbide box-cutter blades aren’t new. For all I know, you bown-bag your lunch five days a week and, Monday through Friday, you’re daintily nibbling away at sandwiches made with bread that you’ve cleaved from a solid uncut loaf of homemade artisanal bread using a high-quality tungsten carbide bread knife. Or maybe they’re passé and in a general state of disfavor.
They originally showed up on my radar when AvE did a BoLTR short review of DeWalt-brand snap-off TC blades five years back: BOLTR: DEWALT Carbide | Knife Blades. His verdict: they’re not worth the additional cost.
Project Farm produced a trapezoidal-blade shoot-out/comparison video that included a Stanley carbide blade: Which Utility Knife Blade Is Best? Let’s find out! DeWalt, Irwin, Stanley, Husky, Kobalt, Lenox. But I’ve never seen any in the wild over here in Hong Kong and they were always a pain to get shipped from overseas… until recently when I found that I could buy certain types and they would ship to HK. I added some to another purchase order and now, lo and behold, here they are.
Of the two form factors I bought, snap-off blades (STHT2-11818 STANLEY® FATMAX® CARBIDE™ 18 mm Snap-off blade x10) and trapezoidal blades (0-11-800 STANLEY® FATMAX® CARBIDE™ Utility Blades x5), all of the trapezoidals came in blister packs with black-and-gray cardboard with yellow branding. Half of the snap-off blades were in the same sort of livery but the rest were in yellow-and-black packaging completely devoid of gray. The date printed on the rear of the cardboard material for each pack with the yellow-dominated cardboard is newer than the year printed on the rear of the gray-printed packs, so I’ll posit that the yellow packaging is the newer design. All of them are labelled as having been manufactured in England, though this is only prominently called out on the newer-style blister packs. See the red-white-and-blue MADE IN U.K.
in the top-right corner of the cardboard?
microscope. I made some markings on the white ceramic blade with a black marker in order to facilitate focusing. All photos were taken at the same level of magnification.
This may be obvious but, for the sake of clarity and in the pursuit of precision, let us state explicitly here that these utility-knife blades aren’t made of solid tungsten carbide or even by brazing TC edges onto steel blanks. The product overview
section of the product page for the 0-11-800 blades states that they’re made from tungsten carbide coated carbon steel
. Above is an image showing a photo of the edge of one of these blades and, to its right, a generic white ceramic snap-off blade’s edge and a rust-flecked plain (presumably carbon) steel snap-off blade. These three pictures were snapped with a smartphone camera, through a clip on microscope
with a claimed 200x magnification.
A veritable Rosetta Stone on a blister pack and the snap-off blades’ safety and recycling iconography
The lion’s share of the back of the cardboard in the older style of packaging for the snap-off blades is covered with the same statement, translated into twenty-five languages, with the English version (indicated by the two-letter country code GB) of the phrase * 10x Longer life compared to 11-301 blades. Spend less time changing blades!
at the top and finishing up with a version of the same claim in Slovenian at the bottom.
Of these translations, all of the last four (Bulgarian [BG], Turkish [TR], Croatian [HR], and Slovenian [SV]), are partially hidden by a sticker bearing the French Triman
symbol and a QR code for the URL https://www.stanleyblackanddecker.com/packaging-recycling which, when accessed, currently redirects us to https://www.stanleyblackanddecker.com/impact/governance/resources-policies/package-recycling. The Triman aka Info-Tri symbol’s presence on applicable goods and packaging seems to have become mandatory in France in 2022 and, if my understanding is correct, places a legal obligation on the end-user to separate and sort the items or packaging. The QR code, by linking to a page on the Stanley site that explains the material code icons on the packaging, satisfies the associated Triman requirement that recycling instructions be given next to the marking.
The clear plastic blister for both versions of the snap-off blade packaging features the digit 3
inside a triangle, indicating that it’s made of PVC and both packaging types, on the brown-gray matte sides of their cardboard backing sheets, display a triangle containing the number 21
with PAP
printed below its base. On the older version of the packaging (the one with a Triman sticker over the bottom of a Rosetta Stone, this material code is hand-stamped over the right edge of the Greek, Hungarian, Czech, and Slovak translations. It signifies that the cardboard is deemed PAP – 21
(Non-Corrugated Fibreboard [Paperboard]
) rather than PAP – 20
(Corrugated Fibreboard [Cardboard]
) or PAP – 22
(paper). Though it doesn’t show up in my photo, the blister on the pack of trapezoidal blades bears a 1
in a triangle (to show that it’s made of PET – #1
) but the cardboard backing sheet has no material code markings.
The older packaging, in addition to the sticker and the manually-stamped PAP – 21
symbol sports three more icons. One indicates that eye protection is needed. Below that, we have a yin-yang arrow symbol asserting that this packaging is recyclable. Finally, a diagonal-slash no
symbol containing a baby head which resembles a dispirited jack o’lantern and the text 0-18
, appearing to claim that this product (tungsten carbide snap-off utility knife blades) is unsafe to use for anyone but adults. Good grief.
On the newer packaging, shown to the right, we have mostly the same iconography but also two others: an exclamation (in a triangle) and a bandaged hand, palm open and facing upwards, being menaced from below by something that looks like the nib of a fountain pen (also in a triangle). The former is a generalized warning symbol and the latter seems to signify a hand-cut hazard. Once again, good grief.