I very briefly mentioned these Midwest Knifti-Cut shears (MW-P657N) in yesterday’s post about Wiss MultiMaster snips. The Knifti-Cut is a compact multi-purpose cutter, and I’m actually a bit surprised at myself for not telling you about them sooner.
These might technically be snips, and not shears, but the absence of a compound-action pivot makes them look and function much more like shears than metal snips. It seems that Midwest couldn’t decide what to call the cutter either, as they describe it as both a shop shear and utility snip.
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I bought my Knifti-Cut shears a few years ago at Sears the first time I stumbled upon them, and have never once regretted the purchase. I don’t recall how much they cost at the time, but it was probably in the neighborhood of $14-15. What I do remember is thinking there must have been something wrong with the price, and that I was getting an unusually good bargain.
Midwest continues to manufacture the Knifi-Cut in the USA.
I have used my Knifti-Cut shears to cut everything from rubber to aluminum. I sometimes use them to rough-cut wires, and think I even once used them to cut flower stems. Sure, ordinary metal snips would have worked just as well most times, but the Knifti-Cut is smaller, lighter, and easier to pack away in a tool bag or mobile kit.
The Knifti-Cut cutter has an overall length of 7-1/4″ and 2″ cutting blades. This makes the shears great for mobile tool kits, but I also find myself using them for quick cuts here and there even when larger and more powerful cutters are available.
Sometimes bigger is better, but the Knifti-Cut proves that this isn’t always true.
Midwest deserves a thumbs up for producing decent performing and highly versatile compact shears. They get another thumbs up for somehow being able to retail the tool for ~$16.
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While I have not need to buy any new metal-cutting snips in recent years, when the time comes I will probably look at Midwest’s before any other brand’s.
Rich
These are American made and one of several of the best scissors I have ever owned. Worth the purchase entirely.
mike
Nice, perfect size for what i need around the house and a great price.
Thanks Stu.
mike
I ordered one of these and a pair of their other types of snips.
Koko the Talking Ape
Do these have a spring to open them again once you cut something? Without that, or loop handle like in scissors, it is hard to see how you would use these with one hand.
Stuart
There are similar cutters with spring-action handles, but these don’t have any springs. The handles are compact and close enough together where you don’t need two hands to use the shears. Even so, you probably wouldn’t want to use them to cut yards of fabric in one go.
David
I’m going to pick up a pair of these next time I have a chance. I almost never see Midwest in stores where I live (Sears is the occasional exception, but their selection is weak).
Fred
An excellent pair of shears with one painful flaw, a pinch point where the handles come together at the rear of the tool. Be very careful that you don’t get your palm caught especially when you bear down with a lot of force. You’ll end up with a very painful bruise or even a cut.
JohnH
I just ordered (based on the article and some of the positive comments) and received a pair of these shears through Amazon ($16). In general, they appear to be solidly made, but there’s one aspect in which I’m quite disappointed. For some reason, they ground the points off the blades such that they now are squared off (about 1/8″ across at each tip). The picture in the article above shows them ending in a sharp point which is what I expected (and need) them to be. I was going to return them until I looked closely at pictures on the Midwest tools website for this product and they appear to be partially squared off as mine are. If I was a gambling man, I’d bet that when the handles bottom out against each other the tips did not come together in a point so they just ground them back so that you could not tell. Plus, they’re not even ground square! Definitely not the craftsmanship I was expecting.
Stuart
Yikes, sorry that you’re disappointed!
The points on mine are slightly rounded as well, as opposed to pointed (I can check later to see how much), and I always thought this was done to make the snips more pocketable.
I slip them into my back pocket sometimes if there’s no good place to put them down. If the tips were pointed, they would more easily tear through.
Midwest advertises them as having needle nose blades for accessing confined areas. Maybe they’re blunted a little bit to avoid nicking anything unintentionally.
Or maybe your tool was finished at 4:59pm on a Friday.
If you’re unhappy, you could/should contact Amazon for a replacement. When it arrives, you can keep the better-looking one. Or if you’re okay keeping them, you can express your displeasure to Amazon, telling them of what seems to be a factory flaw or defect, or quality issue as it sounds like, and they might offer you a partial refund.
I have found that, on the rare occasion something like this happens, a few bucks back on my card can sometimes convince me to keep a tool that is functional but disappointing, slightly damaged, or lower than expected in some way.