on the flip side, i tear open boxes manually because I'm too lazy to go get the scissors/knife
this post was submitted on 14 Mar 2025
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I would never ruin the buff on my benchmark by cutting a box!
...yeah I carry a balisong for boxes
I use my keys
Don't call me out, bro. I know Victorinox Kenjutsu.
I'm that guy
Easily opened for sure, but cleanly? I bet not. The knife will be clean and smooth, and satisfying. The cardboard will never see it coming.
Less effort, too
Lol ... as a kid one of my first jobs was working at a grocery store. I learned early on from older people at the same job how to separate the tape and peel it off as fast as possible. If the box had more than one strip of tape, you just used the pointed edge of anything to snap the tape ..... a pencil,a pen, a nail, a screw, a clipboard, sometimes just even a fingernail.
As soon as you remove the tape, you cleanly get at everything inside without damaging anything.
I once watched a friend of mine at the same job saying that he knew better and always used an exacto knife. After he ruined several boxes of merchandise, they took away his knife.
I work with frozen food boxes and on some of them you can just give few good smacks along the top and half of the tape will just unstick. Then just give a good pull to one of the halfs and you are in.
To break down the box, just flip it on the side and punch, usually that is enough to get one end of the tape unstuck and you can pull it off.
No tools needed at all
This depends entirely on the type of tape it is. There's plenty of ripstop tech in packing tapes now and adhesives that are stronger than the boxes they're bound to, both of which make a mess if you try to tear in a straight line.
They make safety openers for that which have the blade shielded.
How stupid do you have to be to damage the contents of a box when opening it with a knife? Was he just jamming it in anywhere?
Many ex cops work in retail.
Oh God, your comment triggered my PTSD... One of my first jobs I worked at, I had to restock, multiple times a day, a bin with a bunch of items that were very delicate and wrapped in super thin & delicate plastic. But the box they came in was made of super heavy duty cardboard. Like this shit was originally intended to be some kind of bullet proofing material but accidentally got used to make boxes. Even worse though was that each open end of the box was glued shut with enough glue to stick the Titanic back together and still have some left over and then stapled.
I hated those boxes.
You always have to be aware of what might be inside. If it's a bunch of solid objects, chances are you have some room to use a knife. If what's inside is big and fluffy and soft, chances are you're going to do damage.
The friend I talked about nearly got fired because he once ruined several big downy brand new winter jackets because he thought he was an expert with an exacto knife.
It's not that hard to do a clean cut with a butter knife let alone an exacto knife, so what the hell was he doing with it? Was he just plunging it in full force, because I was taught to open a box with a knife by doing a hard angle where if you went horizontal from the edge it'd scrape.
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No I did not watch 100 hours of EDC videos to find the perfect multitool with a selected high quality components and dozens of functions to just let it sit in my drawer or pocket.
I did all this in fact to use the damn thing!!! Sometimes even more than once a week!
And, which ones would you recommend?
I've carried a Leatherman Skeletool for about a decade now and I love it. It doesn't have as many tools as a lot of mulitools do but it has the main ones I need and is well designed.
I own multiple Victorinox pocket knifes, mostly Tinker.
My current EDC multitool is a Nextool BlackKnight. Its a budget option I bought to help with some more serious stuff in my current DIY projects, so I can abuse it without thinking about the cost. It has a great blade and very strong scissors, super happy with it.
On top of that I love retro knives, my latest one is a traditional Hungarian handmade shepards knife, similar to the ones here.
For always fitting in your pocket without being obtrusive, a Victorinox Minichamp Alox with a pocket clip.
Are you callin' me out, old man???
Anyway, it's rarely the cardboard that's a hassle. It's the damn glued shut bubble mailers, the boxes that are completely shrink wrapped, or have those damn plastic straps around them, or plasic clamshell packaging.
All of those get the chop. The latter often with extreme prejudice.
I used to work in a returns department. We joked that our customers had stock in the tape companies. They would put stuff in a bubble mailer and then run tape around it 20 times, covering every square inch and tight as hell. It was fucking awful.
I almost amputated the tip of my thumb the other day trying to open one of those goddamn clamshells and I was just using scissors. Fuck whoever invented them.
Word of advice get a non folding knife with some girth so not a kitchen knife, Ka-bar or a M3 replica are the best in my experience. Then just stab and pull, the plastic will give and you can use inward leverage on the harder outer plastic.
Fuck whoever invented them indeed.
These are designed for the retailer's convenience, not yours. Brick-and-mortar retailers love clamshell packaging because it is designed to be both theft and return resistant. It's literally impossible to open without destroying, so retailers can always point to their "returned goods must be in original packaging condition" clause (rarely enforced, but always there) if they feel like denying a return for whatever spurious reason. And then, the packaging can be made unnecessarily bulky (albeit usually rather flat) which makes it tough to pocket, shoplifting sensor tags are often embedded in it, and opening it in the store to remove the product is pretty damn difficult.
If your blade tastes cardboard, you need to study more. You should be quickly and cleanly gliding through tape, between the edges of that pulpy/corrugated paper that grips like molasses.
I just use it to threaten other people into opening stuff for me. Way less work for me.
When you carry a hammer, everything is a nail.
I laugh . For years I always had crap knives and i use them every day for work and on a farm. Reluctantly baught a TOPS fixed blade , didn't break the bank but it is a solid utilitarian knife (100% us made) and I can't believe how well it holds an edge. I have been using it daily and it replaced my razor knife for most jobs.
Cardboard doesn't stand a chance
While you were busy partying, I studied the blade
On the flip side, I always feel like a real poser when I fail to open a box that looked easily openable with my hands so better safe than sorry.
You gotta have generational skills and 10000 hours of training to not scratch the content of said box.
Or a boxcutter that won't go but so deep. Good ones even have a guide to let you cut around the edges in second for displaying purposes.
But where is the honor in that!? /s
Or just start the cut in the long direction and slip the knife between the top and bottom flaps for the sides. Assuming whoever taped it didn't add more tape perpendicular to the main length, though even then you just need to start a cut for each of them. Tip just needs to barely pierce it.
Behold: the Mini-Zatoichi
I can't. The left over tape is too much for me to take.
recently I have been restricted from knives for.. reasons, but tearing apart cardboard boxes like that one edgy warewolf PNG is pretty fun
Did anybody else ever watch Cutlery Corner with Tom O'Dell? It'd be on at like 2 AM. It's the only QVC-style shopping channel I ever voluntarily watched. A fair bit.