Product Review: Knobby Knife
Contrary to what it may sound like, the Knobby Knife isn’t the weapon of choice in some low-budget off-road horror movie. What it is, in fact, is a valuable tool in extending the life of your off-road vehicle’s tires. While primarily marketed as a tool for motorcycle usage, we felt the premise had enough merit to tackle the rough and tumble world of ATV tires as well. Here’s what we found out.
What is it?
The Knobby Knife is a100-watt heating tool/ blade that maintains over 500 degrees of steady heat for purpose of cutting durable tire rubber. Unique to the tool are a patent pending blade made of high quality steel specially shaped to sharpen the knobbies of your worn tires.
How Does It Work?
Surprisingly intuitively. You simply plug the Knobby Knife in and allow it to heat up just as you would a soldering iron. It typically took a bit under ten minutes for our model to reach operating temp and even after cutting multiple knobs, the temp of our blade rarely dipped below 400 degrees. There is a slight learning curve involved; mostly in determining how much pressure is required and which kind of cutting technique works best for you (we had the best results doing a steady sawing motion then flipping the blade outward just before reaching the actual tire carcass). Those of particular concern have access to a pretty useful instructional video here on the web. The bad news is that the tutorial covers only off-road motorcycle tires so a bit of usage adaptation is required when using the product on ATV/ UTV tires:
http://www.knobbyknife.com/how-to-video/
In the Real World:
The whole scientific process behind the Knobby Knife’s usefulness makes perfect sense. Fresh tires always make impressive traction thanks to well defined/ sharp knob edges. Over time, thanks to a little thing called friction, a tire’s knobs wear down: becoming physically smaller and rounding off at the edges. Using a hot-knife to trim these edges back is a simple cost effective means of regaining some of the effectiveness of the knob while extending the life of the tire in the process.
We found the Knobby Knife worked best for us by leaving the tires right on the quad, and simply rotating them by hand until the entire surface was complete. Then we would move on to the next tire.
Odds and Ends:
The Knobby Knife is extremely well built and solid feeling in the hand. There is simply no comparing the quality and fit/ finish of this product to generic similar-appearing tools. These are areas you simply can’t compromise when it comes to a process as demanding as sawing through a tire’s outer shell.
The asking price is certainly a bit steep but by sharpening even a single set of tires rather than replacing them and the unit has already paid for it-self. Just be careful whom you tell that you made the investment as virtually everyone and anyone within earshot seems to have a tire or two in need of a knob sharpening!
Conclusion:
The before and after.
We’re truly puzzled with why Knobby Knife seems to center only on bikes in their promotion material. It is possible that the reason for this is that the whole process of knob sharpening is more feasible (not to mention safer) with tires containing an innertube. However tubeless ATV tires are by no means immune to the charms of a knob refreshing.
We were successful in freshening up the knobbies of several different brands/ styles of ATV tires by simply paying special attention to removing the blade before coming in contact with the actual tire carcass itself.
Considering the high cost of replacing tires and these tough economic times, we strongly recommend picking up a Knobby Knife.
Contact:
Would you use the Knobby Knife to freshen up your tires? Discuss it here!