This Canary Box Cutter Is the Best $8 I’ve Ever Spent

Like many Americans, I deplore the fact that online purchases harm local businesses, which cannot compete with the convenience of unbearable advantages such as “free” first -rate shipping. Like many Americans, I always buy a ton of online stuff anyway, because it is certainly easier not to have to transport a huge packet of toilet paper at Aldi (at least, as a New Yorker, I can always be a snobs on the fact that I walk to buy the grocery store). But that also means that, come Prime Day or during the holiday season, I have to face a lot of cardboard boxes.

Some 35 million tonnes of “container panels” or cardboard used to make shipping containers like Amazon Boxs, are produced in the United States each year. According to my estimate, at least 10% of this arrives at my door. And although I am super diligent in the recycling of all this (the American Forest & Paper Association estimates that the “effective recycling rate” for the cardboard has a height of 85% – and that’s good!), Breaking these boxes to prepare them to place at the edge of the street is a hassle.

Or it was, until I learned the Canary box cutter, a small slim knife with a anti-cheerful serrated blade and a joyful yellow handle.

A bodie produced by an old Japanese sword company

This $ 8 knife – Yes, it is sold on Amazon, although mine was shipped to me in a padded envelope rather than in a box – is made in Japan by a company called Hasegawa Cutlery, which started almost 100 years ago to polish and grind swords (the “Cutlery” part was added after the Second World War, when the company started to produce seders). Hasegawa’s marketing language suggests that the company has brought all its Japanese expertise to the manufacture of swords to create consumer goods, and even if I have never tried to break down a stack of shipping boxes with a sword, I cannot imagine that it would be much easier than using my canary.

My previous methods to cut the box – Kitchen scissors or a steak knife (do not be like me, children!) – were far from effective, and utility knives, although certainly an improvement, are not excellent in the task either. The cardboard is rigid and fibrous, so although a razor blade can slice it quite easily, it is difficult to use one to make a controlled cut, because the blade will be forced out of the races if you try to go against the “grain”, so to speak; The utility blades are also dull quickly, but will always remain sharp enough to cut you easily if you manage them incorrectly.

The multi -long canary service edges, on the other hand, seem to cut cardboard like butter, which you combine with or against the grain, by pushing the blade or by pulling it, or by making a sawing movement; Its blade remains sharp and will not cut you so easily. (These qualities have made The Canary a favorite of craftsmen who work with cardboard.)

I am not of the type of craft, but I used my canary on the boxes that are both small and large. In about a minute, I cut the large box that my dehumidifier shipped, leaving a careful battery of small pieces of cardboard which are easy to attach to recycling. The knife works as well on lighter cardboard boxes like these Amazon uses, and the thickest, like strong boys who contained my flatpack target furniture.

It seems exaggerated to call this little blade that changes my life, but it definitely saved me a lot of time – much more than $ 8.