Straight talk about line cutters
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The Piranha line cutter is not the first line cutter to be offered to the High Powered Rocket Community. While it is not known who first made a line cutter for high powered rocketry, I believe that the Arch-type line cutter had been the most popular. It had an aluminum body and presumably a steel cutter and a steel Allen screw cap.
Then came the original Piranha cutter with its precision machined all stainless steel construction, it was a huge improvement over any other cutter that had then been offered to the rocketry community. The original Piranha cutter worked as intended and would reliably cut a single Zip-tie (Cable tie) if loaded with Black Powder, it was not reliable with any of the Black Powder Substitutes.
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In 2022, every other small cable cutter ever made was made obsolete with the new and improved Piranha line cutter! The new Piranha cutter can work in a vacuum, in extreme cold and both at the same time!. It is smaller lighter and completely exhaustless! And with BP becoming harder to find, it works well with any of the BP substitutes!
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Below are video of some of the testing done with the Piranha Cutter
Make no mistake about it, for doing Dual Deployment from a single compartment using a drogue parachute in the traditional manner, there is nothing better than the new TD-2 tether and release device to hold the main until it's time for it to deploy!
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​So then why use a line cutter?
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Flying Drogueless with a bound parachute
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While the original Tender Descender worked ok for holding together a "burrito wrapped" parachute, it is not the best method of restraining a bound parachute. Truly the best method of restraining a Nomex bound parachute is with a strong light weight cord. The cable cutter is used to quickly cut this restraint at and free the parachute to deploy.
NOTE:
I know that a lot of flyers like the easy-to-use Zip-ties to restrain a "burrito wrapped" main parachute. I have also heard of these zip-ties breaking and releasing the main too early. Personally, I do NOT any longer advocate the use of zip-ties nor do I any longer supply them in my kits, partly because they are weak (Only about 11lbs break strength) and if you fly over grass or hay ground intended for feeding livestock, there is a risk of livestock eating these zip-ties once the hay is baled and the hay is eaten. If a horse gets hurt as a result of eating zip-ties from a rocket recovery system, surely the launch site would be lost.
(Never mind the fact that these nylon zip-ties take a long time to bio-degrade.)
Anyway, I now supply in the Piranha kits a waxed cotton cord that is bio-degradable and I think would be digestible should it be eaten. In addition, it is very strong allowing the main chute bundle to be reefed VERY tight precluding any early release.
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