Juli's comments on the notch:
"WHAT IS THAT SMALL NOTCH AT THE BOTTOM OF THE SK AND WM WIRE CUTTERS :: A bunch of you have asked and no they are not hard-wire cutters so here is the answer I got from engineering, "The notch is for stress relief, to make the jaw stronger. Because the two halves of the jaw are coming together there, you need a relief to transition to the coined/sliding contact area. Take a close look and you'll see that to go from sliding contact at the pivot to cutter contact at the cutter tips, you need some kind of clearance allow that to happen without interference. It's just coincidental that it looks like a hard wire cutter.""
and:
"Wire stripper on the SK and WM is on the base of the can/bottle opener. Wouldn't recommend using hard-wire cutting on the SK and WM cutters or you'll tweak your pliers out of alignment. Juli@Leatherman"