- Joined
- Jun 24, 2013
- Messages
- 4,162
I had a not so pleasant experience with my Adamas, my first Benchmade, when its blade had too little retention which caused it to pierce my pants and almost cut my behind
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1143331-Tip-Up-Disaster-(graphic-content)
I fixed that to some degree by making stronger Omega springs and used the opportunity to mod he blade a little bit.
Following are the pictures with some brief explanations. Please feel free to suggest any more improvements or ask any questions.
Thank you.
Original Blade

I etched the laser engraved butterfly and letters using DC and then blackened the deepened patterns with AC

The result was black patterns in a black blade

Now I removed the black coating with this paint stripper from Home Despot. Either I got a really old one or this particular brand is not very good. Even on other knives it took much longer than what other people can do with the spray version.

While stripping my BK-9 for example was hard, the Adamas was even worse. I guess Benchmades coating is just better. It took me 6 applications of the stripper for 3 hours each. (the instructions said 1x15 minutes...) In addition it needed lots of scraping with an exacto knife and rubbing steel wool over it. Still not enough!. At the end I was left with many large spots which could not be removed. It almost looked like it was bonded to the metal on a molecular level like some Anodization. I know it wasn't but that's how it behaved and looked. I took another 2 hours with a dremel and a wire brush wheel.
The result is as follows. Non black blade which I prefer for food prep and black etched patterns.

In addition I wanted to make the grooves black to make my Adamas look more refined by having the groove color matching the colors of screws and pocket clip.
I taped the whole blade and cut out the grooves from the tape with an exacto knife and used AC to introduce black oxidation.

Here you can see the part I am most proud of.
I planned to make stronger Omega springs to increase blade retention and prevent another disaster like this http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1143331-Tip-Up-Disaster-(graphic-content)
Initially I planned to use guitar wire. But Rainforest would take 2 days to ship and I couldn't wait and found a cheap thin key-ring which came for free with my car keys. It was the max size wire (0.033 inch) which could fit into the frame hole and turned out twice as strong as the original spring. (Guitar Wire came yesterday and the thickest available is only as strong and thick as the original spring with 0.026 inch). Maybe that is what Benchmade is using in the real deal?
This is a photo of the spring which I bend in 5 minutes with the original lying on top of it. You can also see that the Sibert sign isn't as black anymore. That happened because the original paint was so strong and paint stripper was not enough and I had to use a wire brush wheel to finish cleaning the blade.

Hoping this was a bit interesting to you.
Thanks for reading.


I fixed that to some degree by making stronger Omega springs and used the opportunity to mod he blade a little bit.
Following are the pictures with some brief explanations. Please feel free to suggest any more improvements or ask any questions.
Thank you.
Original Blade

I etched the laser engraved butterfly and letters using DC and then blackened the deepened patterns with AC

The result was black patterns in a black blade

Now I removed the black coating with this paint stripper from Home Despot. Either I got a really old one or this particular brand is not very good. Even on other knives it took much longer than what other people can do with the spray version.

While stripping my BK-9 for example was hard, the Adamas was even worse. I guess Benchmades coating is just better. It took me 6 applications of the stripper for 3 hours each. (the instructions said 1x15 minutes...) In addition it needed lots of scraping with an exacto knife and rubbing steel wool over it. Still not enough!. At the end I was left with many large spots which could not be removed. It almost looked like it was bonded to the metal on a molecular level like some Anodization. I know it wasn't but that's how it behaved and looked. I took another 2 hours with a dremel and a wire brush wheel.
The result is as follows. Non black blade which I prefer for food prep and black etched patterns.

In addition I wanted to make the grooves black to make my Adamas look more refined by having the groove color matching the colors of screws and pocket clip.
I taped the whole blade and cut out the grooves from the tape with an exacto knife and used AC to introduce black oxidation.

Here you can see the part I am most proud of.
I planned to make stronger Omega springs to increase blade retention and prevent another disaster like this http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/1143331-Tip-Up-Disaster-(graphic-content)
Initially I planned to use guitar wire. But Rainforest would take 2 days to ship and I couldn't wait and found a cheap thin key-ring which came for free with my car keys. It was the max size wire (0.033 inch) which could fit into the frame hole and turned out twice as strong as the original spring. (Guitar Wire came yesterday and the thickest available is only as strong and thick as the original spring with 0.026 inch). Maybe that is what Benchmade is using in the real deal?
This is a photo of the spring which I bend in 5 minutes with the original lying on top of it. You can also see that the Sibert sign isn't as black anymore. That happened because the original paint was so strong and paint stripper was not enough and I had to use a wire brush wheel to finish cleaning the blade.

Hoping this was a bit interesting to you.
Thanks for reading.

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