benchmade 522 or 520, is it worth it?

S

spydercomil

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Jul 9, 2010
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I can get a benchmade 522 for 65$, or a 520 for 115$. Is it worth the jump in cost? I use my knives pretty hard, but have never had one break, including a hollow ground griptilian. Is the 522 strong enough for a light duty camp knife, and an edc or should i go for the 520?
 
The tip section of the 522 is needle-thin. I much prefer the flat grind of the 520, but it's a heavy knife.
Because of its weight and size, I rarely carried my 520 and eventually sold it.
I have a 522, but hardly carry that either, favouring a Griptilian/RSK Mk1 or 710.
 
I had a 520 not too long ago. The steel was quite good, and the flat ground 154CM blade worked really well and sharpened nicely. What I really liked about the knife was the handles. I still have yet to find a knife with a more comfortable handle than the 520 presidio...it was just a perfect fit for my hands in every way.

I ended up getting rid of it because I had nothing but problems with the lock mechanism - There was lots of irreparable up-and-down blade wiggle and both of the omega springs broke, one after the other. I got sick of shipping it off to be repaired over and over again. Not worth the hassle.
 
Do you realy want to see a thin hollow grind? if you do then buy the 522. I did because of the price gap between it and the 520 and lack of knowledge. Althought I do not concider it to be week for EDC tasks the 520's flat grind is way way way tougher than the 522. Your choice
 
Didn't Benchmade have to redesign the 520 because the Axis Lock was allowing vertical play and would unlock on its own? I remember reading something about this a while back and it kept me from buying one. Though now the 520 is redesigned and I understand the lock up is solid and free of any blade wiggle.

Is there a way to tell the difference from the original and the redesigned?
 
cutter17 said:
Didn't Benchmade have to redesign the 520 because the Axis Lock was allowing vertical play and would unlock on its own? I remember reading something about this a while back and it kept me from buying one. Though now the 520 is redesigned and I understand the lock up is solid and free of any blade wiggle.

Is there a way to tell the difference from the original and the redesigned?
Click to expand...

As I understand it, one way to tell a relatively old one from a new one is that they used to be made with uncoated, satin finish thumbstuds, whereas they've recently started making them with black parkerized thumbstuds.

However, I haven't heard anything about the model being redesigned to eliminate malfunctions with the lock (it's definitely possible, though - and it would be awesome). I had a newer one with the black thumbstuds and it was still a bugger for irreparable up-and-down blade wiggle, so I'd say if they did make changes to the design, the changes were probably effected some time after mine was made (not sure about the precise production date, but I got mine around two years ago and it was from a new order from Benchmade).

Can anyone confirm the details? :confused:
 
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