Benchmade Ares....Guess Benchmade is improving

[Richard]

For sometime I have avoided anything Benchmade. I tried a few of thier knives always hoping the next would be better than the one before. What I normally ended up with was lousy liner lock-up, blades rubbing liners, crappy factory edges that chipped easily, and every other problem you could think of. My final answer was just to forget it, I wouldnt try another Benchmade no matter how good the price was.

Anyways, there is a forumite I speak with on ICQ from time to time. In talking about knives, he felt the more recent Benchmades had shown quite an increase in consistent quality. Sooooo, yesterday I had the WANTS really bad, and went to the local gun/knife/hunting shop. They had a nice selection including Benchmade. I looked at the 735, which I guess is just the 730 with green and black handles. Looking closely it really is hard to find any fault in this knife. The blade is perfectly centered in the handle. Out of the box its very sharp with a nice even edge grind. All grind lines are even, and overall fit and finish is very nice. If this is typical of the current Benchmade, then I think they finally got back on track with quality. Im going to give it a good work out over the next few weeks and hopefully I wont regret buying it.

Here it is

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Richard Todd - Digital knife photography
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[OwenM]

Richard, I think Benchmade's quality has definitely improved, especially with the Axis models. Check out the 940, in particular. I have two of the blue ones, and they actually stack up pretty good next to my new small Sebenza. I think the Sebenza is in another class, but you can't beat Benchmade for the money.
That 735 is a nice one. I'm waiting to get a plain edge.