Benchmade's reputation

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Lodd

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Jan 23, 2015
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Among people I talk to about knives, Benchmade's reputation has worsened for the last few years. The first things that come to mind when talking about Benchmade are usually poor Quality Control (by now it's been dubbed the Benchmade QC Lottery), high pricing and uneven grinds.

Yesterday, I was at the Dutch Knife Exhibition (DKE). I had my eyes on a Mini Crooked River for a while, so I asked most of the dealers there if they had it with them (none did). When talking about Benchmade, most of them spoke about the above. They also stated it was the reason for them not carrying more knives by Benchmade. One of them even refused to carry Benchmade at all, saying he would consider it 'after they learn to grind straight'. One of his coworkers told me he had purchased a Benchmade Anthem a few weeks ago, but promptly sent it back because of the uneven grind. He joked that the uneven grind was a Benchmade mark of authenticity and that a Benchmade with a straight grind was probably a chinese knockoff.

Now to be fair, people do tend to focus on the negative. Thinking about positives, I would point out the ambidextrous designs (big points with me), good heat treat, durability and good designs. The price is a little on the high side, but worth it if you get a perfect knife in terms of fit and finish. But a good reputation tends to be one of those things that comes in on foot and leaves on horseback (as we say around here).

Personally, out of the 3 Benchmades I have bought in my life, the most recent one (Benchmade proper) came in the box with a burr. Nothing I couldn't fix myself, but at Benchmade's pricepoint, it's kind of ridiculous. You wonder where the professional pride is.

Now, I know I'm posting this in the Benchmade subforum. I'm not trying to stir up trouble. I just thought it was interesting to know how Benchmade fans feel about this.

Do you recognise the above?
Do you think Benchmade's reputation could use some work?
Do you think Benchmade is aware of this?
What do you think could realistically be done to address this?


Disclaimer: Before you burn me at the stake, I did just order a Mini Crooked River. Please don't hurt me ;).
 
I'm new to the BM brand. I've had a 940 and found it was an excellent sample, just not for me. More recently I had a 810 and it was again perfect. Based on these I never researched the brand, per se.

I currently only have a 319, and was surprised to receive it with an uneven grind. That's when I started researching BM and heard much of the above criticisms.

My take is that I just need to be careful as a buyer and look for examples that meet my criteria. I can live with some imperfections, depending on the knife and price point.

My next knife I am saving for is a 550-1 Grip. So the brand image hasnt scared me away, just made me cautious.
 
I genuinely do don’t recognise any of the above.
All my knives are to use, and even if a grind was slightly off it wouldn’t bother me as they are to use, and if you use them you have to sharpen them so I don’t see the big deal.
A point to add is the latest knives I’ve purchased have had by far the best action by a country mile.
Sounds like people having a laugh, hopefully your crooked river is a nice example then You can tell them they don’t know s#!t
 
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Quality control can always be improved upon; I don't think anyone in the chain at Benchmade takes an attitude that "eh that's good enough". I think there are enough redeeming things about Benchmade that keep them in good standing, although always room for improvement. Their direct competition has gone up in price too but value will always be a personal opinion.

Here in the upper Midwest USA I rarely see brands represented as prevalently as Benchmade in brick and mortar stores. Besides the blister pack brands (Buck, Kershaw) Cabelas, Scheels, Sportsmans Warehouse, even majority of the small gun shops I have been in all have display cases dedicated to Benchmade with their current line up. Almost never see any Spyderco and a very small handful of ZT. In my sample area geographicly near me, Benchmade is represented the most.
 
MattWRog said:
Here in the upper Midwest USA I rarely see brands represented as prevalently as Benchmade in brick and mortar stores. Besides the blister pack brands (Buck, Kershaw) Cabelas, Scheels, Sportsmans Warehouse, even majority of the small gun shops I have been in all have display cases dedicated to Benchmade with their current line up. Almost never see any Spyderco and a very small handful of ZT. In my sample area geographicly near me, Benchmade is represented the most.
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I notice the same thing in the Eastern US. Though I would say Case is similarly well represented.
 
I agree with the OP's findings. From my experience , BM has gone downhill in terms of QC and value. Which is why I favor other brands.

That being said , BM still has some very attractive designs. And I decided to give them a try recently by ordering a Rukus II Automatic yesterday. I'm very curious and very excited to see how the factory QC will be.

I used to be a BM faithful. But when I started to consistently get knives with horribly uncentered blades , blade play and iffy grinds , I called it quits. I'm really hoping BM becomes the quality knife producer they once were. I miss the days of the 710 , 707 and the old HK line.

Again , this is my experience and opinion. I want to like BM again. But QC speaks louder than words. So we shall see.
 
I'm with you Brother . . . I bought 6 BM's had to send 3 back for poor quality (that's 50%), grindy action over the tang from the axis lock when closing because they don't bother to smooth the tang where it rolls under the locking roller pin.

Poor fit and finish on the mini MCR and uncentered blade, sharp pointy corners on the scales, an ugly orange blotch under the scales that was hidden by the clip. 2 out of the 3 had off center blades. A black Arcane which I new bought from Knifecenter.com that had tiny white chips in it, so I sent it back for them to switch for a new Emissary which came with a grindy axis lock plus an off centered blade. Of course the only other one they had in stock they took a look and that was off center too. So I sent it back to BM. Big mistake . .. I should have had the store credit me and I could have looked elsewhere.

This is all total BS to go through all of this and a total waste of my time.

These 3 knives where sent back to BM 3/15/18 and today is 4/22 . . . Thats 5 freakin weeks and still no knives, no emails, no nothing. Chris Reeves even "called me" to explain what adjustments they did and that they were shipping sending it back to me that day.
I bought it used and a previous owner probably pinched a washer.

I'm going to start dumping my BM's after I finally get them back as I've moved on to Chris Reeve knives. True that brand is more expensive, but not that much more when you buy them used. At least I'll never have to worry about broken Omega springs and then HAVE TO SEND IT BACK TO BM AGAIN for 5 weeks plus . . . that ain't never going to happen. Screw me once shame on you, screw me twice shame on me.

I'm newer to the hobby and I started with BM as they were pricer, but i figured I was paying up for their quality.

The problem as I see it from my small sample of 6 BM different models now, is it's just like BM sold their name out to some chinese company and the quality dropped like a rock with the newer company.

Here is another sales adage for you BM . . . one happy person tells 3 others, but one unhappy person tells 12 others. Thats the old adage. The newer adage is one unhappy person allows us to tell 1,000's (and thats a beautiful thing).
I'm done. I wish I could tell the factory to just keep them and send me cash, so I could buy more used CRK's.

This post will probably be deleted since BM is a sponsor here and thats not right.
 
Here's what I think. Some "dealers" will only carry a product to use it as a sell against. You can usually spot them by they way they don't have much of the product in their store and the way they constantly talk smack about the brand.

The unsaid issue here is that they really don't have anything good to say about their main line so the easy fix is to go negative. And it works; at least for someone who's uniformed.

It honestly looks like US knife brands have price issues in Europe so they can be a hard sell.

I would say if you really want one of those knives do what you need to do to get it in hand and decide for yourself.
 
I'm pretty new to Benchmade, having bought my first one around last Thanksgiving 2017 at Cabela's (a 940-1601). By that time I had done a lot of research on the various forums and Youtube and heard a lot about Benchmade's quality control, so I examined the knife carefully before I bought it. I found it to be perfectly centered, with a smooth action and no blade play. The edge grind was a little off, being steeper on one side, but I figured I would even it out while sharpening.

Since then I've gone a little crazy and bought 7 more Benchmades (I'm a lefty and love the Axis lock). Five of them were ordered online and all arrived well centered with the lock spot on, but the edge grinds on most were asymmetrical like my first 940. Of those 5, the Foray that I ordered from Amazon with some Christmas loot bothers me a little, because the swedge grinds on either side of the top of the blade are uneven, with the one on the left being ground forward of the one on the right. I'm not sure if I should send this in for a new blade or if I'm being too picky.

But mostly my experience with Benchmade has been excellent. All of these knives were new with dates stamped on the boxes; all made in 2017 except the REI exclusive 940 from 3/18. The current issue seems to be an uneven edge grind, but none of mine have been that bad. Since then I've found a pretty local Premium Plus dealer who generally keeps a good stock of all the current Benchmades, so I can run over there if there's something that catches my eye. They'll get my business from now except for dealer exclusives that I'd like to have.
 
Babyboomer, glad BM's worked out with you. Of course this threads and similar will get plenty of "I've never had an issue with my BM's" except . . . that does not mean much to those of us that have not been happy. It's in the BM forum which is sure to pull out the happy owners, can't blame the ones that are happy.

A tip: Before I started collecting the first thing I bought was a Wicked Edge sharpening system as Im not a fan of the 15 second of factory grind and then tossed in the box to be shipped.
Of course BM will sharpen and put their factory grinds on their knives for life.
But I'm partial to a extremely sharp edge (isnt that what a knife is all about) and I prefer a mirrored edge to a factory grind.

So you might want to start out watching a few wicked edge videos. Their systems appear expensive to some of the other popular sharpening systems, but in life you get what you pay for.
If this interests you rather than sending your BM's back periodially back to the factory and losing the use of them for 4-6 weeks, you might want to do as I did. . . Get into a sharpening system. You can buy a used low end wicked edge system like on ebay etc.

Before I send another knife back to any factory (any brand) I'll just state the issue it has and sell it here at a discount and let the new owner send it back to the factory for their free adjustments.

I'm not the OP and even though I'm on the same issue he posted, I don't want to hijack his thread, so I'll be quiet now ;)
 
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All I'm gonna say is inspect your Benchmade before you buy it or ask the vendor to inspect it before shipping. Either pick the best example or walk. The poor qc is 100% real and extremely frustrating. Map pricing is also sky high for such poor qc. All the youtube channels know all to well about this.

Every Benchmade I've bought was a good knife with poor qc. I only have two atm and I'll never buy another until they make better knives all the time. Sold the rest.

All brands have issues. But Benchmade has common issues. Seems like they need to fix the way they manufacture, train employees or add more qc. I gotta say, I have seen good examples of Benchmades too. Just not too common.

Benchmade do instagram live feeds and half the chat is always asking if they are improving quality and the poor person reading the comments at Benchmade getting frustrated cause it's so true... Priceless.


All the big name youtubers and Instagram personas all know too well about the poor qc. Though plenty of folks are oblivious of these issues and live with them. I wish more people held them accountable so they can improve there reputation by doing better.
 
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expidia1 said:
So you might want to start out watching a few wicked edge videos. Their systems appear expensive to some of the other popular sharpening systems, but in life you get what you pay for.
If this interests you rather than sending your BM's back periodially back to the factory and losing the use of them for 4-6 weeks, you might want to do as I did. . . Get into a sharpening system. You can buy a used low end wicked edge system like on ebay etc.
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Yes, I'm researching sharpening systems. I have to stop buying knives so I can afford one! In the meantime, my local dealer has a Tormek behind the counter, which is handy if I need some work done on a blade.

I don't think I implied that there are no problems with the QC, but I can only go by my experience -- which is 8 knives since Black Friday 2017.
 
Some will say I posted because I’m a fanboy only.
Not true.
I’m posting because I handle/inspect/disassemble hundreds of BM ‘s a year.
I also purchase new BM’s all the time.
I always purchase online, new in the box, site unseen.
Yes I have seen/encountered some issues.
Some minor issues (dull or uneven grind) and some that were a little bigger deal (Anthem w/off center blade).
However, nothing bigger than that.
In addition, out of all the BM’s I have bought & handled in the last few years I would say 90% (or more) came to me issue free.
3 Loco’s, 2 Crooked Rivers, 2 Mini Loco’s, Phaeton, Fact, Bugout, CLA, AFO II, Vector, Presidio II & Mini-Barrage; all relatively recent purchases with no problems.
 
He joked that the uneven grind was a Benchmade mark of authenticity and that a Benchmade with a straight grind was probably a chinese knockoff.
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Hahaha
First off they have some knives I MUST HAVE. So I put up with . . . well . . . Benchmade being Benchmade.
The edges aren't a big deal with me because I plan on reprofiling anything I get and if the edge is just perfect (my last Spyderco, a Para2CamoS30V, (thank you, thank you, thank you) I bust out the balloons and chocolate cake.

What can be done ?
A big giant dope slap to the American work force in general to get their freekin' heads out of their drugs, phones and other BS and back to the work Bench as it were.
Pleasure and satisfaction can be had from a craft well learned and a job well done.
It starts at the top though. I know what it is to have my hands tied behind my back and then beat with a lash to do a "good job" . . . F . . .ing fools.

Benchmade . . . all I can say is . . . good luck.

PS: two of my Benchmades that are perfect in every way. No joke.
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Keyman said:
Some will say I posted because I’m a fanboy only.
Not true.
I’m posting because I handle/inspect/disassemble hundreds of BM ‘s a year.
I also purchase new BM’s all the time.
I always purchase online, new in the box, site unseen.
Yes I have seen/encountered some issues.
Some minor issues (dull or uneven grind) and some that were a little bigger deal (Anthem w/off center blade).
However, nothing bigger than that.
In addition, out of all the BM’s I have bought & handled in the last few years I would say 90% (or more) came to me issue free.
3 Loco’s, 2 Crooked Rivers, 2 Mini Loco’s, Phaeton, Fact, Bugout, CLA, AFO II, Vector, Presidio II & Mini-Barrage; all relatively recent purchases with no problems.
Click to expand...
I find this encouraging. I've taken a long hiatus from BM due to consistent QC issues I mentioned above. But I'm hoping they are back on the strsight and narrow. My new Rukus II Automatic will be here tomorrow or Tuesdsy. Hoping for a great knife all around. And believe me , my fingers are crossed
 
I don't own a bunch of Benchmades ... but I have through the years most were bought in the early 90s and up to maybe 2005 or so ... they were/are great knives everything is perfect no issues at all ...

I've kind of moved to different brands but I still look at some Benchmades now and then ... I was at a gunshow recently and a dealer I've dealth with for years only had a small display of Benchmades instead of his usual huge display ...

we talked and we pulled out a handfull of knives ... out of abot 10 or 12 ... 2 were what I would consider good ... the rest all had something that wasn't up to par for a new knife ...

I hope they figure it out they make some great designs ... and I love the older Benchmades I have ... but I wouldn't buy sight unseen at the moment ...
 
I have 5 BM's (working on a sixth) and so far no real issues, however all were bought in a B&M store, so I was able to handle them before buying. No discernable blade play issues, blades are reasonably centered and the grinds are not a problem for me, but I think the knives are all sharpened by hand, so I don't expect perfection.

I only have two Spyderco's (PM 2 and Para 3 so certainly not truly an accurate representation of the brand) but both have little imperfections that may bother the OCD in some, but I can honestly say that as long as the knives continue to operate reliably, I don't see a problem with Benchmade, Spyderco, KAI, Buck, or any other knife manufacturers.
 
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