Biggest maintenance headache?

I had a Pakistan-made survival knife with the hollow handle. 420J2 steel, I presume. That was a LOT of work to re-grind the edge to something useful, and even after I did, it didn't stay sharp. That's one thing to keep in mind when buying a knife: the factory edge grind. If it's not good, you're in for a LOT of work to correct it, even with coarse diamond stones. The only thing that would help would be some type of motorized sharpener.

Much as I love them, my Swiss army knives need (comparatively) at lot of maintenance. They need the pocket lint cleaned out of them maybe every couple weeks' worth of carry, and the steel is on the soft side, so it needs pretty frequent re-sharpening. It's only a couple swipes on the Sharpmaker, so it's not DIFFICULT maintenance, but it is frequent. The small 58 mm Victorinoxes especially need a lot of sharpening, with only 1.5" of sharp edge, each inch needs to do a LOT of work! On the other hand, those models have the backsprings inside, so they keep their snap even when full of pocket lint.

I bought a used Benchmade Arcane and it was from the older days, when they still sharpened by hand. It had a wide edge grind and I was dreading having to re-grind that super-hard S90v. Since it was also full of lint and missing a pocket clip, I sent it to Benchmade, who promptly corrected all of the issues. Whew, dodged a bullet on that one!
Does Benchmade use some sort of robotic sharpening situation now like Mora does, and like I've heard Spyderco does?
 
I love serrations for some uses , but sharpening is a real PITA .

Especially (looking at you) Cold Steel . 🤬
 
Well, if we are considering sharpening as maintenance I find D2 run at a high hardness a real bastard to sharpen just right. Getting rid of the burr while maintaining that perfectly apexed edge, specifically. I've been griping about it for weeks lol.
 
Does Benchmade use some sort of robotic sharpening situation now like Mora does, and like I've heard Spyderco does?
I don’t know for sure, but I DO know that it came back with an even grind, and shallower than it had before, so I suspect they do now. It was PERFECT for putting the 40* micro bevel on it with the Sharpmaker.
 
I don’t know for sure, but I DO know that it came back with an even grind, and shallower than it had before, so I suspect they do now. It was PERFECT for putting the 40* micro bevel on it with the Sharpmaker.
That's good man. It really kinda sucks when you go to give your knife a touch up on the Sharpmaker and the 40* slots don't work for it because it's over that 😕. Not the end of the world of course, I can always reprofile it down to 17 degrees or so, but that's just another "project" in the line up of the 70 other "projects" you got going on in your head at any given time haha. Glad it worked out for ya.
 
As much as I enjoy my Benchmades: they always give me the worst case of "pucker butt". I always have trouble getting the blade and both washers lined-up inside the axis lock. 😱
 
Does Benchmade use some sort of robotic sharpening situation now like Mora does, and like I've heard Spyderco does?
My new Mini Adamas with Magnacut has a mildly convex edge bevel. Near the apex, it's 24 degrees on one side and 19 on the other. Most of my older Benchmades are better than that. So if it's a robot, the robot needs maintenance.
 
My new Mini Adamas with Magnacut has a mildly convex edge bevel. Near the apex, it's 24 degrees on one side and 19 on the other. Most of my older Benchmades are better than that. So if it's a robot, the robot needs maintenance.
Haha seriously. I'm not so sure about sharpening robots honestly... I suppose Mora has always done a pretty good job on the ones that I've had, however could definitely use a strop when received. Spyderco I've heard uses robots now, and the edges I've received have been pretty dang good, however i've heard other people say otherwise. Shoot, Benchmade should probably actually get a good quality robot because I've got a few very dull knives from them. I remember my Mini Rukus back in the day was comically dull and so obtuse that I didn't know what to do with it. That was before I'd gotten proficient at sharpening.
 
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