With Benchmade's help, I ordered a BM750bt Pinnacle by phone thru the Cutlery Shop.
I've seen that the Bts's were shipping, but I was happy to find Benchmade now shipping the black-bladed, non-serrated product. For this design and size of the blade, I wanted the non-serrated BT Pinnacle for my collection.
It actually came 4 days earlier than expected, Cutlery Shop threw in 2 day UPS delivery for the regular shipping price.
After having 2 CR Sebenzas, large-small, I felt like the Pinnacle might not be anything close to the fit-finish and quality of the more-custom Sebenzas.
I was wrong.
The CR Sebenzas are tops in their class, hands down. Anne and Chris shouldn't worry about their future business!
But for a mass production product, the 750 Pinnacle seems like a real winner. The blade is damn sharp out of the box. The handle feels great, and has some machined ridges exactly where you'd want them for a little better grip than just the sandblasted titanium. It shows the extra effort that went into the ergonomics of this knife.
The action's a little stiff, but I'll lube it and play with it enough so I'm sure it'll loosen up.
The blade geometry looks more "Tactical" in design than the Sebenza, and the recurved belly may be a problem sharpening, but the BT coating is uniform and adds to the mystique of this product.
But I'll bet it won't make it past an airport security guard..even without serrations, in BT it's just bad-ass bad looking!
The lock-up seems very solid, and the titanium lock-bar does seat pretty deeply into the back of the blade, so I don't expect it to unexpectedly close.
It's too pretty to slam into a table to check out whether it's really locked-up or not.
I'll have to be carefull carrying this in my pocket, from what I've learned with my Sebenzas:
The Titanium looks great, but just look at it the wrong way, and it'll develope scratches and unlike CR, BM apparently won't refinish the scales for careless customers.
As an added bonus I didn't even expect, my 750BT is engraved "First Production Run 1 of 1000"
Please don't tell my wife what that really means( 1 of the first 1000 made in this run).
Conclusion:
Fit-Finish First Class
Design and Execution First-Rate
Value for my money: delivers all thats' expected, and a bargain compared to Chris's original Sebenza Design.
I bet they'll easily sell everyone they make, and I'm happy they started shipping the non-serrated BT product so early in the run of these designs.
I've seen that the Bts's were shipping, but I was happy to find Benchmade now shipping the black-bladed, non-serrated product. For this design and size of the blade, I wanted the non-serrated BT Pinnacle for my collection.
It actually came 4 days earlier than expected, Cutlery Shop threw in 2 day UPS delivery for the regular shipping price.
After having 2 CR Sebenzas, large-small, I felt like the Pinnacle might not be anything close to the fit-finish and quality of the more-custom Sebenzas.
I was wrong.
The CR Sebenzas are tops in their class, hands down. Anne and Chris shouldn't worry about their future business!
But for a mass production product, the 750 Pinnacle seems like a real winner. The blade is damn sharp out of the box. The handle feels great, and has some machined ridges exactly where you'd want them for a little better grip than just the sandblasted titanium. It shows the extra effort that went into the ergonomics of this knife.
The action's a little stiff, but I'll lube it and play with it enough so I'm sure it'll loosen up.
The blade geometry looks more "Tactical" in design than the Sebenza, and the recurved belly may be a problem sharpening, but the BT coating is uniform and adds to the mystique of this product.
But I'll bet it won't make it past an airport security guard..even without serrations, in BT it's just bad-ass bad looking!
The lock-up seems very solid, and the titanium lock-bar does seat pretty deeply into the back of the blade, so I don't expect it to unexpectedly close.
It's too pretty to slam into a table to check out whether it's really locked-up or not.
I'll have to be carefull carrying this in my pocket, from what I've learned with my Sebenzas:
The Titanium looks great, but just look at it the wrong way, and it'll develope scratches and unlike CR, BM apparently won't refinish the scales for careless customers.
As an added bonus I didn't even expect, my 750BT is engraved "First Production Run 1 of 1000"
Please don't tell my wife what that really means( 1 of the first 1000 made in this run).
Conclusion:
Fit-Finish First Class
Design and Execution First-Rate
Value for my money: delivers all thats' expected, and a bargain compared to Chris's original Sebenza Design.
I bet they'll easily sell everyone they make, and I'm happy they started shipping the non-serrated BT product so early in the run of these designs.