Brittleness/Burn Problems with Benchmade still a thing?

Z

Zenturio

Joined
Aug 7, 2017
Messages
171
Hi together,

first of all, I do not want to bash or blame BM. I liked a lot of their older models.

Now I am thinking of buying a 550 or Redoubt and slap on AWT scales.

The thing is, my experiences with a Presidio CF Elite 2 years ago and with a 551 S30V were not good. The Presidio chipped very badly, even after a few sharpenings. The 551 also had problems with chips and edge degradation under light use.

Also, there are a lot videos on YT showing similar problems.

What are your recent experiences? I do not want to get surprised in a bad way ;)


Thanks and BR,
Oliver
 
I have a half dozen or so Benchmades, 710, Mini-Rukus, Grippies in D2 and CM154, Puukko 200 in 3V, and haven't experienced any problems with chipping or poor edge holding, so I wouldn't worry. If there is a problem, Benchmade has pretty good customer service from what I read.
 
Same here as above... No issues with mine........Why didn't you just send it back to Benchmade??
Their Customer Service is pretty good...
 
The blades on my BM's isn't the problem. It's the blade play. Both my 535BK-4 and my 945 has serious blade play. Got tired of adjusting and tinkering with them, so I don't carry them anymore.
 
I’ve had, and daily carry, two Redoubts since they hit the market. One of the two is carried daily: Rain, snow, heat, cold….never a problem. Relatively easy to sharpen and stay sharp for quite a while. I had a third one with AWT scales: didn’t like the addtl. weight + the scales were kind of slippery. Like a lot of folks on this forum, I have many knives (well over 100 to my wife’s dismay) to choose from for EDC. Those Redoubts are the choice most every day.
 
Delgadonine said:
The blades on my BM's isn't the problem. It's the blade play. Both my 535BK-4 and my 945 has serious blade play. Got tired of adjusting and tinkering with them, so I don't carry them anymore.
Click to expand...

My mini grip also had issues with play.

Problem was the stop pin was wider than blade+washers, so tuning the action was impossible. Maybe that's ure issue as well?

Fixed it by grinding down the shoulders of the stop pin. Not an easy task.
 
I don't think Benchmade has egregious issues across the board, or people would have caught on by now. That being said, some people use their knives much harder than others, so they're more likely to see chips. A steeper sharpening angle might help if you've had this issue a few times.

You could also track down a Hogue RSK; they offered a version with a Magnacut blade and carbon fiber handles that might hold up to your use better. The handles are nice enough that you might not want to swap them out, and Magnacut is significantly tougher than S30V at the cost of a little edge retention.
 
Dear all,

thanks for your answers.

After reading your comments, I decided to order a 550 in S30V steel.

I reprofiled the edge bevel according to my needs and did a test to examine if there may be problems with chipping.

I cut into hard wood, twisted the edge to provoke lateral force. I cut through heavy zipties (also with twisting), cut heavy polypropylene rope and cardboard. After the rope and cardboard the shaving sharpness was quite away, but there was no single chip/ding or flat spot found on the very edge. That blade performed way better than my other Benchmades from a few years ago!

That means I am very happy with that 😊

I just ordered OD green AWT scales to make the 550 my new main EDC worker 😉

Thanks and BR,
Oliver
 
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