disappointed in Benchmade

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dstewart

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Today I went to a local gunshow,there was a knife dealer there. I looked at about a dozen benchmades, not one of them were very sharp. Now I love bm and I have about 10 or so,I looked at 755,710s,940s, and so on. I am very unimpressed with theyre sharpness. I thought people were just bashing them on here but its true F&F was good just not sharp. When you look at a fifty dollar kershaw that will shave hair it seems unreasonable to spend the extra on Benchmade. I am very disappointed and think from now on I will look else where.....
 
I am really impressed by:
1. How many people believe that the "news" about BM producing dull knives are really worth repeating time and time and time again...
2. How people with clear agenda to find some BM shortcoming fail to find actually anything worthwhile to surprise us with.
What is it about - sharp, dull... OK lets discuss that again...
 
Im sure there are many reasons why some batches of knives leave the factory short of razor sharp. No reason to down on a company.
Every edge bevel on a new blade has to be reprofiled after the first sharpening anyway, whether it was razor sharp or not so sharp. To me, i could care less if my knives purchased didnt come out hair whittlers.
 
dstewart said:
Today I went to a local gunshow,there was a knife dealer there. I looked at about a dozen benchmades, not one of them were very sharp. Now I love bm and I have about 10 or so,I looked at 755,710s,940s, and so on. I am very unimpressed with theyre sharpness. I thought people were just bashing them on here but its true F&F was good just not sharp. When you look at a fifty dollar kershaw that will shave hair it seems unreasonable to spend the extra on Benchmade. I am very disappointed and think from now on I will look else where.....
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I completely agree. benchmade is a company that sells just KNIVES. it is unacceptable they don't come very sharp when you're paying the prices they charge. I've seen $20 knives come much sharper. their F&F does not match the prices.

And the more people who speak up the better, maybe benchmade will eventually listen.
 
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Doesn't BM knife boxes have a warning on the box that explicitly states that the knife is very sharp and handle with care?

My BM H20 Griplitilian was one of the sharpest knifes out of the box I have had handled. I think the only thing sharper out of the box than a BM is a Spyderco. Even the BM i've handled at REI or Sports Chalet in their display case are pretty sharp.
 
at that level of quality... there's no point in sharpening it. we're all gonna sharpen it our own way anyways. i'm surprised knife makers even bother unless they ask how we prefer our edges.

i've had bad benchmades [wicked off center] and really good ones [most of them]. still like the company, even if my taste has evolved to more... expensive flavors
 
Whether or not you know how to sharpen a knife, I still think a knife at those price points should come sharp! How come Spyderco can do it? Oh by the way I love
Benchmade and prob own 15 of them!
 
Well...

First, I believe Benchmade has considerably more sales to military and LEO than any of the other 2 of the "big 3". Probably because of their large range of automatics. This means more perceived hard use, and thus a more obtuse angle is desirable to avoid complaints of rolling or chipping. This obtuse angle means the blade won't be as sharp.

Second, I'm pretty sure the sharpener that Benchmade offers is set at 25 degrees per side, so it wouldn't be too hard to imagine why the knife isn't at a more acute angle because of that.

Third, it's easier for a somewhat knowledgeable user to reprofile to a lower angle than to grind a more obtuse angle on an acute edge(looks prettier too). Those incapable of performing this task probably won't care if the edge is dull because they can't sharpen their knives to be any sharper than the factory edge it came with.

Any "omg it's dull" thoughts I had about my Benchmade evaporated once I cut myself with it:thumbup:.
 
RevDevil said:
Are you unable to sharpen knives on your own?
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^^Exactly. I'm always amazed by the stuff people will whine about, and the justifications they'll come up with to explain why this very basic question isn't the only sensible response to their whining.
 
the dude has a point though. when you buy a knife...a knife of all things (especially from a reputable company) it should at the very least be sharp lol.
some knife guys on the forums can be ignorant and cocky but the gods honest truth is that you shouldn't have to sharpen a brand new knife. it's comparable to buying a cosmetically pleasing car but the engine is shot. i can sharpen a knife all day long but that was not the ops point.
i get a kick out of it because i've experienced the same thing when i posted about the F&F of my new para 2. I was merely asking some opinions and some guys were coming off as know it all, rude A holes. you shouldn't treat people like they are idiotic.

i should also mention that i never purchased a spyderco that was anything short of razor sharp.

;)
 
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Spyderco, Kershaw, and Cold Steel ship knives with amazing edges. If they can do it then it's not crazy or "whining" to expect the same from Benchmade. I don't think my Benchmade knives came dull, but they were noticeably less sharp than the others.
 
How do we even know that they weren't sharp? He looked at them, he didn't cut anything with them. Some people have no idea what a sharp knife is.
Nothing in this guys story makes sense, he claims to own "about 10 or so" benchmades that are apparently good but then sees some at a gunshow and figures that they aren't sharp without cutting anything and now he swears off them completely and name drops kershaw as a brand that apparently when he looks at them he knows that they all shave hair.
This is at best ignorant slander and at worst purposeful malicious slander and if I ran this forum I would not stand for it.
 
so let me get this straight. this guys is not allowed to express some disappointment because you disagree? if you ran the forums, nobody would be safe...
 
also, it's no about a knife getting dull. he's talking about brand new knives. i'm shocked that people can't grasp such a simple concept.
 
four_shore said:
the dude has a point though. when you buy a knife...a knife of all things (especially from a reputable company) it should at the very least be sharp lol.
some knife guys on the forums can be ignorant and cocky but the gods honest truth is that you shouldn't have to sharpen a brand new knife. it's comparable to buying a cosmetically pleasing car but the engine is shot. i can sharpen a knife all day long but that was not the ops point.
i get a kick out of it because i've experienced the same thing when i posted about the F&F of my new para 2. I was merely asking some opinions and some guys were coming off as know it all, rude A holes. you shouldn't treat people like they are idiotic. i guess revdevil only buys dull blades from high end companies just so he can sit around and touch them up (that's of course when he's not treating people like morons on bladeforums) lol..

i should also mention that i never purchased a spyderco that was anything short of razor sharp.

;)
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True -- if the knife came unsharpened or literally as dull as a butter knife, it would certainly constitute reasonable grounds for complaint since it would render it unusable for its intended purpose of, you know, cutting stuff. ;) But the OP seems to be applying a significantly higher standard than merely having a functional edge, namely whether the knife will shave hair like his Kershaw. And that's why people like Rev, Ankerson, and I are suggesting that if he wants consistently good edges -- or to be able to regain that edge after use -- it's inevitable that he learn to put it there on his own.

Look, I appreciate that companies like Spyderco, Kershaw, Cold Steel, and others (I'd include Emerson in this list as well) consistently ship their knives with relatively sharp edges, and wouldn't mind if other companies would follow suit. What's drawing the negative response in this thread is the OP's apparent use of out-of-the-box sharpness as grounds for condemning an entire brand, especially since for anyone who actually uses their knives sharpening is something that will inevitably have to be done.
 
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