Is Benchmade phasing out thumb holes?

J

jec88

Joined
Mar 6, 2012
Messages
833
Just curious. I have a mini grip 555 with the hole and a hk14716 and 940 both with the thumbstud. Awhile back i looked over a 550 grip in person and when I went back a month or so later, all the thumbhole 550/555 were gone from the knife shop.
Looking online, many places seem to be out of stock of the thumbhole versions. You can find them, but they just seem to be a little harder to find than they should be? Is it just that they sold out over the holidays and haven't built up their inventories or is this a trend?
 
no. see -1 upgrade.

bm wouldn't have invested in gearing up for upgrade were that the case.

apples to apples, I still prefer 550 to 551.
 
You could be right, but then again Benchmade does a better job than most companies of not flooding the market with unneeded models. They base production on what models and configurations of those models are selling (saw a production staffer comment on this in one of those BM factory tour videos a few years ago), and as such, can run low on certain models until more are produced.

I do worry about them one day soon abandoning the Spydie hole to avoid the TM/licensing thing altogether, but dang, what a shame arriving at that day will be...
 
I doubt it. I don't have solid figures, but I would guess the models with holes sell a lot less total pieces overall, so they
are going to focus on the biggest sellers first... I think that is probably why they brought out the 556-1 before they brought out the 555-1.

As mentioned, they kept the hole on the new -1 series. You have to remember too that this is the time of the year when they are struggling to get all of the new products out on the market, on top of the products they were already producing, so they are extremely busy. Give it a month or two and things will probably be back to normal.
 
I think you are right. A few days ago, I played around with the "design a custom grip "feature on the website and it would't let you choose a sheepsfoot, but now it looks like you can so hopefully they won't discontinue them. I picked up a 550 with the hole since I have a mini 555 and the hk1476 mini axis. The only thing I didn't like about my mini grip was the partially serrrated blade, but my son loves it so I gave it to him and bought myself a regular grip 550.
 
If only they would make a 551 blade
with a thumbhole..
 
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