Major reprofiling advice

T

the_mac

Joined
Mar 14, 2005
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My current EDC is a Benchmade 556 mini-grip, partially serrated, in 440C. 556S-BLU. I love the ergonomics, size, and the way the steel takes an edge. What I don't love are the serrations.

What I would really like to do would be to regrind the primary bevel in the serrated portion of the blade to give the edge a recurve profile, eliminating the serrations and giving it a huge cutting advantage with a recurve at the same time.

Would this be a reasonable idea?

Possible problems as I see them:
1)The steel may be hardened only at the blade edge, and then left softer and more durable near the spine, and grinding off that much material may remove the harder steel if this is the case.
2)Removing a good portion of the material near the hilt may make the blade significantly more succeptible to breakage.

And if neither of those poses a problem, then what is the best way to go about actually re-profiling the blade? Would I be well served to use a slack-belt sander, or a grinder, or a mill with a carbide tip to mill out the new profile, or hours of tedious hand grinding with stones. Or just abandon the idea, and use the knife the way it is.

Any and all advice or comments would be great.

Thanks
-Jake
 
You would need a belt sander to do it right, and it will still look like crap.
I would advise selling it, and getting the plain-edge model. The recurve idea will not work well with the steep grind of this blade.
Bill
 
the_mac said:
What I would really like to do would be to regrind the primary bevel in the serrated portion of the blade to give the edge a recurve profile, eliminating the serrations and giving it a huge cutting advantage with a recurve at the same time.

Would this be a reasonable idea?

Possible problems as I see them:
1)The steel may be hardened only at the blade edge, and then left softer and more durable near the spine, and grinding off that much material may remove the harder steel if this is the case.
2)Removing a good portion of the material near the hilt may make the blade significantly more succeptible to breakage.
Click to expand...
I'm not going to give you any advice on how to do it, mostly because I don't know. BUT:
1) Nope, putting a differential temper on a blade take time and $, and it's rarely done on folders, in fact, I've never seen a production knife with a temper like this.
2) I can understand your concern, but I've seen some knives with pretty large finger cutouts, and holes cut in the handle, etc. Remember, it's steel! It's tough stuff, you can remove a healthy portion and still have a strong knife.
.
As far as whether I'd recommend doing it or not, I'd say GO FOR IT! You won't learn until you try, and if you're interested in learning about knives, this may be a great place to start. Good Luck. Even if it does look like crap or you end up ruining it, (which I doubt you will, you seem smart enough) you will have learned something from it. If you don't do something, it won't get done!, so GIT 'ER DUHN!
Just one more thing, you're going to have to be careful not to over heat this knife, and ruin it's temper. If you use a file it shouldn't be an issue, if you use power equipment you will have to be very careful, but I can't tell you how. Sorry.
 
If you choose to do it, I think it would be possible with a 1.5 inch (or so) wood dowel and progressively finer crocus cloth. Probably start with 80 and move down to 600. Then stone to the cutting edge.

I saw a Buck Strider someone did this type of mod to. Killed the resale value, but looked like it might have been serviceable.
 
I was thinking of one I saw where they did not bring the whole edge up, just took out the serrations in a fluid arc.

It ended up looking more like an deep recurve.

My bag.
 
This would take me about five minutes on my bench grinder. You would just have to either have a water feed or keep the knife blade moving on the stone and dunk it in water every few seconds so you don't lose the steel's temper by getting the blade too hot.

This would "crudely" but effectively eliminate the serrations very quickly. Then you could work with a flat file or course whetstone to get the primary edge angle and lastly resharpen it like any other knife.

I like serrations better than plain edge and it might be best like was previously mentioned to sell it in the want-ad section and get one with a plain edge.

How'd you link the model info to the Benchmade product page? I have inserted links but never linked one to a word like you did and was wondering how hard it is to do?
 
Considering how high the serrations ride, I would not grind the entire edge back, I would either recurve the blade, or do a Tracker style dual profile. It would take about half an hour with benchstones, minutes on a belt sander, bench grinders are similar but with a much higher chance of buring the edge, take care.

-Cliff
 
Okay, I think I'll start small. I'm going to try the same mod on my Kershaw VaporII first, because it's my beater knife, and if it turns out okay, then maybe I'll try the benchmade sometime.

As for the link, it's like this, but without the asterisks... [*url=http://YOUR LINK]Text goes here[*/url]
 
mac, welcome to bladeforums! i don't speak from a whole lot of experience, but i hang around the knifemaker forum a lot, and i'v gleaned some wisdom from them.
if i were you i wouldn't try it. 440C gets awfully hard, and it would agonizingly tedious to keep the blade cool enough to keep the temper. differential heat treat is nonexistant (to my knowledge) in folders just because it's not worth it. the blades are too small to efficiently heat selectively. for a blade as small as the benchmade you're talking about, grinding the teeth off would most likely make the knife awkward to use, and i think you'd probably end up wishing you hadn't.
Alex
 
I was just at the local knife shop and noticed like Cliff had mentioned, the serrations are cut deep into the blade of the mini-grip. I think it would be best to buy another knife.
 
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