- Joined
- Mar 1, 2022
- Messages
- 11
Hi all,
I am relatively new to the knife game. Before this year I bought a number of affordable knives, but this past year began exploring high quality manufacturers.
I recently purchased a Mini Adamas. Im not really into the tactical style, but something about that knife design is just beautiful, not to mention it feels so good in hand.
In any case, when I first took delivery of the knife, everything seemed nice and tight. After a day or so, i noticed that the knife had a some amount vertical blade play -- enough to catch my attention and bother me.
I read up on the forums that this is often caused by the the "tolerance gap" between the pivot and the pivot hole on the blade. It seems there is some variance in Benchmade's manufacturing, where some blades have less of a gap, some more. I checked this by disengaging the lock and pushing / pulling the blade, during which I could feel the gap.
I also read on some advice on the forums to clean up the knife pivot and washers. I polished the washers (I actually found there was a slight deformation that i was able to flatten). I applied a slight amount of lubricant on the pivot and washers, applied some graphite to the tang. And spent some time actuating the axis lock, in order to encourage surfaces to mate and break-in the knife.
After all these efforts, the knife seems to have improved quite a bit. The up and down play is now much more solid. Now when I rock the blade, with light to moderate pressure the knife blade play is barely noticeable. With moderate + pressure the blade play is still there, but less pronounced.
One important detail worth mentioning is that the remaining vertical blade play is also accompanied by movement of the axis lock (like im fighting the tension of the lock). And if I push forward the lock, blade play disappears.
In any case, the reason I am posting is to get some perspective from those of you with more experience in the knife game. Given the current state of my knife, would you be happy with the knife?
Part of me is wondering if I exchange the knife, maybe I would get an example with tighter tolerances and no play at all (the flip side being I could get one with worse play).
I could keep my knife and send it in to Benchmade to see if they could further improve the action?
What are you thoughts knife community?
I am relatively new to the knife game. Before this year I bought a number of affordable knives, but this past year began exploring high quality manufacturers.
I recently purchased a Mini Adamas. Im not really into the tactical style, but something about that knife design is just beautiful, not to mention it feels so good in hand.
In any case, when I first took delivery of the knife, everything seemed nice and tight. After a day or so, i noticed that the knife had a some amount vertical blade play -- enough to catch my attention and bother me.
I read up on the forums that this is often caused by the the "tolerance gap" between the pivot and the pivot hole on the blade. It seems there is some variance in Benchmade's manufacturing, where some blades have less of a gap, some more. I checked this by disengaging the lock and pushing / pulling the blade, during which I could feel the gap.
I also read on some advice on the forums to clean up the knife pivot and washers. I polished the washers (I actually found there was a slight deformation that i was able to flatten). I applied a slight amount of lubricant on the pivot and washers, applied some graphite to the tang. And spent some time actuating the axis lock, in order to encourage surfaces to mate and break-in the knife.
After all these efforts, the knife seems to have improved quite a bit. The up and down play is now much more solid. Now when I rock the blade, with light to moderate pressure the knife blade play is barely noticeable. With moderate + pressure the blade play is still there, but less pronounced.
One important detail worth mentioning is that the remaining vertical blade play is also accompanied by movement of the axis lock (like im fighting the tension of the lock). And if I push forward the lock, blade play disappears.
In any case, the reason I am posting is to get some perspective from those of you with more experience in the knife game. Given the current state of my knife, would you be happy with the knife?
Part of me is wondering if I exchange the knife, maybe I would get an example with tighter tolerances and no play at all (the flip side being I could get one with worse play).
I could keep my knife and send it in to Benchmade to see if they could further improve the action?
What are you thoughts knife community?
