request for opinions on Benchmade tether neck knife

[Mongo]

Greetings all, I saw one of these today at my local army/navy surplus store. Neat little fella in a neck knife sort of way. It had some kind of a grippy coating on the handle and a inch and change length blade. Upon a little research, I found that it has a Gin-1 blade steel. I'm not too familiar with this stuff.
Does anybody have one of these? What do you think of it?
All opinions appreciated,
Mongo

 

[Danbo]

Hey, Mongolian. GIN-1 is the original steel Spyderco used on their first knives. Pretty good stuff, but not as good as BG42 or VG10 or even ATS34. I think it's about like AUS6. Takes a great edge, and holds it reasonably. Pretty easy to sharpen, too.

 

[Mongo]

So... does anybody have one of these? How do you like it? What are your dislikes?

 

[tarsier]

I had one for about a year or two, I don't remember exactly. I sometimes like to carry a small, fixed blade pocket knife, and the Tether Knife was my choice for awhile. It's flat and light, so it carried very comfortably in a pocket. I don't wear neck knives, so I can't comment on that aspect.

The blade has a similar size and shape as the Spyderco Navigator, which I like. It looks a bit like a box cutter to some people. GIN-1 is a very rust-resistant, low maintenance steel. The blade was a bit thick to be a great slicer without a lot of reprofiling work. I didn't bother, since I use this kind of knife for household and outdoor crap work. I remember scraping old grout out with it at one point. It's really too expensive for that sort of thing though.

The handle material is quite grippy, and the green color combined with the blade shape makes it less threatening than some other fixed blades. I don't like finger grooves, but the ones on this knife were tolerable for a while. I would still prefer the handle to have no humps or grooves though. If that were the case, I would probably still have it.