Pros: Weight, Ease of Opening, Handle Material, Blade Sharpness
Cons: Sheath, Handle Feel, Pocket Clip
3 star knife as sold and a potential 5
Seems like everyone rates these knives a 5 automatically. I just don't understand the hype. IMO, the condition of the knife as sold is not worth the price. Then, if you want to have a knife worth keeping, be prepared to spend another $200+ to modify it to the point where it becomes an AWESOME knife. Now if you are looking for a "kit knife" and enjoy customizing knives, this knife is for you. Straight out of the box it has a few negatives. The first thing you will notice is that every edge on the knife is unfinished. This knife just doesn't feel good in the hand. After a few minutes of flipping, I set it down and picked up my Benchmade 51 morpho with aftermarket titanium scales. On top of that, the blade is not "crowned", nor does it have a swedge. Also, the knife is w/o a pocket clip. I knew it didn't have the pocket clip when I bought it and I figured I would just buy one from BRS...well, you can't. I like having a clip for easy and fast "bite" handle recognition. The bare minimum you will have to spend in order to have a knife which doesn't produce fatigue quickly and won't give you callouses all over your hand is $175 (Rounded handles, crowned spine, and swedge). This service is available through BRS. Oh, be prepared to wait 6 weeks to have this done. There are other knives out there that come standard with these features. So when I received the knife I thought about sending it back. However, I decided to take this opportunity to learn a few knife finishing skills. I broke out the Dremel and rounded all the edges and buffed to a high gloss finish. Before putting the knife together I happened to see a YouTube Video of some guy flame anodizing titanium spoons. Short trip to Home Depot, then with torch in hand began to add some color. 2 handles came out great and will have to sand, buff, and re-torch the other 2. Anyway, I put the knife back together and the rounded edges have helped immensely. It is almost a pleasure to flip now...almost. The edges on top of the blade still feel horrible. I'll get around to doing the blade as well but I'm not sure if I will be able to make it look as good as the handles. I was contemplating having BRS do the blade though I think I'll do it myself. BRS should have done it before selling the knife, so on principle, I'm not going to give them more money. I think when I do the blade, I'll make sure to sand off the BRS logo and possibly laser etch my own. I figure this knife will have somewhat of a "Rat Rod" theme to it since I'm not a master knife maker. Once all my "mods" take place...THEN I can see giving this knife 5 stars. If you don't want to spend extra money after you buy this knife or you don't want to do the work yourself, my suggestion is you buy a 51 with titanium scales. I actually don't mind doing the work to make the knife great, I just wanted others out there to know what there getting.
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