Well today I took receipt of a Benchmade 210 (Activator), it was pre-ordered from Joe at ODS (cheers Joe the service was great).
The first thing that strikes you about this knife is its size, I have averaged size hands, but if I hold my hand in a clenched fist and stick my thumb up it exceeds the total length of the knife.
The steel for a knife of this size is quite thick at around 3 - 4mm, the blade has about a 50mm cutting edge, has a depth of 25mm approx at the ricasso and the back edge of the blade and tang has a nice flowing curve (it is pretty much a perfect arc). The blade is flat ground with a secondary bevel and has 30mm of straight cut file work on the spine.
The handle depth is that of about 15mm at the butt and gracefully curves to a finger groove just before the cutting edge wher it widens to 25mm and the handle is two tone G10 graphite and silver. It is full tang and is made in S30V.
Despite its size it feels very good in the hand, it has a comfortable and very robust feel to it (probably due to the fact that the steel is nearly the same thickness as my Gene Ingram #30).
The slip pouch sheath for it (four peices of leather, with an area cut out of the third one in, stitched together like a pancake), is black leather and basically dwarfs the knife, but seems secure. It has a good sturdy belt loop on the back that will take a 2" belt happily.
My only dissapointment with it is, on the box it states "Benchmade knives are packaged extremely sharp", quite frankly I had to really try with this and it barely removed a hair on attempting to shave an arm, I have screwdrivers which came sharper. However I have all sorts of stones so it will give me a chance to practice my sharpening technique.
First impressions are it is a lovely little knife, but could of done with being sharper out of the box.
):
I would of taken pictures, but I cannot find the digital camera at the moment, so here is one from a website, the scale is pretty much 1/1, maybe a little smaller.
The first thing that strikes you about this knife is its size, I have averaged size hands, but if I hold my hand in a clenched fist and stick my thumb up it exceeds the total length of the knife.
The steel for a knife of this size is quite thick at around 3 - 4mm, the blade has about a 50mm cutting edge, has a depth of 25mm approx at the ricasso and the back edge of the blade and tang has a nice flowing curve (it is pretty much a perfect arc). The blade is flat ground with a secondary bevel and has 30mm of straight cut file work on the spine.
The handle depth is that of about 15mm at the butt and gracefully curves to a finger groove just before the cutting edge wher it widens to 25mm and the handle is two tone G10 graphite and silver. It is full tang and is made in S30V.
Despite its size it feels very good in the hand, it has a comfortable and very robust feel to it (probably due to the fact that the steel is nearly the same thickness as my Gene Ingram #30).
The slip pouch sheath for it (four peices of leather, with an area cut out of the third one in, stitched together like a pancake), is black leather and basically dwarfs the knife, but seems secure. It has a good sturdy belt loop on the back that will take a 2" belt happily.
My only dissapointment with it is, on the box it states "Benchmade knives are packaged extremely sharp", quite frankly I had to really try with this and it barely removed a hair on attempting to shave an arm, I have screwdrivers which came sharper. However I have all sorts of stones so it will give me a chance to practice my sharpening technique.
First impressions are it is a lovely little knife, but could of done with being sharper out of the box.
):I would of taken pictures, but I cannot find the digital camera at the moment, so here is one from a website, the scale is pretty much 1/1, maybe a little smaller.
