New Benchmade model just announced (593 P.S.K.). I’m not entirely sure what they’re thinking with this one.
by marrenmiller
New Benchmade model just announced (593 P.S.K.). I’m not entirely sure what they’re thinking with this one.
by marrenmiller
7 Comments
Im thinking they are delusional (especially for the quality) and are gonna price themselves out of the market…
I want to see Benchmade succeed, but I’m not sure this is the way they’re going to do that. Major spec and design points for the 593:
* Axis assisted opening
* Coated CPM Magnacut
* ~3.5″ blade, .11″ stock thickness
* Shallow saber grind with unusual blade pocketing
* Split/multicolor G10 scales
* $360 street price, per SMKW listing.
This just isn’t a cohesive product in my mind:
* It’s a survival-oriented knife (“Personal Survival Kit”), but it’s assisted opening? How is that helpful in a survival scenario?
* .11″ blade stock? Why couple a shallow blade grind with that thickness of stock? Pick a lane. Go thin grinds/thin stock or thick grinds/thick stock.
* Their decision to coat their Magnacut blades continues to baffle me, as it adds cost/complexity but little practical value.
* The pocketed blade design isn’t going to do anything helpful other than accumulate debris, as you could shave weight and retain strength by using a different blade profile altogether. Again, added cost/complexity for no benefit.
* The scales are split for absolutely no practical reason at all other than to give it some visual flair. It’s getting boring writing “added cost/complexity” at this point.
* The price. Just ouch. I grabbed a PVD-coated PM2 Salt for $166. I don’t see the value presented here, whether in materials, design, or execution.
Edited to add: they’re marketing what appears to be a normal choil blade design as a dedicated fire striker surface. They’ve just lost the plot entirely here.
Pocket Survival Knife
For whatever it’s worth
Just Benchmade jumping the shark…
Again.
This is the kind of thing that would have been a good successor to the 581 Barrage I love so much, yet it’s baffling what they are trying to market this as. Price is typically outrageous.
I think the key marketing blurb is probably: “If you prefer to carry an auto outdoors but face regional restrictions, the 593BK PSK offers an ideal alternative with its efficient and ambidextrous one-hand deployment.“ I have to imagine they’ve done some research and that “outdoor auto” guy exists, although I’ve never met him lol. In theory an assist will help force a blade open when the pivot gets dirty; at least I have heard that from an assisted knife enjoyer before. If the axis lock stops working, the assist will also still try to keep the blade open rather than floppy (although you couldn’t call it locked), since unlike say Kershaw’s assist the BM assist constantly tries to open the knife. Also some people just like assisted opening knives; just not so much on Reddit. They like that it’s reliable and that the blade “fires” etc.
As for coating Magnacut, Spyderco also coated their PM2 Salt. At the end of the day Magnacut isn’t invincible and a coating will help with corrosion resistance. If your goal is to create some kind of super duper pocket survival knife, it’s not crazy to implement that redundancy. The grind is so the knife can still cut decently (it’s at the end of the day a small knife) but won’t snap in half doing “bushcraft” and other hard use stuff. It doesn’t lean in either direction because it’s supposed to be a balancing act.
That’s it for me steelmanning this knife though. I think it’s gonna get discontinued pretty fast because I dunno who wants it, and it breaks the number 1 rule: It looks like shit lol. It looks like some kind of discontinued 90s Benchmade piece of crap. The pocketing would be forgivable if it looked cool but it doesn’t. Like Siebert’s trademark fuller barely does anything but the best thing about it is it looks kinda cool.
If they’re going for bushcrafting/survival knives, they already have several other options that are better. Not sure what niche this fills. The handle is reminiscent of the Anthem, but that really just reminds people that it’s not an Anthem. And I don’t really get the assisted opening thing. Maybe some people are into it. I have a mini Adamas. What is a situation when it would be preferable to have this instead of the Adamas?