Review Benchmade Mini Adamas: Anatomy of a Counterfeit Knife

SharperApex

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Excerpt from the full review:

Verdict​

I’ve spent this entire post discussing the various qualities, features and value proposition between the over-priced Benchmade Mini Adamas with MagnaCut, model 273-03, and a substandard, counterfeit version made by some crappy, sociopathic, criminal charlatan in China. How did it go? Well, the bogus knife came in a bit lower on the overall ratings scale. I’ll explain why.

First off, the counterfeit’s show side blade marking says it is a Benchmade knife, verified by the registered trademark symbol. On the clip side, there is a marking that says the blade is made of CPM MagnaCut, the ultra-premium, modern, particle metallurgy steel made by Crucible Industries in Syracuse, NY. But it’s not. Clearly so. It’s instead made of the mediocre, ingot-formed, Chinese-made budget blade steel 9Cr18MoV (which he admits to on his AliExpress webpage!). This is nothing more than fraud.

The bogus knife’s blade itself is sloppily made, demonstrated by the poor, blurry grind line borders between the flat, the swedge, and the primary bevel. And you won’t be surprised to learn that the knife, out-of-box new, is barely sharp at all (but then again, it is counterfeiting a Benchmade knife, so perhaps copying this feature is intentional).

Next, the bogus knife’s action is abjectly terrible. I included a photo above in this article of the unfinished blade tang edge, against which the crossbar lock slides when the blade is opened and closed. It’s so poor that, when the crossbar lock is disengaged, the blade just stops 2/3s the way down in its drop. To get past the hang-up, you have to manually push it down to close it the rest of the way. It is hot garbage.

Hilariously, the counterfeit knife’s pocket clip’s contact patch laughably falls into the middle Sibert hole, which means it won’t hold on to your pocket for long, although maybe in the long run, losing this crappy knife is more of a blessing than a curse.

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The kicker for me, though, was in the printed materials included with the bogus knife. The counterfeiter, some scammer in China whose name I have not used, but instead simply call him JUFooly, wrote to all his customers what looks to be a ransom letter, filled with words in random fonts (and in random languages!), unexplained, irrelevant images, and various pleadings he asks for. He explains that on his webpage in AliExpress.com, he has photoshopped the pictures of his knife (removing all branded identifications so he can claim he doesn’t sell counterfeits) so he won’t get in trouble with AliExpress. He admonishes all his valued customers to not publish photos of his knife in online reviews! No, no, no! He doesn’t want his customers to reveal he is a counterfeiter. (Oops! My post includes dozens of photos of his fake knife, I may have overlooked that request!)

But he goes on! Oh yes, he does. The last paragraph of the ransom letter, if you can call it a paragraph, reads as such (and I quote):

“.If you have a complaint, please do not open dispute, it would cause me a bad influence, you can contact me first. Business is not easy, I need to feed my family, I hope you can understand, do not malicious disputes, thank you.”

Our dear little charlatan wants us to fret over his ability to put food on the table for his family who benefits from his criminal enterprise. Aw, too bad, so sad, Brad. He actually tries to make us feel guilty by invoking his poor, likely mythical, family in his ransom letter.

Are you nuts, JUFooly? Have you given any consideration at all for the families of the small-company and independent, one-person knifemaker shops in the US and Europe from whom you are stealing? You are stealing from them by counterfeiting their copyrighted and trademarked designs and engineering. But just as bad, you are not only stealing their potential customers, but because your counterfeits are pretty crappy knives, you are hurting those knifemakers by falsely giving them a poor reputation among unsuspecting knife buyers due to your crappy work.

This shyster continues by claiming that business is hard. I can only imagine. I guess it would be really hard dodging all those nosey, busybody, international trademark infringement investigators who are needlessly causing you a bad headache, right? JUFooly is just one among an endless sea of sociopathic criminals who want nothing more than to personally benefit by stealing the creative and clever work done by others. But he does claim to be the largest such seller on AliExpress, so perhaps he is some scammer of note.

Sunlight disinfects all things from the darkness of the night. It’s time to call out these terrible people doing these terrible things that hurt not only our best and brightest knifemakers, but to the unsuspecting people who buy this crap (or at least those who resell it to unsuspecting, other people on places like eBay – you know the drill there, right?). Knifemakers lose, knife-buying customers lose, but these soulless, counterfeiting charlatans continue to win, unless we stand up and work to stop this crap.

If you can’t afford to buy the genuine-made knife (and we all know how insanely overpriced Benchmade knives are), you must understand that you’re only fooling yourself if you believe buying crap-quality counterfeits will bring you joy. It won’t, and you won’t be happy with it as a working knife, either. Your fake knife won’t impress your friends, either. Anyone with a few working braincells can see all the revealing dead giveaways on these bogus knives. Lastly, by buying this garbage, you are perpetuating and incentivizing these overseas criminals to continue their thieving and scamming. Please know that there are tons of great, well-made, and very cool-looking, budget-priced knives that will serve you really well as a working knife. Please give this some thought when thinking about falling for this counterfeit trash. Thanks!
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For the full post, please see my blog post at https://sharperapex.com/benchmade-mini-adamas-anatomy-of-a-counterfeit-knife/
 
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Your review states the blade steel of the BM was Magnacut and the copy was 9Cr18MoV. How did you determine the type of blade steel used in the knives?
 
Great question! Benchmade states that their blade is made from CPM MagnaCut and I take them at their word. The real question is about the counterfeit knife blade. Interestingly, the webpage on which the fake is sold states that their blade is 9Cr18MoV! I suppose the counterfeiter wants to cultivate some sense of transparency, yet he sells the knife with the blade marking stating MagnaCut. I can’t speak to his true motivations for doing so, but that was the source of that bit of data. Thanks for your question!
 
Great question! Benchmade states that their blade is made from CPM MagnaCut and I take them at their word. The real question is about the counterfeit knife blade. Interestingly, the webpage on which the fake is sold states that their blade is 9Cr18MoV! I suppose the counterfeiter wants to cultivate some sense of transparency, yet he sells the knife with the blade marking stating MagnaCut. I can’t speak to his true motivations for doing so, but that was the source of that bit of data. Thanks for your question!
Crucible and Niagra Mohawk have a prohibition against exporting Magnacut to Asia, which they have been aggressively enforcing with some of the Chinese makers. So, could be that he is covering his tracks.
 
Great question! Benchmade states that their blade is made from CPM MagnaCut and I take them at their word. The real question is about the counterfeit knife blade. Interestingly, the webpage on which the fake is sold states that their blade is 9Cr18MoV! I suppose the counterfeiter wants to cultivate some sense of transparency, yet he sells the knife with the blade marking stating MagnaCut. I can’t speak to his true motivations for doing so, but that was the source of that bit of data. Thanks for your question!
You should state that in your review. You don’t really know.
 
B brownshoe , This is excellent feedback! Thank you so much! I just updated the full post in 2 places, including in the Blade section where it first comes up and in the Verdict section at the end, to identify how I got that data. I also updated the excerpt in the original post above. I really appreciate your helpful input! ❤️
 
Both knives went through a decent spine whack test and were fine. No failures. As both survived and were identical in result, I didn’t include that detail in the already long post. There were far too many other issues where the counterfeit was way below par. Thanks for your question!
 
I now recall that the locks on older Mini Adamas knives were notorious for failing, but Benchmade resolved that problem by the time they released 273-03 in MagnaCut.
 
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