- Joined
- May 9, 2002
- Messages
- 12,605
Hi there. My name is Jake, and I pretty much hate middle-of-road length knife blades. I can get behind the super shorties and what they bring to the table, but I generally gravitate toward larger bladed knives for my EDC sporting at least a 3.6" blade with most flirting closer to 3.75 or 4+". To me, they have always just made more sense. They fold, so they fit in your pocket. Logically, pack the largest one you can comfortably carry because it is still going to fold up smaller than a fixed blade, right?
My typical EDC is a Mircrotech Combat Troodon. Big ol' OTF knife. If I am going a bit more subdued, then I carry a Large CRK Inkosi sporting a 3.6" blade. My wife and daughter just bought me a Cold Steel for my birthday not to long ago: A Counter Point 1 with a 3.75" blade made out of AUS10.
A few weeks ago, I got the itch for a new knife. I wanted what I wanted: Big, Tough, Unapologetically brutish. I decided that I would give the newer version of the full size Benchmade Adamas Auto a try. I loved everything about this knife...except the Auto part. Long story short: I don't like the Axis Lock in terms of it being the firing mechanism as well as needing a safety. It's a bit of a "hair trigger" auto, and painful lesson learned, USE THE DAMN SAFETY
Mine popped open in my pocket a little. I had no idea it had done so. Reached in, ouch!...nine stitches and a very expensive co-pay (thanks, HSA
!) my right little finger has a new cautionary tale to go along with the scar.
Anyway, I still love the knife, but I have gone back to my OFTs for my auto needs. However, if you have read the title of this little rambling, you will notice that this is NOT about the full size Adamas. See, I really liked everything about the Adamas. I liked how capable it built. I loved the wide profile of the blade. I was getting used to the Axis lock, but I figured I would like it more if it didn't have spring tension trying to fire the blade constantly. Have a few birthday bucks in my pocket, I figured that I might like to give the knife a try again. However, something kinda dawned on me. I have so many larger folders, and there have been more than a couple of times where whipping out a huge knife in public may have been frowned upon. That said, I still prefer my knives to be hard-use tanks over lightweight and gentlemanly. I still want the knife to be capable of real work. Then I remembered that my LKS where I bought the full size Adamas Auto had a flat black Mini under the glass. Why not?
OK, this is the part where I eat crow. This is an awesome EDC if you are looking for a brick outhouse that doesn't completely fill your pockets. I think it has to do with the design. Benchmade has managed to keep the spirit of the Sibert design yet scale it down about 30% in a proportioned way so that it still "works" as a hard use knife. My biggest gripe with many 3.25" blades is that they are neither fish nor fowl. They are lukewarm and really only excel at being the tool you wished was bigger or smaller than it is. However, Mini Adamas somehow manages to pull it off.
For those not familiar, this knife sports a 3.25" blade of CPM-Cruware which is becoming one of my favorite steels rapidly. It has the traditional Axis lock that allows for easy one hand opening/closing whether you use the thumb studs, doing a lock drop, or just giving the blade a flick with gusto. The oversize broze washers and polished tang make this a silky smooth knife to open. So far I have only opened and closed it a couple hundred times and opened some boxes at my desk, but it has a very solid lock up with even less blade play than my Adamas Auto.
Also, while the Full Size is obviously a much larger knife as you can see from the comparison pics, Benchmade did the Mini right. Where the tip of the full size has at attractive taper, the Mini keeps the same thickness most of the way out. So while you have a thinner stock blade, you actually have an arguably equally strong tip. The Mini is on the left if you couldn't tell. There are a lot of ways the overall design seems to have been thought out to make it an effective version of its bigger brother. I feel that it is on par with comparison between something like the Zero Tolerance 300-series and the ZT350. Certainly smaller but retains the DNA.
In closing, I don't have much else to add simply because I have not been able to use the Mini for much of anything yet. However, it seems just as well constructed as my other Benchmade knives, came razor sharp out of the box, and seems designed to handle everything from opening mail to being pressed into emergency use should things go sideways. For those looking for a lighter EDC that retains the look and feel of the full size brute but is both more pocket and society friendly, I'd take a good look at the Mini. It's causing me to rethink my stance on medium sized knives. A lot of performance has been worked into a scaled down package that is easy to carry but will most likely outwork larger knives by other makers.
It's made me enough of a fan that I am tempted to head back and pick up a fixed blade Adamas just to round out my collection...but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Mini is going to get the lion's share of the pocket time.
Thanks for reading my ramblings
My typical EDC is a Mircrotech Combat Troodon. Big ol' OTF knife. If I am going a bit more subdued, then I carry a Large CRK Inkosi sporting a 3.6" blade. My wife and daughter just bought me a Cold Steel for my birthday not to long ago: A Counter Point 1 with a 3.75" blade made out of AUS10.
A few weeks ago, I got the itch for a new knife. I wanted what I wanted: Big, Tough, Unapologetically brutish. I decided that I would give the newer version of the full size Benchmade Adamas Auto a try. I loved everything about this knife...except the Auto part. Long story short: I don't like the Axis Lock in terms of it being the firing mechanism as well as needing a safety. It's a bit of a "hair trigger" auto, and painful lesson learned, USE THE DAMN SAFETY
Mine popped open in my pocket a little. I had no idea it had done so. Reached in, ouch!...nine stitches and a very expensive co-pay (thanks, HSA!) my right little finger has a new cautionary tale to go along with the scar.Anyway, I still love the knife, but I have gone back to my OFTs for my auto needs. However, if you have read the title of this little rambling, you will notice that this is NOT about the full size Adamas. See, I really liked everything about the Adamas. I liked how capable it built. I loved the wide profile of the blade. I was getting used to the Axis lock, but I figured I would like it more if it didn't have spring tension trying to fire the blade constantly. Have a few birthday bucks in my pocket, I figured that I might like to give the knife a try again. However, something kinda dawned on me. I have so many larger folders, and there have been more than a couple of times where whipping out a huge knife in public may have been frowned upon. That said, I still prefer my knives to be hard-use tanks over lightweight and gentlemanly. I still want the knife to be capable of real work. Then I remembered that my LKS where I bought the full size Adamas Auto had a flat black Mini under the glass. Why not?
OK, this is the part where I eat crow. This is an awesome EDC if you are looking for a brick outhouse that doesn't completely fill your pockets. I think it has to do with the design. Benchmade has managed to keep the spirit of the Sibert design yet scale it down about 30% in a proportioned way so that it still "works" as a hard use knife. My biggest gripe with many 3.25" blades is that they are neither fish nor fowl. They are lukewarm and really only excel at being the tool you wished was bigger or smaller than it is. However, Mini Adamas somehow manages to pull it off.
For those not familiar, this knife sports a 3.25" blade of CPM-Cruware which is becoming one of my favorite steels rapidly. It has the traditional Axis lock that allows for easy one hand opening/closing whether you use the thumb studs, doing a lock drop, or just giving the blade a flick with gusto. The oversize broze washers and polished tang make this a silky smooth knife to open. So far I have only opened and closed it a couple hundred times and opened some boxes at my desk, but it has a very solid lock up with even less blade play than my Adamas Auto.
Also, while the Full Size is obviously a much larger knife as you can see from the comparison pics, Benchmade did the Mini right. Where the tip of the full size has at attractive taper, the Mini keeps the same thickness most of the way out. So while you have a thinner stock blade, you actually have an arguably equally strong tip. The Mini is on the left if you couldn't tell. There are a lot of ways the overall design seems to have been thought out to make it an effective version of its bigger brother. I feel that it is on par with comparison between something like the Zero Tolerance 300-series and the ZT350. Certainly smaller but retains the DNA.
In closing, I don't have much else to add simply because I have not been able to use the Mini for much of anything yet. However, it seems just as well constructed as my other Benchmade knives, came razor sharp out of the box, and seems designed to handle everything from opening mail to being pressed into emergency use should things go sideways. For those looking for a lighter EDC that retains the look and feel of the full size brute but is both more pocket and society friendly, I'd take a good look at the Mini. It's causing me to rethink my stance on medium sized knives. A lot of performance has been worked into a scaled down package that is easy to carry but will most likely outwork larger knives by other makers.
It's made me enough of a fan that I am tempted to head back and pick up a fixed blade Adamas just to round out my collection...but I have a sneaking suspicion that the Mini is going to get the lion's share of the pocket time.
Thanks for reading my ramblings
