are you sure you just didn't get a dud? all the other reviews I've seen/heard on youtube have all been very positive. i have looked into that ZT 0566BW before and it looked awesome, but the weight turned me off, because 5.30 ounces is just a lil too much for me.
Yeah. It's hard for a whole knife to be a dud. If it was one problem or another, then it would be a dud and worth sending in for repair, like if it was just the blade being poorly heat treated or just slow to open. The fact that several aspects were less than good left me with the conclusion that it was just a poorly designed knife, at least relative to what I consider good. I didn't want to get hugely into it because I don't want to sound like I'm bashing BM, I've used a mini-grip that was just fine and one from their bone collector series. They didn't really suit me but they were fine as far as purchase price and functionality.
As far as the nitrous blitz, their nitrous assisted opening mechanism, basically a leaf spring type set up, was slow, inefficient, and really ineffective. Once the detent was overcome any kind of pressure at all against the blade would halt movement. Using the thumbstuds it was hard to flick it open without my thumb coming off of the stud and brushing the blade as it opened. I could wrist flick it open just fine but that negates the purpose of the assisted opening mechanism.
Like is said, the steel was less than good, far less. I don't need to go into a steel being shoddy. It was probably a dud blade because the 154cm I used on the mini-grip was good and I can't see BM heat treating the blades much differently between the different series.
I really don't know what they use to coat the blade and pocket clip, but it might as well be black paint. It came off ridiculously easy making the knife looked far more used than it actually was. Within a month it looked like I'd been carrying and using the knife for quite a bit longer than that.
The handles had G10 scales and Ti liners, of course. The G10 was slick, a little bit of sweat or other moisture caused it to be slippery. The Ti, which is really the second reason I bought the knife, the first being I thought it looked cool as hell, were so thin that I could squeeze the two sides of the handle together, almost where they were touching. If the blade was closed, I could squeeze the handles and pinch the blade hard enough to where the blade could not be deployed.
The lock stuck pretty bad. I could release it with my thumb alone but it wasn't smooth by any means. I've seen and heard of worse now but I knew enough then to know I didn't like it.
There were easily felt hot spots on the top of the handle, both where you'd place your thumb and farther back near the ring finger. It wasn't because the edges weren't knocked off, they were smooth enough, but it was just a bad design for my hand. I wear large gloves, not small midget hands or large Andre the giant bone crushers. If they'd have put a back spacer in there it would've solved a couple of the problems, like the hot spots and the side of the handles being so flimsy.
It was hard to find a sweet spot that allowed the weak opening spring to work while keeping the blade from rubbing the sides and introducing blade play. I blame that on the weak spring but really I could just as easily blame it on the blade being off center.
On the plus side, like I said it was super light, carried well in the pocket, and the blade grind on both primary and secondary bevels were well done. The swedge terminated evenly on both sides leaving the spine looking good. It was easy to disassemble and re-assemble. It was easy to remove the knife from the pocket and replace it because of the slick G10. It had a standard BM arrow shape clip which is alright. Didn't get caught on anything and I'm sure BM would've sent a replacement if it had broken.
Anyway, I didn't mean to lay it all out there but for $100 bucks it could've and should have met my expectations a little more. I didn't expect perfection, I rarely do, but I want a company to sell me a product that's worth their asking price. There were too many flaws in this knife model that can't be explained by something that could be a one time thing, like a botched heat treat.
Good luck, if you get a coated blade you'll destroy it's value pretty quickly and it'll be hard to recoup even close to what you paid for it if you decide to sell it. I couldn't really bring myself to gift it to anyone else so I put it in one of my junk drawers. Went back looking for it later and it wasn't there. It's just as well. I didn't care about it one way or another. Maybe some of the other knives in their HK lineup are good. I don't know and will probably never know. Good luck with your decision. It is a pretty cool looking knife.
and i think i might pull the trigger on it because of all the good things I've heard about it.
