Sigh.
I already made the RenĆ© Magritte joke previously, so I canāt very well use it again. So, Iāve been staring at the blinking cursor for the better part of five minutes now trying to figure out how the hell Iām going to write a hook to put in front of this frigginā thing.
This is, very emphatically, not a Benchmade Model 87. Yes, yes, I know what it looks like. But itās fake, mon. No question about it.
It is, in fact, made by prolific balisong cloners One Balisong. On this I am a bit of two minds, as usual, because on the one hand itās a total Chinese ripoff of Benchmadeās design and on a certain fundamental level thatās not cool. But on the other hand, One Balisong casts no illusions whatsoever over what it is. It is marketed directly and up front as a clone ā not, meaningfully, a counterfeit. Youāll notice it doesnāt sport the Benchmade logo on it at all. It arrived in a plain white box without any stolen trademarks on it.
The thing is, see, that it exists for the express purpose of acting as a consolation prize for all those people who will never in a thousand years actually have the opportunity to own a genuine Model 87. I include myself in that group. Iāll leave this here for an illustration why; even when the damn thing was available it was $550, and Benchmade produced a grand total of about seventeen of them before discontinuing it. Now they wonāt sell you one for any price no matter how much you want one. So if theyāre worried about losing a sale, maybe they could actually manufacture some damn product for a change.
Oh, but then the first run buyers will all howl that their resale value is being diluted by increasing the supply. Cry me a fucking river.
Sharp eyed readers will note a couple of minor differences between this and the Benchmade original, notwithstanding the missing markings. The Model 87 has a Torx headed screw in latch head pin, whereas this has a plain press fit one. And the genuine articleās blade is CPM S30V, and this is D2. And the Benchmade has ball bearing pivots while this has bushings and phosphor bronze washers.
All of the rest of it, though, is spot on. Iāll cut to the chase right here and say that the One Balisongās build quality and bill of materials here is actually astonishingly good.
The balisong knife market is, of course, famously insane. But now weāre standing on both sides of the bell curve simultaneously, and I get the feeling history is starting to repeat itself in ridiculous ways.
In the beginning we start with the various big name knife manufacturers like Benchmade and whoever else, who produce high quality knives and get popular, and then they get expensive. So the clone manufacturers have risen up to compete with them ā typically by ripping off and reproducing their designs, of course ā but now the clone manufacturers are getting super popular, too. This is turning into big business, and enthusiasts are flocking to these knockoff knives which are improving by leaps and bounds. Now, weāve got knockoff manufacturers that have a reputation for quality, with a real name for themselves and actual dedicated fans. So their prices are starting to creep up, too.
This knife costs around $100. For what you get, considering the price of enthusiast balisongs in general, thatās still an outstanding deal. But itās still not exactly what Iād call cheap. So whatās next? Will another cheaper clone maker step up and clone the clone?
What you get for your hundred bucks is a 1:1 scale model of the Benchmade Model 87. The same dimensions, all around. So itās a big knife, very chunky overall with a wide squared off aesthetic. Itās 5-7/8" long closed, fully 9-15/16" long open, with a 4-1/4" blade thatās got a trendy reverse tanto point. The blade is 0.121" thick with a nicely rounded spine. And while it has a machined finish left on both its flat and its bevel, itās very fine and reminiscent of that on a Spyderco knife. Itās not unattractive at all. The grind is also completely flat, which I did not at all expect.
The hardware all faithfully reproduces the decorative machined glaive style screw heads of the Benchmade. Yes, the handles are genuine titanium and are unitary channel-milled slabs exactly like the original. That leaves the entire knife weighing in at a not insubstantial, but deceptively light 156.8 grams or 5.53 ounces.
The latch is this non-protruding style that drops out the bottom. It is indeed spring loaded, and pops out the bottom when you give the handles a moderate squeeze.
From a usage standpoint there isnāt a single fly in the ointment. The genuine article is probably better, no doubt, largely owing to its ball bearing pivots. But One Balisongās knives are designed for use and in this āBM87ā it shows. Doing flip tricks are precisely what these are for. The machined handles feel excellent in the hand. The knife pivots freely precisely as you would expect, the rebound action is great, and the spring latch is immensely satisfying. The latch will spring out from either the latched shut or latched open positions, and the torsion spring hidden inside keeps it standing out and well away from both the handles and blade so you canāt strike either one with it while youāre manipulating the knife.
In addition to a baggie containing a complete replacement set of pivot hardware, mine came with a card in the box proclaiming it was pre-tuned at the factory.
This threadlocker on the pivot screws is as it was delivered. I broke it loose when I took the knife apart for my disassembly photos. It seems like someone went ham more on one screw than the other, but the action was fine when I received it and it wasnāt difficult to take apart at all.
The wiggle test reveals what we already knew, of course. While it wonāt match the uncanny squareness of a bearing knife, itās still pretty good for a bushing pivot model that has such long handles. The presence of the bushings means you can fully tighten the pivot screws and the handles will not lock solid. Here, as pictured, is with the screws as tight as theyāll reasonably get.
This is of course a ālive bladeā model and it comes with an edge already on it, although my example is not actually very sharp from the factory. This may be by design, or it may just be where the penny was pinched. The edge grind is dead true, though. If you plan to use this for real cutting tasks and not just showing off you will probably want to give it a sharpening once over but the good news is that this wonāt be difficult at all. It is sharp enough to draw blood if you really fuck up and do so with gusto, but itās such that you at least have a chance of not breaking the skin if you make a minor mistake and graze yourself on the bite side without too much force.
Here are the guts. As a channel milled knife, the bill of materials is not very long but itās still impressive. The handles are as stated solid titanium through-and-through. The washers are indeed phosphor bronze, and each pivot has a precision bushing going through its respective hole in the blade.
I canāt fault the machining work in the handles. Iām staggered; I just canāt shut up about it. You get that much solid titanium for the price? This is not how Chinese knockoff knives are meant to be.
What you get in each pivot is this stack. Two bronze washers, the bushing, and a Chicago screw. The assembly goes together like this:
The latch reproduces Benchmadeās novel design and uses a torsion spring for its mechanism.
Despite how it looks, itās actually very easy to take apart and put back together. There is a hole in the shank of the latch, and an index notch in the handle beneath the screw head. You can just drop the spring in place and itāll work ā you donāt have to mess around with keeping it under tension or anything before you can cap the screw off.
The latch components.
Obviously I havenāt got a genuine Benchmade Model 87 to compare to. But with this thing being such a full size knife, I think the nearest equivalent I have to act as a stand-in is the Kershaw Lucha.
The BM87 is thicker than the Lucha, at 0.433". There is no clip to subtract from the measurement, because it hasnāt got one. It is tapered, and very wide at the flared end: 1.491". Itās noticeably wider than the Lucha as well, all the way down its length.
The Inevitable Conclusion
As a clone knife, the One Balisong is always going to have a bit of a stink following it around. All the forum oldheads will turn their noses up at it and itāll never actually be worth anything or appreciate in value like a Benchmade would. But thatās not the point.
I fell down the rabbit hole of researching clone balisongs as much as I dared before I bought it and Iām still mystified at the following these things have. People get into clone knives ā big time. Now I can see why.
Even just as an objet dāart this is fantastic, but it also has the benefit of being designed to be used. If one day you send it windmilling off onto the pavement youāre bound to be a lot less broken up about it, for instance. And if you totally bin it, you can just buy another one. Thatās not a luxury youāll have with a limited run collectorās item.
Iāve always maintained that a knife is best when itās able to be used. Sure, I have a couple of drawer queens in my collection slowly gathering dust and appreciating value. But as a whole I try not to.
If youāve been eyeing one of these but youāre sitting on the fence because youāre afraid it might be crap, hereās your verdict: It isnāt. Be shocked, or be appalled, or be disgusted. But there it is.
I lobe your posts dude, thank you.