If 2024 has confirmed something about Benchmade, it’s that the Oregon knife-maker is all about coloring exterior the strains in its quest to innovate — actually. A few months in the past, Benchmade launched the Water Assortment, a well-rounded collection of knives aimed toward “the wilderness that lies beneath the floor.” All six knives sport MagnaCut metal, new colour mixtures, and radical type strains — all to enchantment to extra folks throughout a wider demographic.
However these additions aren’t nearly kind; Benchmade baked bits of practical innovation into these new knives. Benchmade’s thought of including a rainbow of blade coating choices to the Bugout collection and Shootout collection is a lift in each kind and performance; an added layer of blade safety coloured to enhance the knife handles is an excellent strategy to preserve a product line related.
It’s an train in enchantment that seems to be working.
One other of its newest choices splits its kind and performance — this time between a survival knife and a bushcraft blade. The P.S.Ok. (Private Survival Knife) is a hard-use folder with the trademark Axis lock and some design cues from the Bugout and Adamas knives. Its construct and dimension are like in contrast to something I’ve seen from a Benchmade knife.
However maybe most notably, it carries OD inexperienced G10 deal with scales with grey G10 bolsters. It’s a colour mixture much like the now-discontinued 496 Vector that matches the setting a survivalist or bushcrafter may very well be in any given day.
In brief: The Benchmade P.S.Ok. is a full-size, abuse-ready folder designed to get you thru something. From its Cerakoted MagnaCut blade to its G10 deal with scales, bolster, and AXIS Help opening and locking mechanism, the one factor this knife is lacking is a protected phrase.
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Cerakoted MagnaCut metal blade -
AXIS Help opening and locking mechanism -
Steadiness between dimension and weight -
The quantity of sparks this factor makes with a ferro rod is mindblowing
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Two-hand closure -
Can be too massive for small palms
Benchmade P.S.Ok. Overview
Design and Options
With an general size of 8.4 inches and weighing 5.32 ounces, you may contemplate the P.S.Ok. to be too massive and too heavy for an EDC knife. By frequent knife requirements, you’d be appropriate. Nevertheless, it is a heavy-use knife constructed to be your one and solely knife in a survival state of affairs. Its dimension and weight lend it to being extra dependable than the usual folding knife.
MagnaCut is a well-balanced EDC metal that’s powerful, has good edge retention, and is straightforward to resharpen. Benchmade selected to Cerakote this blade, making already corrosion-resistant metal impervious to corrosion. The coating additionally will increase the general put on resistance of the blade.
On the deal with, G10 gives a very good basis for a knife meant for use and abused. Nevertheless, the addition of a full set of metal liners makes the P.S.Ok. prime for twisting, turning, digging, and chopping.
The P.S.Ok. is an AXIS Help knife, that means that it has a spring-assisted opening. In contrast to computerized knives which have a darkish authorized cloud hanging over them (relying on what state you reside in), spring-assisted knives don’t fall below that scrutiny.
This characteristic permits the knife to deploy easily and quick, which may provide you with a bonus in a survival situation. For those who’re into knives you may fidget with, the P.S.Ok. may also present that repair.
First Impressions
I believed Benchmade already completed releasing its 2024 lineup of knives, so the addition of the P.S.Ok. got here as a pleasant shock. As somebody who enjoys an enormous, beefy knife destined for work, it was love at first sight. However I didn’t actually admire what this knife was going to get me into till it was in my palms.
The deal with on the P.S.Ok. gives a full, four-finger grip that’s captured between its contours. The G10 scales and bolsters are scalloped, bettering the grip, particularly should you’re carrying gloves. Its clean, flat backbone provides you a pleasant place on your hand to relaxation, which lets you simply transition from a typical handhold to a pinch grip.
Pinch grips help you choke up on the blade for carving and drilling. It’s an analogous grip to how you’d maintain an oyster knife, and on the P.S.Ok. Benchmade added impressions to the blade that will help you index your hand and provide you with extra management.
Although the P.S.Ok. is ready to navigate across the legal guidelines and rules that computerized knives face, it’s nonetheless a two-hand knife. Like an auto, you may open (with gusto) with one hand, however the knife requires each palms to shut it down. It’s par for the course, and one may argue {that a} two-hand closure isn’t as vital as a one-hand opening, however I nonetheless really feel it’s value mentioning.
Within the Area
A significant boon in having a flat Cerakote end on a knife that can see use in a wide range of environments — for a limitless number of duties — is that nothing sticks to the blade. Whether or not you’re slicing veggies, digging within the grime, or sharpening a gooey sapling department, you may simply wipe the P.S.Ok.’s blade clear for its subsequent job. Moreover, a ferro rod can go away behind a whole lot of soot that might stain the end of a blade. Not so with Cerakote.
So, the place it might sound foolish to coat a blade that’s already extremely corrosion resistant, the Cerakoting aids within the perform of the knife, not simply the enchantment of its kind. This, in flip, preserves the lifetime of the knife and helps preserve it in good working order.
Past that, the P.S.Ok. eliminates any want to hold a fixed-blade knife. You may even contemplate leaving your hatchet at house (however nonetheless carry a noticed).
This palm-filling folder not solely makes kindling assortment and prep a simple job, however it might additionally assist in shelter constructing too. Be at liberty to dig a gap with this massive magnificence if you want to set an animal entice, or change as much as the pinch grip to carve, whittle, or course of meat. This knife performs many duties, and all of them effectively.
There was one space the place I known as B.S. on the P.S.Ok. and was fortunately confirmed incorrect. Cerakoted blades can’t throw sparks on a ferro rod. Ferrocerium requires direct contact with metal with a purpose to throw a spark.
Benchmade knew this, and absolutely coated the P.S.Ok. in Cerakote, save for a small spot within the choil.
In its product description for the P.S.Ok., Benchmade states that the knife has “a devoted placing choil on the base of the blade for fireplace beginning with a ferro rod.”
After I first noticed the devoted spot, I wasn’t impressed. There was little or no uncovered MagnaCut within the choil. Quick ahead 5 minutes, and the fireworks show that got here off that Überleben Hexå ferro rod wowed me.
After I’m incorrect, I say I’m incorrect. Additionally, I threw such a bouquet of sparks that I melted a part of the display screen protector on my cellphone making an attempt to videotape it. The stuff you do for love, amirite?
Benchmade Survival Knife: Ought to You Purchase?
If Bilbo and Frodo Baggins can carry one ring to rule all of them, then you may carry one knife to kick all ass. To say I’m impressed with each the shape and performance of this outsized knife could be an understatement. For my EDC, I like a knife that’s simply south of 8 inches in size. However contemplating the P.S.Ok.’s construct and objective, something shorter would have made it cumbersome.
And whereas the P.S.Ok. could fill your hand in all instructions, it’s not cumbersome in any respect. I discovered it very comfy to make use of and abuse even in demanding conditions like digging and boring. This, in fact, is aided and amplified by the flowing contour of the deal with form and the scalloping of the G10 scales and bolsters.
All mentioned, the P.S.Ok. feels extra like a contemporary bushcraft knife with survival capabilities to me.
For those who’re on the lookout for a heavy-duty knife which you can depend on in hard-use conditions, the P.S.Ok. has your identify written throughout it. That is the action-packed, revolutionary knife that you just all wished you had in your final journey, now out there on your subsequent one.