Benchmade Griptilian Custom Knife - First Look

I recently found myself in the market for an almost every-day carry knife.  Most days I still carry the small folding knife that I bought myself with store credit that I earned working as a counselor-in-training at a Boy Scout camp a long, long time ago.  It's a great knife - sentimental, well-loved, and still in great shape.  The knife that I'll someday hand down to my son.

I somehow talked myself into having a second option available for those days when I might want to carry something a little more substantial.  I did my research, laid hands on lots of options, and in the end chose a Benchmade Griptilian.  One of the things I really liked about the Griptilian is that it is a part of Benchmade's custom knife program, meaning that you can get it customized from the factory more-or-less the way you want it, for a small premium over the MSRP of the standard Griptilian.



My Custom Benchmade Griptilian

Why Custom?

I certainly didn't need the custom option, I could have saved about $60 by buying from other internet retailers, but there were a few things that drew me to it.  I'd be lying if I didn't cite the "coolness factor" as the first thing that drew me to building a custom Grip' over buying one off a shelf.  Who doesn't want a personalized knife? 

There were other details as well.  I liked being able to pick the blade shape, and I liked being able to pick the blade steel.  Two things that were limited with off-the-shelf options.  The choice of colors for the blade and scales was interesting but not a make-or-break option for me, as there are zillions of third-party options available for Griptilian scales.

You get basically 4 choices in the custom program.  I'm not going to go into detail on all of the options available at every step, since they're likely to change at any time and anyone can just go to the Benchmade site and play with the configurator to see them all.  What I outline below are the choices I made, and why.

Pick your knife

The first and most obvious choice you have to make is the platform - what knife do you want to customize?  When I created mine there were two full-sized options and two "mini" sized options.  I chose the full-sized Griptilian.  As I mentioned above, I really liked the way it felt in my hand, the opening and closing mechanism.  Benchmade's Axis lock is really sweet, but there are about a hundred other pages dedicated to the Axis love fest. 

I picked the Grip' because it felt right in my hand, was the size I was looking for, and had a huge user community out there for support, spare parts, etc.

Pick your steel

The standard Benchmade Griptilian comes with 154cm steel, which is a really nice, high quality stainless steel that stays sharp and is equally easy to sharpen.  There were several other options available, and after evaluating them all I chose S30V steel.  S30V is probably one of the nicest, if not the nicest, blade steels that is readily available in this price range.  Obviously there are exotic materials out there, but that's not really what I'm interested in. 

Pick your blade shape

I love the sheepsfoot blade shape that Benchmade offers, and I especially love that this particular blade uses a thumb hole instead of a stud for opening.  I'm not a huge fan of thumb studs - in my experience if they're big enough to work well they're big enough to get hung up on stuff.  Small enough not to catch on things means it's likely too small for me to find and use quickly.

The hole, on the other hand, means that the blade can pass completely through something as the edge of the blade opens up the cut and tapers to the full thickness of the blade.  I think it's also easier to clean - a big hole vs. a tiny one with stuff sticking through it. 

I chose a plain blade (vs. serrated).  Serrated edges are hard to sharpen, limit the useful length of the knife to about half the actual length, and generally suck at everything but sawing-type tasks.  If you blades are not sharp you probably prefer a serrated edge.  If your blade is shaving sharp and made from good steel you probably prefer a plain edge.  Every serrated blade I've ever bought I've regretted.  To each his own, I guess.

One of the Laser Markings I chose for
my custom Benchmade Griptilian

Cosmetics

Cosmetics don't really matter in the grand scheme of a tool, but when you spend your hard earned money on something you want it to look nice.  The good news is that Benchmade offers plenty of options, and if you don't like the options available it's actually pretty easy to change the look of the knife by installing different handles ("scales") later.  There are lots of aftermarket scales available for this knife - a simple Google search will reveal plenty of sources. 

I chose a black blade, all black hardware, and tan (maybe they call it 'sand') scales.  I also personalized the blade on both sides with some laser markings.  There are a lot of options for text and icons and patterns that can be used to embellish a knife.  It's also possible to import your own icons or logos, if you're so inclined. 

There are a number of different clips that you can choose from, and I picked a pretty basic one.  However, that standard clip allows the Griptilian to stick out of my pocket a bit further than I'd prefer, so I sent off an email to Benchmade's customer service to see if a deep carry clip was available.  While there is not a specific deep carry clip for a Griptilian, the clip for Benchmade's Contego will fit the hole pattern, and so customer service agreed to send me the appropriate deep carry clip free of charge.

What arrived was not the correct clip, unfortunately, so I dropped another quick email to Benchmade.  They apologized and explained that there was a 'newbie' picking parts and that he had sent out a few wrong clips.  A second clip was dispatched the same day.  Great customer service as usual. 



With the original clip, the Griptilian sticks out quite far



With the deep carry clip, it's much more hidden.

Nice Touches

A few nice touches to mention.  Communication from Benchmade during the build process for my knife was outstanding.  Nearly every step of the way, I received an email with a status update and a link to a YouTube video that showed the basics of the process being carried out (laser cutting, milling, finishing, and final assembly).  The videos are short, and feature one or more of the people who work at Benchmade in the department where the knife was living at the moment. 

Another nice touch was the packaging.  The knife arrived via UPS in a tamper-evident box.  Inside the UPS box was a standard Blue box (Benchmade has three product 'levels' - Black, Blue, and Gold).  Inside that box the knife was wrapped in a small cloth sack.  Care and Use Instructions were also included, along with the warranty. 

Nothing all that crazy really, but the small things and attention to detail add up to make me feel like I was getting something special.  Customer service was also outstanding. 

First Impression

Below is the good, the bad, and the ugly of my Benchmade Griptilian.  I'm thinking exclusively about the knife itself, and not about the order process, shipping, customer service, etc.  I'm also thinking about my first impression only.  Once I have some miles on this knife I'll come back and write a longer-term perspective.

Good

• This knife is extremely sharp from the factory
• The Axis lock is super-secure, and the mechanism is easy to open and close one handed
• The build quality is outstanding
• Cosmetically the knife is exactly as I expected from using the design tool online

Bad

• The material used for the scales feels cheap at first - it's not, but if you handed this knife to someone who didn't know anything, they might think it was a low quality knife

 Ugly

• The clip allows the knife to stick too far out of my pants for my liking.  Benchmade sent a deep-carry clip and it's much better.

A Final Note

I did not receive compensation in any form from anyone to write this review.  I purchased my Benchmade Griptilian with my own hard-earned money.  The opinions expressed here are mine and mine alone and have not been tainted by any third party.

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