![]() Even at just over ¼ inch thick, there’s no bending and bowing in the Narrows. That’s when you realize you’ve been lied to your whole life. ![]() Looks can be deceiving and when it gets down to actually using the Narrows. How thin? I have knives with blades thicker than the Narrows. It excels in form and function and is made from premium materials, but it’s also a bit of a talking piece because it’s so thin. In the Field (Photo/Nick LeFort)Īfter nearly a month of day-to-day use in work and play, I’m still overly impressed with the Narrows. It’s a whole new take on the crossbar lock that someone should be getting an award for in the Engineering Department at Benchmade. I’m over here in a daze, locking and unlocking it, letting the blade drop, and then firing it back in place. In all of this - the thin frame, the Bohler M390 steel, the electric blue anodization on the thumb stud, backspacer, pivot bolt, pocket clip, and screws - it’s the new Axis lock that has me in the zone. Benchmade even had the audacity to lighten Narrows up by milling out the titanium handle scales, as if being around 3 ounces was just too much. This is a Benchmade knife and even though it still falls inside the confines of the Blue Class of its knives, it’s a high-end dynamo that could easily fit into their Gold Class. When you shift everything and focus on the Z-axis and realize how thin the knife is, it doesn’t look like a knife you can do a whole bunch with it before it snaps or a good wind whisks it away. North and south, east and west, it looks like a premium folding knife. Seriously, the Narrows nearly defies everything you know about a folding knife. I didn’t think a knife could be this thin. Benchmade Narrows First Impression (Photo/Nick LeFort) But you’re going to need to drop over $500 to experience it firsthand. In the end, the Narrows may just be one of the most well-thought-out and best-built knives on the market for 2023. When you wrap that with two slabs of milled Titanium, and anodize the hardware, thumb stud, pocket clip, and pivot bolt to be electric blue, you’re left with one of the most impressive production folding knives to hit the market in the last decade.īut, why would Benchmade stop there? Where it could have easily made this a frame-lock knife, it decided to reengineer its Axis, crossbar-style lock so it could fit the thin profile of the Narrows. In drop point form, it becomes incredibly effective and easy to use. That’s roughly the thickness of a credit card. That tapers down to 1/32 inch at the tip. How thin is the blade? At the thickest part of the spine, the blade is 5/64 inches thick. When you thin it out, as Benchmade has done here, you get an uncanny slicing and cutting experience. Bohler M390 steel is a premium steel known for its high corrosion and abrasion resistance as well as honing to a razor-sharp edge. Where that aspect is impressive, the real wow factor here is how well the blade slices through materials. When you put this knife in your pocket, it virtually disappears. To give you an idea of how thin that is, the Narrows is 33% thinner than the Bugout. The result is milled 6AI-4V Titanium handle scales and a specially engineered Axis lock that works within the narrowness of the Narrows.Īnd I haven’t even told you about all of the electric-blue accents and the M390 drop-point blade.Ĭheck Price at Blade HQ Design and Features (Photo/Nick LeFort)Īt just over ¼-inch thick the Benchmade Narrows is the thinnest knife Benchmade has ever made. The Narrows is an exercise in both engineering and metallurgy. To achieve this skinny profile - without sacrificing strength and durability - Benchmade had to distill everything down to what was absolutely necessary and build back up from there. It’s also less than 3 ounces, which lines this knife up to go against everything we’ve learned about strength and durability in folding knives. ![]() For everyone who’s not an engineer or sucks at fractions as I do, that’s just a hair over ¼ inch. The Benchmade Narrows is around 9/32 inches thick. But there is one knife that’s going to shake things up, if not for its price - its ultrathin profile: the Narrows. There are a lot of updated knives in there and a collection of new ones designed to outlast you and whatever you do. Benchmade came out of the gate roaring in February with a lineup of knives that got better and better each time you flipped the page of its 2023 product catalog.
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