Not liking Benchmade, for personal reasons, I’d never bought one of their knives as I didn’t want to give them any of my money.
I’d sharpened quite a few but never owned one.
The knife reviewers kept referring to the Bugout (535) as one of the most over rated knives out there.
But giving the devil it’s due they also acknowledged that it is if not an icon with its axis lock it is at least noteworthy.
Wanting to move my collection of knives into more of a legitimate knife collection I decided to buy one not from a retailer but from a private sale off Flea-Bay. Up to this point I’ve only bought & kept knives I liked .
It arrived & I thought it felt like the cheapest piece of crap I’d ever held since getting serious about knives.
I’d seen enough reviews to know I’d want more weight & rigidity so I also bought a set of titanium scales from Flytanium.
All said & done I have $175 into it & I don’t think for me, that it’s worth a penny more.
How the axis lock affects the action is a really foreign feeling to me. Almost like the reverse of assisted opening with the “spring shut” feeling.
The blade thickness is too thin for my liking and even with the scale swap it’s still the lightest knife in my collection.

But enough of the meh about my impressions.













I can’t believe there’s folks on here that’s not hip to this but I’ll add these clips just in case.

I have the exact knife you bought off eBay. I beat the hell out of it. After the 2 last hurricanes hit Florida I literally used it while digging up a root ball that killed my irrigation lines. Not the proper tool but I would use it in the sandy dirt to cut away smaller roots that were f’ing with me. Mine is actually the combo blade.

It is very lightweight. Almost flimsy feeling I agree. Where I disagree though is that is precisely why I have it. I have bigger beefier knives but sometimes it’s nice to drop a veryquality but lightweight blade in my pocket.

For this it is nearly perfect. I wouldn’t take this as my do everything knife but it actually is tougher than it looks. Nearly 20 years ago I broke the axis springs on a hard use 940. Also during hurricane cleanup.

This Bugout took my abuse, felt gritty as hell, dull as a butter knife a couple times but bounced back. I took it apart, cleaned everything, sharpened it, it doesn’t look brand new but it’s a tough little beast.

BM stepped on their crank with the gun stuff. I don’t buy them anymore but honestly I don’t buy that many knives anymore so it’s not like I am making any real changes to my habits.

To save themselves they should own their actions, vow to be better and move out of Oregon. As long as they are there they will always be subject to the crazy left stuff.

I could spend a month of my life w Grumpy Biker and be lucky to learn 5% of what he knows...