Nimravus was the only fixed blade Benchmade was offering for a while, well not anymore :). Though, I am not
exactly excited about their new fixed blade, but I definitely love this one. Very interesting, hi-tech piece. As a small or medium sized, all around, utility knife, IMHO one of the
best production blades on today's market. Busse & Chris Reeve are
rather semi-custom or semi-production knives. Besides the intended use for those is quite different. Much more on the heavy duty use side, compared to the Nimravi family. Nimravus
is much thinner than .25" thick Busse and larger CRK knives, well, matter of fact its thinner than small CRK knives such as Shadow
III or Mountainer I. Thus as a cutter it is more efficient, but not as strong as the knives mentioned above.
Also, if you look at the different production fixed blades, there are very few knives in Nimravus class. Gerber Yari, SOG Recondo which
is not exactly an utility knife, Camillus CUDA, basically that's all. Personally, I like Nimravus the best. This includes blade geometry, handle design and of course the blade
material, which is M2. I say hi-tech, because of the design and materials. Nimravus is sporting G10 scales on the handle & M2 Tool Steel (or ATS-34). On the other hand it's a rugged, tough & simple tool. One piece, fixed blade. Not
much to break in there. After having it for over 2 years, I can say it's a user, and the most used knife in my inventory, which is getting rather large :) I liked it enough to get
3 more :) One more Nimravus, now with a plain blade & the Nimravus Cub, also no serrations, and later one more, with no BT-2, to be more exact, stripped and
polished. And of course all of my 4 Nimravi are made of M2 tool steel ;) I've had more than one chance to be convinced in its[M2] high performance.
Generally, I like Nimravus design a lot. I think that Allen Elishewitz did an excellent job with Nimravus. It's a
high performance cutter, period. However its point is strong enough to handle some serious prying and leveraging for the knife that thin. Partly because M2 is plenty tough partly
because of the geometry, However I wouldn't recommend to overdo with prying. After all it's only .115" thick. Yes, Nimravus has a fairly thin blade, well, again, depends what
we are comparing it with. If you take such hard core knives as Busse, Chris Reeve, Strider, yes then it's very thin :) Compared to kitchen knives it's thick. Anyways, the thin blade has its advantages, and is preferable for certain types of cutting tasks and materials.
I was interested, what the heck the did the name Nimravus mean :) Turned out, that's a cat, well it was a cat ;) - click here to see A prehistoric cat, though with very impressive set of teeth ;) I've learned about that and many other things at James Mattis' web site,
actually James was the one who gave the name to this knife. Unfortunately he's no longer with us :( He'll be always remembered in knife enthusiasts society.
For those who like even smaller blades Benchmade has one for you, #145 Nimravus Cub has a blade
of 3.65 (9.27cm) inches long.
Blade
- Made out of M2 steel that I like so much, Nimravus is an impressive piece of cutlery. Of course there are better blade materials, but IMHO, out of all steels used in production knives this one is the best choice for non-stainless steel. Sure, the most important thing is the heat treatment, yet out of all the production knives I've handled so far M2 was the best in terms of edgeholding and toughness combined together. Benchmade Specs their M2 blades at 60-62 HRC. Knowing production blades it's absolutely safe to assume that the real number will be 60. The best to my knowledge this is lower than M2 optimum performance level, but still, very good. As I know custom makers who work with M2 harden their blades up to 64 HRC. Will be very interesting to get a blade like that, probably I'll try it out later. For a while I thought M2 would be rather on the brittle side, but time showed I was very wrong. M2 easily outperformed ATS-34 and 154CM, considered as a premium grade cutlery steels. Where the later 2 had chipped, M2 had been holding up just fine. I wrote in more details about the edge chipping problems with 154CM/ATS-34 in Osborne 940 review. And once again, it's all in heat treatment, because Strider MH made of the same ATS-34, but heat treated by Paul Boss had no probs so far.Officially, according to Benchmade Nimravus has an "Asymmetrical Tanto point" blade, but doesn't really look like one to me. However it's slim & sexy, I like it a lot, and it does what it was meant to do just great. Which is cutting. What else would you want from your knife :). Although Nimravus has more like a fighter style blade, it's a great user knife. I don't really have anything to complain regarding the blade. As I have already stated, its been optimized for cutting, or at least I think so and I use Nimravus just for that. Its thickness, flat grind, blade geometry, that all contributes to the improved cutting ability. For its size Nimravus is a one tough piece and a very good cutter. Plenty of belly to slice and slash. Serrations also might be a real help for some applications, though they are rather rough.
Edge holding
- It is very good with M2 blades. Just like most of the other production knives, Benchmade blades have the same problem, they are sharpened at very high angle, in other words the edge is too thick. On the average my Nimravi had the edge sharpened at ~50 degrees included. That's good for an axe, but not for the thin utility knife. Depending on your sharpening skills and the equipment used it may take considerable amount of time to reprofile the edge on any M2 blade, but believe me it's well worth it :) After I got my Edge Pro Apex, which is an excellent sharpening device, I have resharpened all of my Benchmades. Currently they all have the edge around 30-36 degrees included. Which gives 15-18 degree per side. I've experimented a while with various edge thickness and profiles. Some of them have double bevel edge, 15 primary, 21 secondary. Some have single bevel, 17-18 degree per side. The results are just great. Cutting performance gain as usual is 400%-500% and more, compared to factory edge. Plus, when it gets dull it so much easier to touch up and resharpen.Polished double bevel edge 21/17 degree per side - I've been using Nimravus with this type of edge for several months. It served well for various cutting tasks. Mainly I was using it for light cutting, occasionally I'd cut something rougher such as a piece of an old carpet, or linoleum, or some cable. primary bevel at 21 held up very well for those things, and even when I hit an occasional staple or two. I've had very good results with cardboard and other soft materials.
Later I've decided to experiment with rougher and thinner edges. Current configuration is approx. 15 degree angle per side and it is not polished. I've used 180 grit stone with the Edge-Pro for final sharpening. The edge is really thin now and quite rough compared to mirror polished edges I've been using before finished with 3000 grit polishing tape. Don't have too much to report for now, except the fact that the edge this thin is quite susceptible to the damage :) Last weekend I've accidentally hit the steel staple in the notebook I was cutting in half and the edge got deformed badly. Steeling and following touchup with the 1000 grit ceramic rod didn't help. I'll have to resharpen it again. However, pure cutting performance gain is easily noticeable. I guess for a while I'll keep it at that level to get more substantial results. In short rougher edge has its advantages for cutting, as it is more "grabby" and needless to mention the thinner edge is more efficient cutter.
Cutting ability
- As an example of how important the blade grind is for cutting, I could tell you the following: The other day I was cutting cardboard (again:), this time I've had 2 blades for experimenting, trusty Nimravus and then new Strider Buck spearpoint folder. Even though the Strider is a folder it's significantly thicker than Nimravus, and its blade grind is different too - low saber ground. In general if we compare the blades in terms of raw strength, the Strider will easily outperform Nimravus. While both knives are made of high quality tool steel, BG-42 in Strider and M2 in Nimravus, just because of the amount of metal in its blade Strider is much stronger. I haven't conducted head to head edge holding ability comparison tests yet, because those 2 knives have very different edges for now, but later I will. Obviously, egeholding is a very important criteria, at least for the knives :) However, as usual when you cut, the point is how easily you defeat the material being cut, right? In this case, with the cardboard Nimravus won.In the beginning both knives had the edge that was able to push shave in both directions. Nimravus had double bevel edge, 21/15 degrees for primary and secondary bevels accordingly, and Strider folder at that time had roughly 25 degree edge, as I haven't had reprofiled it by that time. I've started cutting with the Nimravus, and after it lost shaving ability I've switched to Strider folder. Some time later, I've noticed that I needed apply more and more efforts to push cut through the cardboard. I've checked the blade, it was shaving sharp, and it remained such for quite long time, yet when I've switched to Nimravus, it'd cut through the cardboard with significantly less effort, even though it had already lost the shaving sharp edge. Apparently, several factors contributed to that fact:
- a) The edge thickness, Nimravus had much thinner, and polished edge, when the Strider had a rough, thick edge;
- b) I think one of the most important factors was the blade grind. Nimravus is flat grind, Strider - hollow, thus during the push-cutting Strider would create significant drag;
- c) The blade thickness, as I've mentioned above, the two blades differ in thickness, .115 for Nimravus, .1875 for Strider;
- d) And the last, but not the least the handles. Nimravus handle is much more comfortable then Strider's;
Boron Carbide coating
- BT-2 has been BM standard coating for long time. It's mandatory for all their non stainless and semi-stainless steels(such as D2). To be fair, Teflon based BT2 does good job in preventing corrosion. At least I've never seen complaints about that. However, there are some other requirements to the knife blade coatings, and BT2 doesn't perform all that good in some of them. Basically the main complaint to BT-2 has always been its very low scratch resistance. This picture was taken after a 14 months of use. As you can see the coating on this blade is far from pristine. Main use for my Nimravus is what I'd call light cutting - cardboard, boxes, plastic, small wiring, etc. Nevertheless the coating is scratched quite bad. If your primary concern is corrosion resistance, then those scratches, unless very deep will not affect your knife's resistance to rust, for the Teflon based BT2 penetrates the pores in the metal, thus preventing rusting, even when the BT2 is worn on the surface. If you need scratch resistance then you'll have to look for something else.In 2001 Benchmade started using Boron Carbide(referred as BC) as an alternative coating. The best to my knowledge first knife to receive BC coating was 770 Osborne. Later that year this thread appeared on the Bladeforums. What was said about BC sounded interesting and I've decided to give it a try. BC coating is offered by BodyCote. I've contacted them in December of 2001 and worked out the details.
As you can guess the #1 blade from my collection to receive the new coating was my trusty Nimravus. Turnaround time was couple weeks and the price for a single blade is 25$ now. That included blasting off the old coating and shipping/handling. Here is the picture of the Nimravus with its new BC coating. It looks dark gray, non glare, somewhat matte finish. BTW after receiving Nimravus I was surprised that it looked different that the other Benchmade blades, even though all BC coating was done by the same BodyCote. The explanation turned out to be a simple one :) Depending on the blade finish mirror, satin, blasted, the coating color changes from glossy brownish to dark gray.
For details about BC you should check this hread on Bladeforums. In short it's very hard 90HRC, and very thin, few microns. Obviously those are positive qualities for the blade coating.
As of the real life use of BC coated Nimravus, I don't have much data yet, it's been only few days since I've received it back. However I've already had a chance to use Nimravus for its usual chores and BC held up very well. Definitely much better than the old BT-2. After cutting several hundred inches of cardboard, plastic boxes, fiberglass tape, and cable there were no visible scratches. That is after I've cleaned the knife with a cloth. So far other people report the same. Of course BC is not indestructible, yet it is very durable. Well, seems to be so far. I'll be posting pix and updates as I use it more.
Handle
- The G10 scales are not thick & they're nicely rounded, so the handle doesn't feel bulky in your hand, plus it has good ergonomics, scales provide secure & comfortable grip, reverse grip too, is comfortable. The knife is very easy to control. The rifling (positive indexing notches) on top of the blade, at the blade base & a fingergroove are a very good support when the greater force has to be applied either for stabbing, cutting or slashing applications. Although have to admit that after prolonged usage my thumb does feel sore, those notches would've been much nicer, were they just a bit smoother. Later on I am planing to smooth them down using the dremel. The same trick worked very well for my SOG X42 field knife, so Nimravus is the next in the line.
- Specifications:
- Model: #140 Elishewitz - Nimravus;
- Blade: M2 High Speed Tool Steel Hardened to 60-62 HRC or ATS-34 stainless steel hardened to 59-61 HRC;
- Length: 4.50" (11.43cm) Thickness: .115" (2.92mm);
- Handle: : G-10 scales;
- Weight: : 6.20 oz. (175gm) Warranty: Limited Lifetime;
Last updated - 06/20/08