Many recent Gold Class knives have been coming out w/ Carbon Fiber handles and the latest one 930-91 is coming out in Titanium.

Question: Which is more sought after or exotic, Carbon Fiber handles or Titanium or would you like to see another material?

they are both sought after. I would like to see benchmade try to make a Timascus handle gold class knife. Have you seen that stuff? It is simply awesome. With some brushed satin M4 steel.

Oh, that'd be nice... But from what I hear it's pretty hard to work with and with it's price the fact that raw timascus (forged of course, not mineral) is hard to find in production quantities it seems highly unlikely we'll see it happen any time soon...

Timascus? I'll have to google search that...

What happened to Benchmade making low quantity Gold Class and making them true collectors pieces, Like the 46DM(12 pieces), or 941-81(38 pieces), or many other w/ 50 or even 100 pieces.

Lately we've seen the 525-81(unlimited pieces for '09) or this 930-91(250 pieces).

With a low quantities, it would put Gold Class knives a truly rare and exotic class...

941-81 ended up as 38 piece run not by choice. Two versions of what happened are:
1) It was made of spare parts left over from previous Ti releases
2) It was planned as a larger release, but because titanium is not the most friendly material to work with, handles for the rest of the series ended up defected in one way or another.
46DM... That one was a true masterpiece. Sad part is, there's not enough demand for such pieces and most of those who can shell out $2K for a knife would rather place an order with a custom maker for less money, then buy a production piece. However in production environment it's almost impossible to release a knife of such quality and attention to detail for lesser amount and still make profit.

quote:

Originally posted by RxEnergy:
46DM... That one was a true masterpiece. Sad part is, there's not enough demand for such pieces and most of those who can shell out $2K for a knife would rather place an order with a custom maker for less money, then buy a production piece. However in production environment it's almost impossible to release a knife of such quality and attention to detail for lesser amount and still make profit.

Excellent explanation.

I think carbon fiber is probably the more exotic or sought after... They're both hard to work with, but carbon fiber is actually pretty dangerous to work with as well.. Its nasty stuff and of course respirators are a must etc.

Having said that I think I personally prefer titanium... Its rock solid, light, and you can do cool stuff with it.. Annodizing, timascus, and so on.. I love Ti frame-lock knives

Can't make a frame-lock out of carbon fiber.... or can you