Details: Benchmade 940

Tools that work well are beautiful. Tools that almost work well are irritations. Sometimes the difference between the two can be measured in hundredths of an inch.

I’ve been carrying a Benchmade 940. When the knife is open the blade length and shape are perfect for what I ask of it, it’s small and locks securely. In fact it was perfect for me with one exception…I couldn’t open the damn thing. My thumb would consistently slip off the stud, resulting in a blade that sometimes would open halfway, sometimes would open just fine and sometimes wouldn’t deploy at all. Tools that work well are beautiful, but my 940 was not.

Not wanting to give up on it, I searched the inter-web for a solution. In some obscure knife forum posting that I have since lost track of, someone had a similar complaint about this knife–their large thumbs didn’t play well with the thumb-stud. What’s more, this was not the typical “I’m just here to complain” posting because this guy had a solution. He took the wider and larger thumb-stud from a Benchmade 950 and put it on his 940. Problem solved.

Hmmm. But unlike this poster, I don’t have a seemingly endless supply of every knife produced by Benchmade.

So I emailed Benchmade and politely asked two things. If they would be kind enough to send me a deep carry clip for this knife (because I like how their folding knives ride in my pocket with this clip) and I also explained my issue with this almost perfect tool and asked to purchase a thumb stud for their 950 model so that I could change it out.

Shortly thereafter I heard back from Katherine at Benchmade who said she would put both parts in the mail to me, no charge. Great customer service from them, again.

Fast forward a week later and the parts arrive. I install the deep-carry clip and thumb-stud; the knife and my thumbs have been in sync ever since.

The new stud is oh-so-slightly wider and has a constant diameter all the way to the end unlike the original, it’s black (the original was silver) and stands proud of the sides of the knife (the original was narrower than the scales). So aesthetically, maybe it’s not as nice as the original. However, my 940 now opens every time I ask it to; that is a beautiful thing.