Home / Outdoors / Knives & Multi-Tools

A Rare New Benchmade Collaboration Knife Angles to Be a Collector’s Grail

Premium blade steel, a uniquely evocative handle treatment and a worthy cause add up to something special.

Close-up of a Benchmade folding knife blade and handle with water droplets on a textured surface.Benchmade
Add Gear Patrol as a Preferred Source on Google

By Steve Mazzucchi

Published

·

If you buy from a link, we may earn a commission. Learn more

While some brands seem to partner up left and right, America’s leading maker of premium EDC knives does not fall in that category.

Which means when Benchmade does announce a collaboration, we sit up and take notice.

Folding knife with stonewashed blade and blue handle featuring white lightning pattern and attached silver paracord.
The handle treatment is not purely visual, as the semi-skeletonized scales are also unique to this edition.
Benchmade

How could we not when the result is something like today’s team-up with a top-notch fly fishing brand?

Meet the newest member of Benchmade’s Water Collection, the limited-edition Mini Adira Abel Dark Waters.

Colorado connection

While Benchmade typically prides itself on crafting as much of a knife as possible in-house in Oregon City, Oregon, the new Mini Adira begins life roughly 1,110 miles east of the HQ.

Montrose, Colorado, to be specific. That’s where Abel’s team machines, finishes and anodizes each scale by hand before sending the handles, backspacers and custom drag-knob lanyard beads westward.

Partially open Benchmade folding knife with a two-tone stonewashed blade and teal handle with white lightning pattern.
The 3.21-inch modified drop-point blade is just capable on dry land as it is out on the open water.
Benchmade

Inspired by Abel’s popular Vaya fly reels, those notably semi-skeletonized scales feature a unique Dark Waters Lightning pattern, which evokes spring storms, shifting skies and flowing water. 

Because the treatment is applied to one handle at a time, no two knives in the 1,000-unit limited-edition run are alike, adding to the appeal for deep-pocketed fans and collectors who may not actually fish. 

Close-up of a Benchmade folding knife handle in matte green with white lightning pattern and black screws.
The manufacturing process ensures no two handles are exactly alike.
Benchmade

If that sounds far-fetched, just think of the thousands of dive watches purchased by people who’ve never even snorkeled, let alone gotten SCUBA-certified. 

Besides, the Mini Adira is a hell of a knife on dry land as well.  

Close-up of a folding knife with a green handle featuring white lightning patterns and a stonewashed blade engraved with "MAGNACUT LIMITED EDITION Abel.
The offside of the blade points up the collaboration as well as the blade steel and exclusivity.
Benchmade

That owes a lot to the precise attention to detail Benchmade’s manufacturing team applies in assembling, sharpening, inspecting and finishing each knife.

Let’s not forget what deploys via ambidextrous thumb stud and Axis Lock from those glorious handle scales: a 3.21-inch modified drop-point blade made of MagnaCut. 

Folded tactical knife with a blue handle featuring white lightning patterns and a black braided lanyard.
Along with the handy lanyard, the knife accommodates a reversible tip-up clip (clearly on the other side in this image).
Benchmade

It’s worth noting that the standard version of the Mini Adira, which costs less than half as much, also boasts the vaunted super steel.

But this edition is special, as is the cause it helps support: Benchmade and Abel will donate $10 from every knife sold to Project Healing Waters, which helps American vets heal through what the brands call the therapeutic art of fly fishing.

Availability and pricing

The Benchmade Mini Adira Abel Dark Waters is available now for $500.

About the Author:

Now managing editor, Steve has served in a variety of roles with GP since 2019. Having previously written and edited for such publications as Men’s Health, Men’s Journal, Esquire and ESPN, he enjoys covering a range of topics — but mostly those pertaining to cycling, snow sports, pocket knives and motos — and dreams of a utopian world in which everyone’s bike seat is at the proper height.

Read More

Want to stay up to date on the latest product news and releases? Add Gear Patrol as a preferred source to ensure our independent journalism makes it to the top of your Google search results.

add as a preferred source on google
, , , ,