Life is full of things that are special, but cruel reality ensures that you won't realize it at the time. Like the fireflies dancing over the meadow at dusk leaving their trails of curves and loops in the air that last a just a second or two each, thousands of them, glimmers that form a whole that can only truly exist in memory.

Long summer days spent with friends, when the world was still full of wonders and anything might still have been possible. New adventures, new experiences, new horizons to explore. And, perhaps, a new knife in your pocket. You can never go back to that time, and to someone without the right kind of mind you may never be able to explain it. That's how it works; some things are only clear afterwards, when any curious thing may take you right back to that fond memory.

Youth is wasted on the young.

It's been easily twenty years since I last bought a Benchmade balisong knife. It's been twenty two, I think, since I bought my first. I didn't note the date. You don't think of that at the time, because you won't realize that it's one of those moments.

It was my Model 32, which was not my first balisong and truth be told it wasn't my first Benchmade either, but it was my first balisong that was actually any good. Truly, a revelation after a whole procession of ghastly flea market rattletraps. It immediately became my daily companion for many years, and to this day is a treasured old friend living in prominent position in my knife rack. It's the knife I wore to my wedding, and one of the very few in my collection of a couple of hundred to meaningfully appreciate in value since I bought it.

I pedaled my bicycle to the local gun store to pay $199 for it, an incredible amount of money hard earned from my dinky part-time job to pay for a mere pocketknife, but being pleased as pie the whole time to finally be 100% of the unimpeachable legal age to do so and thus there's wasn't a damn thing anyone could do to stop me. Maybe in some small way I already knew this was one of those pivotal moments, the otherwise unforeseeable kind that firmly sets somebody on one of life's inevitable paths.

I've bought a couple of Benchmade balis since. A Model 53. A Mayhem. Oodles of clones of the 42 of various stripes from appealing to awful, some of which I may some day write about here. But never again have I quite managed to recapture that magic of the first time. It's said that sort of thing is actually impossible.

But we can damn well give it a good try.

When I was given an opportunity recently to pick up a Model 82 "Laro" in person new in the box for slightly less than MSRP and well below the current going rate, I might have felt that little spark, that lift, the wind beneath my wings one more time. I knew I couldn't pass it up.

The thing about angels, you see, is that most people only get one.

If you can get your hands on an 82 — a prospect that is as usual getting increasingly unlikely, although some of the lesser known retailers purport to still have a couple — you will pay the thick end of $650 for it. With that type of price tag, the Model 82 absolutely must be something special, because otherwise its entire existence would be moot. This immediately delineates the world into two types of people: those who get it, and those who don't.

In order to explain, let's talk about Harley Davidson for a moment.

Like them or hate them, the one inalienable truth about a Harley is that it is the one motorcycle in the world that anyone, even non-motorcycle people, can name. Harley Davidson did not invent the motorcycle. They did not, if we are going to be completely truthful, even meaningfully innovate or iterate on motorcycles as a whole in a mechanical sense. There are manufacturers in the world who make motorcycles that are cheaper, motorcycles that are faster, motorcycles that are more reliable, motorcycles that drip less oil in your driveway, and in fact in some cases all of the above. But none of that is the point.

What Harley Davidson has is the quintessential essence of the motorcycle. The shape, the outline, rumble in the seat, the wind all around you, the chrome flashing in the noonday sun, the zeitgeist and indeed the very image of the motorcycle is Harley's stock and trade. Tires, engines, handlebars, spark plugs, tanks, and paint; All of those are mere details afterwards.

When you sit on a Harley, regardless of all else, there is the ineffable sense of occasion. Nothing else is a motorcycle, only this. It is James Dean and Hunter Thompson and Evel Knievel and Danny Trejo and even Clark Gable, and nothing can change that. Not management missteps, not the coddling with kid gloves by the Reagan administration, not even being owned by a bowling pin company; love them or hate them, it's unlikely anything is going to diminish the legacy of Harley Davidson any time soon.

And so it is, winding our way circuitously back topic, with Benchmade and as it follows the Model 82.

Benchmade certainly didn't invent the balisong knife — far from it. But a balisong knife is literally where Benchmade began, a fact which they celebrate to this day on the 82's box and indeed even its blade with their now iconic bali-song logo. With it comes that same sense of occasion, a certain gravitas that's impossible to quantify but somehow doesn't come with a balisong from any other maker.

But before you accuse me of being the brochure for this thing, let it not be said that I haven't been hard on the big B many times myself in the past. Often have I decried the ludicrous list prices on their mainstream models while they stolidly cling to an apparently static lineup while their competitors in many regards cruise right past. Finally being in a position to see things from the other side of the counter myself, so to speak, now I understand. It's expensive because what goes into it is expensive and getting moreso all the time, especially if you're still going to make it in America. So I get it, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

But some part of that is by the opposite side of the same token something that makes the Model 82, yes, that little bit special. Objectively, perhaps, there is no call in the world just yet for a $650 general purpose pocketknife. But if we were going to be purely objective all the time there would be no call whatsoever for any high end knives at all.

The 82's drop pointed, stylized, and ventilated blade is made from Magnacut. That's Larin Thomas' home grown supersteel and the current state of the art and darling of high end knife steels.

This marks another first for me as well as it's my first Magnacut knife.

That is to say my first that's actually made from Magnacut, and not just one that says it is. (That "CLA" there is, I'm very sorry to report, fake as a snake. If the lack of a choil didn't tip you off already. It's mechanically impeccable and very interesting, but still fake. Perhaps we'll discuss it later.)

I have no experience with Magnacut other than what I read. It's supposed to be the all-singing, all-dancing, does-everything perfectly balanced wunderstooff of, if not the future, certainly this very minute. I'm sure I'll find out about all that at least a little bit. But probably only a little, because it's unlikely I'll use this heavily.

But does it keeeeeel?

Probably. The Model 82 scores respectably for a factory edge out of the box. It's an unfair comparison as usual, because the Bugout I use as my control has had its edge fanatically hand-polished by yours truly and then used for no purpose whatsoever other than producing these chart figures. The Model 82 has a tumbled stonewashed finish on its blade surface which no doubt introduces a tiny amount of drag, and at 0.104" or 2.64mm in cross section it's also 20% thicker than the Bugout's blade. All of these will negatively impact it on my dinkum paper cutting test by its very nature.

For whatever it's worth I used it to open a pack of Gummi Bears last night and it went through the plastic packaging like it wasn't even there.

The 82 is a compact number for a balisong, measuring up at 4-3/4" (120.65mm) closed and a whisker under 8-1/4" (209.55mm) open. The blade is 3-5/8" long (92.08mm) from the tips of the handles, but the usable edge starts before a large choil and is about 3-5/16" (84.14mm).

The styling is of course reminiscent of the Model 87 and/or the 85, or perhaps vise-versa, although the 82 is much closer to EDC sized. It has the same channel milled solid billet titanium handles, glaive headed screws, and even the same pattern of slots and holes milled in for lightening. It's 125.3 grams or 4.42 ounces. With that plus the size, in reality maybe the more obvious comparison is my beloved Model 32 instead.

The 82 would be eminently EDC capable except I'll bet you wouldn't actually do it, you chicken. It also lacks a pocket clip, although in its stead you get what is, for lack of a better description, a holster. You may have spotted it nestled in the box above.

It's either made from Kydex or something moulded very much to look like Kydex. I can't tell if it's an injection moulding or simply pressed with some manner of hideously complicated jig. It's certainly not pressed around your individual knife, as it has distinct clearance and relief areas built into it to facilitate a clean draw without, presumably, scratching up the knife.

It's got a clip on the back picked out with the Benchmade butterfly logo, and which is obviously intended for a belt and is not a pocket clip per se. It's hooked over on the end and very highly sprung. There's a grab tab on the tip of it but flexing it to snap onto your belt while you're already wearing it is kind of a three handed job. Threading your belt through it is a better bet. The clip seems extremely robust and is just wide enough to clear a 2" pistol belt and even has adjustable retention, which is the sort of thing that'll surely get any old whacker to pitch his tent.

The clip is folded over the top of the holster and screwed in through the back, which seems like it ought to be a tailor made recipe for scraping and damaging the finish on the handles.

...Except there are a pair of wings formed into the edges of the holster that space it out so it doesn't touch. You have to be very ham-fisted indeed to shove the 82 into its holster such that it runs the risk of getting scratched.

Which is just as well, because it is an absolute thing of beauty.

The Torx and glaive headed hardware create a cohesive style throughout the entire ensemble. It's a kicker pin design, so there are no Zen pins to be found in the handles here. But the pins and even the latch head carry the theme.

Squeeze the handles and the latch springs open of its own accord. Spring is the wrong word, though. This puppy is actually magnetic, with a trio of opposed doughnut shaped magnets tucked under the screw heads and on the shank of the latch. When the handles are squeezed far enough for the crosspin in the latch to clear its keyhole shaped home, it's silently pushed out by magnetic repulsion and kept there proud of the handles and blade so it can't clash.

The action is faultless. The 82 is a ball bearing pivoter and it's also extremely rigid. There's nary a wiggle, no tap, not a rattle to be found anywhere within it. It's quiet, too, producing only a single understated click with each rebound. It is the polite, distinguished cough of the professional butler, nothing more. Just as you say, sir. Very good, sir.

Originally I was going to take this apart to show you, but I found that the screws were highly threadlockered and mine came from the factory in a perfect state of tune. The screw heads are matted just like the handles, and pristine. Do I really want to sully all of that? I don't think I do.

The Inevitable Conclusion

I went out to breakfast with my wife the other day and the bill came to just over $50. It wasn't anything fancy, just diner fare with a menu modification or two. Maybe that puts it all into perspective, these days.

Maybe we really are all headed to hell in a handbasket. Maybe it really was better back when and it's not just that we remember it so. Cherish the special moments as we find them, then, and recognize them for what they are. They'll never come around quite the same way again.

So maybe six hundred bucks is a bargain after all. Mere nothing, for the opportunity to hold perfection.