Lock Failure Poll

[JNewell]

I had a Military that came out of the box unable to lock up, even with a ferocious wrist-flick. It was replaced by the dealer. These things happen...users are responsible for ensuring that things they buy operate safely, as intended by the manufacturer and within the reasonable expectations of the user, and I note that user expectations seem to become less reasonable (particularly with respect to minor matters of fit & finish) as the years go by.

[rodloos]

Not a Spyderco, but I had a Byrd Wings that one of the blades failed to lock open, right out of the box. It would "click" as if it was locked, but I went to whittle a stick and put my thumb on the spine of the blade and it started to close.

It was replaced under warranty.

[jackknifeh]

This was about 2 years ago if I remember correctly and I did witness in person. It was on the brick sill of my utility room windows while outside having a few beers and cooking on the grill. I can't say for sure that the ball bearing was fully engaged as I was not holding the knife, but it seemed to me that the pressure pushed the ball bearing backwards and the blade released. This was a pretty solid whack. I think he may have picked up that particular manix 2 at a gun show so no telling what generation it was, I never asked to read the date code on the box. It did have the old clear cage. That said, he still carries this knife to this day and it has been used for shucking oysters, camping, all sorts of semi-hard use and it still locks up tight.

When the knife locks the spring pushes the bearing forward until the center of the bearing is on top of the flat part on the tang. When pressure is put on the spine the contact is supposed to be on the center of the bearing. If the bearing is not all the way forward the "corner" of the flat spot on the tang will push the bearing back (much like when my cue tip miscues off the cue ball :) ). This is how the bearing should move when you pull the lock release buttons back. I don't know what Spyderco did to correct the problem but I think it could be corrected by filing a tiny bit of the flat spot on the tang or whatever is on top of the bearing when locked. If the gap between the tang and whatever is on top of the bearing were wider the bearing could go in farther. I think what is on top of the bearing is the bar on top of the handle at the pivot.

I'd bet at least half of the failures when testing a knife occur when doing something you would never do when using a knife normally. Even when using it HARD. The only time I can imagine hitting the spine would be when you hit the spine when splitting a piece of wood. Can't remember the word for this. But, when I've done this I always have quite a bit of downward pressure on the handle. This puts pressure on the edge where it is supposed to be. I was thinking the pressure on the handle would reduce or eliminate any pressure from the spine whack from effecting the lock. Also the blade would penetrate farther (maybe). I don't know much about this because I've only done it to see what it was like. I've never done it because I needed to do it. I have 100% faith in the CBBL and BBL's when good material is used for the knife parts (like Spyderco uses) and the lock is free form debris. That said, a folding knife will never be a fixed blade.



Jack

[paladin]

The only time I can imagine hitting the spine would be when you hit the spine when splitting a piece of wood. Can't remember the word for this. But, when I've done this I always have quite a bit of downward pressure on the handle. That said, a folding knife will never be a fixed blade.

I think the term you're looking for is "batoning."

[Peter1960]

On a Byrd Finch the lock failed completely ...

[yablanowitz]

My only "lock failure" on a Spyderco was a first generation Dodo. I read a bunch of posts here where people were whining about the ball bearing lock not working right on their Dodos. I got curious, pulled the Dodo out of my pocket, opened it and pushed on the spine with my thumb. It folded up with less effort than a G-10 UKPK. After I washed and oiled it, it locked up reliably. I'm not sure why I even bothered, since I'd been carrying and using it for a year that way.

[hunterseeker5]

I had a Tuff which I consider to have come suffering from lock failure, but NOT because it would disengage from pressure on the spine.

The Tuff I got came with a lock bar tension so outrageously high I was unable to disengage it without quite a bit of discomfort. I should note this was not caued by lock stick. There is no purpose to this either, because if the blade tang either is cut properly to prevent this (it has a curvature and ends with the tang perpendicular to the lock bar so there is no innate lateral force) or it is not.

That said, after disassembling and adjusting the tension on the lockbar of my Tuff, the lock behaved precisely as it should and would not allow the knife to close from pressure on the spine. This is because the blade tang was cut correctly, unlike so many other knives.

[JNewell]

I had a Tuff which I consider to have come suffering from lock failure, but NOT because it would disengage from pressure on the spine.

The Tuff I got came with a lock bar tension so outrageously high I was unable to disengage it without quite a bit of discomfort. I should note this was not caued by lock stick. There is no purpose to this either, because if the blade tang either is cut properly to prevent this (it has a curvature and ends with the tang perpendicular to the lock bar so there is no innate lateral force) or it is not.

That said, after disassembling and adjusting the tension on the lockbar of my Tuff, the lock behaved precisely as it should and would not allow the knife to close from pressure on the spine. This is because the blade tang was cut correctly, unlike so many other knives.

My older son (26 YO) and I have Tuffs with exactly that problem. What tool did you use on the pivot?

[Strong-Dog]

Wow. Is almost 10% good, or bad? I have nothing to compare this to

[Fred Sanford]

Yep.

I had an Endura that came from the factory with some of the tolerances not quite right and it would unlock with hard pressure to the back of the blade (just with your hand). I returned it and got another one which was fine. I've had over 80 different Spydies and only that one Endura had a problem. Good stuff.

[JNewell]

Wow. Is almost 10% good, or bad? I have nothing to compare this to

If it were a properly set-up survey, it would be catastrophically bad. Running a poll, or even a discussion, on a forum like this is never going to give you good representative results, though. I guarantee there's no way that 10% of Spyderco's shipped knives have lockup problems. They'd have gone out of business a couple of decades back if this was representative of overall production.

[paladin]

If it were a properly set-up survey, it would be catastrophically bad. Running a poll, or even a discussion, on a forum like this is never going to give you good representative results, though.

Yep, hence my disclaimer at about the 6th post down...

I also think we've got at least a couple of Byrd failures logged. A couple of guys mentioned Byrd failures as an informational sidenote, but voted "no" which was fine.
But we have at least 2 other Byrd "no" votes ( I'd guess ) registered which muddied the waters.

The "no's" for the Spy value line, while not restricted by me, are probably not representative, either.

Plus, with an anonymous poll you're gonna get some "haters."

Having said that, we're still good.

[anagarika]

Not at all.

Other brands yes. Not a Spydie. Never in my experience so far.

[dgebler]

Wow. Is almost 10% good, or bad? I have nothing to compare this to

I would agree 10% would be bad if this poll represented 10% of the knives spyderco puts out. For example if everyone in the poll only had one knife and 10% failed.
If you consider that most of the posters in this poll have had say 20-40 knives and out of that only 10% of the people have even had a single failure this is much less than 10%, actually those numbers represent much less than 1%. Too early for me to do the math, but if you consider that most of us on the forum and posting in this poll have had many knives this is a low number.

[JNewell]

Yep, hence my disclaimer at about the 6th post down...

I also think we've got at least a couple of Byrd failures logged. A couple of guys mentioned Byrd failures as an informational sidenote, but voted "no" which was fine.
But we have at least 2 other Byrd "no" votes ( I'd guess ) registered which muddied the waters.

The "no's" for the Spy value line, while not restricted by me, are probably not representative, either.

Plus, with an anonymous poll you're gonna get some "haters."

Having said that, we're still good.

Just for clarity, that wasn't intended as even the slightest criticism of the poll. It's just an observation about the nature of the medium. :spyder:

[nccole]

I think the term you're looking for is "batoning."

If for whatever reason you (not you directly, universally you) feel the need to baton your folder, for the love of Baby Jesus unlock it first!

[paladin]

No worries...I fully understood the import of your observation... :)

Interestingly enough, to me (at least), is that most of the "fails" with posted comments are "out of the box" issues...

I was really more interested in failures resulting from knives already established as solid by their ELU's , that AFTERWARD experienced a lock malfunction, catastrophic or otherwise. I tried to keep the poll as streamlined and accessible as possible and didn't count on that contingency.

No one expects 100% perfection from every single production knife fresh off the line-- although it's a great target.

And everyone who's posted a poll knows how difficult it is to balance simplicity, accessibility, & accuracy in an online poll--- also an impossible to reach perfection goal.

[Laethageal]

I did vote yes on the poll because the lock failed on my ZDP endura. I did stress the cutting edge itself more then most would do but I never put much force on the pivot and locking mecanism. No twisting and the only time I did battoning was by hitting the back of the edge taking care not to hit close to the handle. The knife did cut in muddy situation but was cleaned and no lint nor residue cause the failure. Mostly seems as the difference in material hardness between ZDP and the lock caused early failure. The knife is not yet but close to 2 years old.

[tvenuto]

10% would be high (bad) in my opinion, but some of this is being confounded by the ambiguity of the question. By this I mean, some people's locks never worked (which means that they weren't locks), and the knife never saw use. Some people's locks previously worked, and then failed in use, which was I think the intent of the question. Both are scenarios worth noting, for sure, but only one of those is something I would consider "lock failure." Also, this doesn't mean that 10% of locks fail, but rather 10% of people have experienced (some kind) of failure. Those people could very well have owned 100 knives and experienced 1 failure, which would mean the actual failure rate is 0.1% (of the people who answered this question).

[yablanowitz]

Exactly. My one "lock failure" is less than one percent of my locking Spyderco folders, so if I threw in a whole "yes" vote, it would effectively skew the results since I can't throw in 167 "no" votes to represent all the locks that have worked perfectly every time.