new member and new to spyderco with a problem.

[moonman079]

Hi all i just got my first spyderco last friday. i bought the tenacious to see how i liked them before spending alot of money. so far i really like it but am having a small problem. i have always taken my knives apart to clean them and replace parts. when i got the tenacious when i opened it was gritty feeling like it had dust and debris in it. so i took it apart and cleaned it real good added a drop of oil and its good to go.

the problem i am having is that no matter how much i tighten the pivot screw there is side to side blade play. the only time it goes away is when i tighten it down to the point you can barely open or close it with both hands. i put the 4 washers back in just as they came out and tried switching them around just in case. but nothing seems to help.
a little blade play i can live with but it moves about 1/8th of an inch to either side. you can feel the liner lock and pivot screw move with it a little bit. is there anything else i need to try? i contacted spyderco to ask them but they told me i voided the warranty which is fine with me and said they could send me more washers. but i do not see that really helping since i have 4 in there now.

[rycen]

Did it have the blade play to start with?

[Blerv]

Welcome to the forums! Best of luck with the knife. In the future you might try oil first and opening/closing multiple times, that normally works very well (assuming you didn't try this of course).

[golddot370]

Sorry to hear about the blade play, I hope you are able to resolve your issue. In the future warm soapy water will do the trick on gritty knives. Welcome to the spyderco forum

[BigBill5953]

Welcome!

[dbcad]

Welcome Moonman :) Did the Tenacious have the play problem when you first got the knife?? Before you took it apart?

Given the warranty is voided, there must be an underlying reason why you can't get rid of the play. With 1/8" of blade play either something isn't fitting correctly or your expectations of action smoothness are unrealistic. I'm not being critical of your observations, just trying to think to the root of the actual cause for 1/8" play side to side at the tip :) That symptom is not very common.

Pictures of what you think are the areas causing the problem might be helpful. There's definitely a problem somewhere, it would be good to figure out exactly where it is :)

[hunterseeker5]

Well getting that response from their customer service dept. is more than a little sh*tty quite frankly. I've always viewed the purpose of that disclaimer to avoid claims regarding damage from improper disassembly/reassembly. To be punished for your honesty, assuming you didn't actually harm the knife, is kind of a cop out. But since you're on your own, lets get to the diagnosis stage of the exercise.


If you had lost a washer, or it came from the factory without enough, you wouldn't be able to stop the blade play by tightening the pivot screw. The fact that you can tighten down the pivot screw until it goes away means you don't need anymore washers.

What is the problem then? The pivot pin. Either the pivot pin/tang hole spec is off (too much space) or the pivot pin's hole/slot in the steel liners is too large. As a result the only thing really reducing blade play is your pivot washers. The knife is just made to a lower spec, all of them I've handled are like this as well. Larger radius (not thickness) washers may make some minor improvement, but essentially I believe you're stuck with it.

[Holland]

make sure the stop pin is tightened all the way

[Blerv]

Yes but the knife has excessive play as described. They offered to send him washers but to open a W&R ticket without knowing who's liable doesn't seem a fair path either. Someone has to pay for the labor. More importantly each knife slows the turnaround process for everyone else with a W&R ticket.

Best of luck with the knife! You might drop by a knife shop and see if anyone has any ideas. If they want to earn your biz maybe they will help you out.

[hunterseeker5]

Yes but the knife has excessive play as described. They offered to send him washers but to open a W&R ticket without knowing who's liable doesn't seem a fair path either. Someone has to pay for the labor. More importantly each knife slows the turnaround process for everyone else with a W&R ticket.

Best of luck with the knife! You might drop by a knife shop and see if anyone has any ideas. If they want to earn your biz maybe they will help you out.

You know I am going to butt heads with you one this one. Its perfectly fair game to assess the issue, because you can't determine if it is a manufacturing defect via email whether or not the user has disassembled the knife. Its perfectly fair for them to tell him to send it in, and say that if it turns out not to be a claim covered by warranty the customer pays return shipping and everyone goes about their merry way.


Here is an alternate way to look at it: as a customer service rep you should never punish a customer for honesty and/or reward a customer for dishonesty because what you are doing is selecting for a bunch of liars and thieves as your customers and pissing off your honest customers. I'm assuming that the problem existed prior to disassembly. If the OP had gone to spyderco and lied saying that the knife simply came that way, spyderco would have looked at it. If the error was due to manufacturing spyderco would have resolved it. If the error was due to disassembly they'd have noted that, and charged him for the repair and return shipping.


Here is the thing. If you ever go out and really use your knife, not just fondle it, keep it in your safe, and drag it around in your pocket I mean really go out there in the rain and the mud in the dust and heat and use your knife as a knife should be you are going to foul it up. Pivots are made of stainless steel, blade tangs can be carbon steel but are inaccessible, grit gets in mechanisms and wears down surfaces. Its not reasonable to say that you can never disassemble your knife. I've heard this "blow it out with air and wash it with soap and water" malarkey one too many times. If all you do is pocket carry that may suffice, but some of us use our knives and if you want to get the grit out of the pivot, fight rust where its inaccessible assembled, get blood out of the pivot (ever tried that one with only soap, water, and compressed air?) and generally maintain your knife SOMEONE has to disassemble it. Spyderco clearly doesn't want to have to do this, and its not reasonable to expect them to, but every spyder I've bought I've done so on the theory thats been floated here that as long as you didn't damage the knife doing so, spyderco will still honor warranty claims. To refuse to even look at the knife because the user confessed to disassembly is VERY different from saying "we may have to charge you for the repair if the claim is not covered under warranty."

Spyderco offered washers, admittedly the OP could try them and see if it helps and good on spyderco for not leaving him completely out in the dark, but lets be honest here: those washers cost less than the postage it'll cost to send them to him. Its not like he was swept away by the bearhug of spyderco customer service.

Fair Blake?

*edit*

I should have kept this a little less personal, because I can't specifically speak for what was said either by the OP or sypderco in this instance, but the way the OP is portraying it is what I'm responding to specifically.

[rycen]

Way to derail a thread.

[moonman079]

thanks for the replies guys. i did try to just oil it when i got it but it just helped alittle. i am not too worried about the warranty really. i have always worked on my own knives, guns guitars and other stuff. it did have some blade play in it when i got it but the pivot screw was pretty loose. i only had to turn it one and a half times to take it out. the washers it came with are 2 larger diameter and 2 smaller diameter not sure if that maks a difference or not. i tighten the pivot screw all the way down then slowly back it out just a hair at a time to get it to where it opens smooth. having to use a slight flick of the wrist to open it does not bother me at all but when i loosen it to that point the blade play is back.
to get rid of the blade play i have to tighten it to the point that i have to do a quick hard flick of the wrist. about twice as hard as the benchmades and zero tolerances that are not spring assisted that i have owned. my $30 hk p30 knife opens alot easier with less blade play as well. i do not expect the knife to be perfect. it is a tool and will be used alot. i was just wondering if anyone else had this problem.

[Blerv]

Hey Moonman. Sorry for the derail :) .

When tightened is the opening smooth still? Sometimes one knife will just be stiffer than another even within the realm of the same model.

The compromise between a light action and play is sometimes a tough one to dial in. You might drop the edge angle and keep the action looser. That might reduce how noticeable the play is.

Hope others have better advice.

[hunterseeker5]

I myself have two resiliences and they both have a fair bit of blade play, side to side only. On mine ts from the aforementioned pin-tang hole size issues and small radius washers. That said I keep both pivots on the loose side because I like them smooth and fast, and given that they have a longer blade they STILL have only about 3-4mm play at the tip. *shrug* YMMV I guess? Sorry for derailing your thread.

[xceptnl]

I am sure we can all agree with your initial urge to get a new knife, manipulate the action, and upon feeling its lubricity would want to get to the bottom of it. The best approach I have learned is to avoid loosening that first screw until all other alternatives have been considered. As golddot said, fast flowing warm water and a little soap can free that pivot of any residual grit.

[Bladekeeper]

I have four tenacious , ps , Spyderedge , black and green no play on any of them it sounds like you got unlucky , firstly the op brought it new providing we are getting honesty .
The only time I have seen this on a new blade was because of a steel filing rubbing away between the bar and the blade personally this is why I would have just sent it back.
However I'd get a eye glass and go over the parts bar , washers , blade etc sometimes at magnification light doesn't reflect as well at the point of problem.
Don't let this be your judgement of spyderco it's an unfortunate situation best of luck.

[DeathBySnooSnoo]

Are you carrying it tip up or down? I found that with them tip down thye can develop some play if you really crank down the clip screws.

Also, try tightening it up til the play is gone but the action is a bit too stiff. Work it in while keeping it well lubed and it should break in somewhat and you should have a good balance of tightness and play.

[Evil D]

Well, without seeing the knife, this is all speculation, but here goes nothing.

1. Did the knife have side to side play to begin with? Did you honestly check to see before you disassembled it?

2. The initial grittiness was likely due to the pivot being tight from the factory, which could have prevented the side to side play, which in the long run WILL loosen up and go away without the need to take it apart (if it ain't broke, don't fix it).

3. Take the knife back apart (may as well at this point). Inspect the washers very closely. Do any of them have any damage, bends, etc? I took my Yojimbo 2 apart for modding purposes (warranty be damned) and found that one of the liners had a very small dot of what i'm assuming was melted metal/slag from the laser cut pivot hole. It was probably 1/32 inch and right on the edge of the pivot hole on the liner, and the washer had been pressed into this dot of metal. It was completely fine from the factory this way...no side to side play and it was silky smooth opening and closing, but i didn't notice this until after i put it back together and found this horrible play and the pivot wouldn't adjust to my liking no matter what. Eventually i took it apart and found this blemish, and sanded the dot down and flipped the washer around so that the flat side was facing the blade tang, put it back together and all was well.

Long story short, washer damage = unhappy pivot.

4. Inspect the liners around the pivots as well, to make sure there aren't any issues like #3. You may wanna look at the pivot hole on the blade, but i've never seen any issues there.

5. I strongly recommend avoiding trying to sand/polish the washers/liners/tang/pivot etc in an effort to smooth it out. If you aren't extremely careful doing this, you'll take away too much metal somewhere and create play that you'll never get rid of no matter what you do.

6. Once you're satisfied that all of that checks out, check the insides of the G10 where the liners meet up. I'm not very familiar with this particular knife so i don't know if they're nested liners or not, but make sure there's nothing in there that could prevent everything from coming together perfectly.

7. Reassemble the knife. Start by putting together one side with the liner screws just barely tightened, then put the washers/blade/washers/liner/G10 and so on together from the other side (sorry if this is all common knowledge, i have no idea how experienced you are). The important part here is to NOT tighten up the screws yet. You need to tighten them up equally in a sequence in order to not put anything under bind, which will surely cause play and/or blade not being centered.

8. There are many opinions on how to go about tightening screws. Personally i like to barely (and i mean barely) snug all the screws and pivot screws just far enough that everything is flush together. Sometimes i won't even tighten the scale screws at this point at all. I'll snug down each side of the pivot screws, making sure the blade is still centered. I'll then play with opening and closing the knife a little to see how the action is, whether it's too tight or whatever. I'll check for play at this point, and there shouldn't be any once the pivot screws are properly adjusted. Then i go about snugging the scale screws one at a time going towards the butt of the handle. There's bound to be a better way to do this...if you search i'm certain you'll find threads on this topic, there's at least a few threads going around about blade centering that covers different methods of tightening and adjusting screws.

: DISCLAIMER :
From here out, i feel i've been the cool knife bro and tried my best to help solve the issue, and i genuinely hope it does help. With that said, i now feel the need to chastise you for taking the knife apart. Please take this with a grain of salt

Ok, it is NOT necessary to take a *Spyderco* knife apart for cleaning, with the exception of maybe some back locks, but i think with a little effort you should still be able to get them clean. There was just a thread/video of a guy digging in the dirt with a Manix 2 to show that the lock still performed with all kinds of crap in the pivot...he rinsed the knife out a few times and all was well. All you need to do is use soap and running water and work the pivot under running water, and all the crud will come out no matter how filthy you've gotten the knife. If that doesn't do it, another great way to clean a pivot is doing the same open/close/repeat while spraying WD-40 into the pivot. Then use a can of compressed air (or better yet an air compressor if you have one) and blow the whole knife out so it's dry inside, throw a drop of your preferred lube into the pivot and work it in, and there's no reason the action shouldn't be baby *** smooth. This is all especially true for the pillar construction knives...the insides are right there...all you need to do is rinse them out.

OR, you can take them apart and possibly make some mistake that none of us can figure out, void your warranty, and end up with a jiggling POS that Sal himself would probably scratch his head at fixing. Plus, every time you take apart a Spyderco, God kills a kitten. Please, think about the kittens next time.

[xceptnl]

....OR, you can take them apart and possibly screw make some mistake that none of us can figure out, void your warranty, and end up with a jiggling POS that Sal himself would probably scratch his head at fixing. Plus, every time you take apart a Spyderco, God kills a kitten. Please, think about the kittens next time.

ROTFL. That cracks me up David.

[moonman079]

lol thanks guys. i took it apart again and wiped the oil off and started over. after inspecting the bushings closely the one on the side where they had the pocket clip was rough and alittle bent where the clip srews went in. i am still using the cleaning cloth i used when i took it apart in the first place. my wife got in from work and helped me look over stuff. she can see alot better than i can. on inspection the cloth had a small spot of shavings off of the bushing. i guess somehow some small shavings came off the bushings and got on the pivot post. i assume thats where the gritty feeling came from. but i took my zippo and laid it flat on the bushing and pushed down to flatten it out. now the blade play is down to under a quater of a milometer.
so i can live with that. i do not plan on this being my last spyderco. i plan on purchasing an endura and military. plus my wife wants a small one for her purse. i have a bad habit of taking stuff apart to clean it. every new firearm i buy gets field stripped and cleaned before i shoot it my guitars get the strings taken off and cleaned as well. my wife likes the pic of the cat she thinks its cute lol. i myself am not a cat person.