The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details:
https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is $300 $250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
I love to play with and fugure out best ways to open and close knives I don't care for assit knives.
I think the lock on the Marksman is incredibly simple, comfortable, and satisfying to operate. But I use a method that I haven't seen in a video or read as described anywhere. It just came to me and it's the only way I close it and it made the darned thing 10x more addicting, actually.
I'll try to describe it.
With the blade open, hold the knife vertically with the blade pointed up. Your grip is going to be a gentle "pinch" of the lock bar generally right behind the pivot.
You want to Pinch with your thumb and your middle finger. Hold it so that the heel of the handle is resting against the heel of the palm of your hand while you pinch it. You don't have to squeeze like crazy, just a gentle, comfortable hold with your middle finger and your thumb. And keep your pinky and ring finger out of the way. My natural hand position while pinching the lock bar like this curls them up the same as the rest of my fingers (which keeps them safely out of the way) - you probably won't have to consciously do anything with your ring and pinky finger, but I thought I'd throw that out there in case someone doesn't.
Got it? So you've got it in hand held as above.
Now take your index finger and press gently on the spine of the blade at the foreward/tip end of the oval thumb hole. Maintain your pinch grip on the lock bar while doing so. Doing this does two things: Loads the blade to go snapping shut, and it levers the lock bar up off of the lock tab. Maintain your pinch grip while doing this.
If you hold it as I describe, when you have enough pressure applied to the spine to lift the lockbar, at "slams" shut with the same speed as it opened with, and the effort is minimal with no crazy gouging of your thumbs.
If you do this and the blade doesn't close all the way to the locked position, then the geometry of your grip isn't correct. Move your pinch a little lower and move your index finger push a little more forward towards the tip.
Try it!
That works extremely well.
You need to add in a double caution...no, a quadruple caution in caps: KEEP FINGERS OUTTA DA WAY!
LOL - had you been using that method before I got long winded there? LOL