I was just comparing my SNG, Small Seb 21 and Galyean Pro Junkyard Dawg and noticed the thickness of the framelocks. Though the three of them have different Ti thicknesses, the cutout towards the bottom seems to be about the same thickness across the board.
Doesn't this basically mean that the locks are all the same strength despite the different thickness of Ti? If they were to bend, they would bend/give at the site of the cutout, no?
Excuse me if I'm confused or should shut up.
You aren't confused. Some lock cuts are precariously thin and others are thick, some not even consistent. I have spoken about this time and time again and actually received hate mail about it at times from various sources. Once people take their blinders off and start realizing that if you spent half the effort looking at the knives you love with the same eyes you use to pick apart the knives you hate you'd start to see more objectively for whats right in front of you instead of viewing with a blind faith bias so often seen in fans of certain brands. I understand brand loyalty and I'm not condemning it but when you present something best you can sticking with the facts best you know how and people attack or go on attack after that well, it gets uncomfortable. Lets face it the truth sucks sometimes. But, once blinders are in place people don't want to see what you tell them about if it threatens their belief even though its hard to get around what is right in front of them sometimes. We see it with liner lock back and forth (urinating) matches all the time. Such is life I guess.
Anymore I avoid these threads or try to because they've gotten me in such hot water in the past but thanks Mike. I guess.
I had missed this one.
I'll try to keep this short as possible for me.
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My He Man folder has been done with both a very shallow unseen lock cut for some folks that wanted it slightly easier to manipulate and I've done them without a lock cut in the rear at all also. This model is capable for a frame lock and in my own private tests its held more weight than other so called hard use knives. My He Man is called a he man because its lock is harder to manipulate but its also harder to accidentally disengage and being a slab design in titanium .095 thickness well, its about as good as a frame lock gets. Contrary to popular belief frame locks cannot count great strength as one of their fortes` and neither can many thin liner locks particularly long thin lined liner locks.
I'll let you in on a little known secret. Has anyone ever wondered how Steve got into doing frame lock conversions in the first place? Take a guess. Go ahead guess.
You got it. I tested some of my own before I realized they were not quite as tough and strong as I thought. Being too stubborn to admit I ruined the dang things, (some of them were expensive believe me) I just rebuilt them. I see locks all the time and sometimes I wish I didn't know what I know because I like em other than the fact that I know if I bought it I'd want to rebuild the lock when it got here and do it my way. Why buy one though at that point. I'll just make my own. Anyway, I have pictures of some too about like that one shown. I never post em because well, it would be bad for some and I'm not into that really. Usually they bend like that and kink and the lock is bent downward well, correction I guess its technically upward but you know what I mean. I suspect the lock stabalizer on that model gave it the type back bend leaving the lock semi straight because if if had not been there it would look a bit different and maybe even tear like some I've tested.
Some very thin ones collapsed like that at 65 to 68 pounds of free weight. None made it to 100 pounds. Some liner locks actually hold more weight. A strong liner lock may hold 130 pounds, most not so much, more like 100 pounds if lucky. It just depends on so much including the length of the knife tested and the blade length. As you may have figured out that ain't much compared to many of the locks we all see these days. Still though there are advantages to frame locks in that the hand helps the lock to absorb some of that and in the hand the frame lock can and does do an aweful lot of hard use jobs. Its still my personal favorite because it need not hold a house on the end of the knife to be useful guys. Its obviously flawed if you lean into it too much I guess but most never get that far. Not in use anyway. In abuse maybe but normal use no.
There is a large variance from company to company and from knife to knife not only in the thickness but in location of the lock cuts at times. I have two S2 CRKT knives with different length locks and lock cuts in different places yet they are the same model. I've seen Emersons done different from year to year. (see pic links) And in my own model after great expense at personal experimentation tearing up knives I no sooner got done building I finally got a down pat design I can live with and like even though I don't make many now but it works okay and I think for a frame lock its about as strong as you are going to find. .095 slab, no lock cut and basically not something you are likely to sit around flicking open all day but something capable of doing the job when you need it and locking up pretty stout. Bending .095 ti with no lock relief is a bear but I do it and there ain't no way that lock will hyper extend out the wrong way. It takes a tool and leverage to bend it at that thickness so the human hand ain't budging it beyond the point that you can free up the blade!
Lock cuts provide the best of both worlds. You can manipulate the lock at a cost of strength making that slab design more like a thin liner lock in action, and you can still get the added benefit of having the hand and fingers physically securing the lock or a bit of a better feeling for reliability.
Maybe one day if I get cranky and old, senile or whatever I'd post some of the pics I've received over the years of knives mangled but for now no thanks. Not going there. For what its worth in most tests even though the lock does fold up and sometimes kink and even tear its usually not the most catastrophic defeats one can see in a lock. What that means is the blade is usually still open, so if you are going to have a lock defeat thats the way to do it so no one gets cut or not bad anyway, but maybe just a bad pinch and a bruised ego followed shortly by some choice words rarely used by sailors. Sometimes its difficult to impossible to close the blade actually.
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=63384&d=1164952855
Two Emerson HD 7s different years made. Same other than? Guess.
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=101695&d=1214777197
Well, thats all I have on it. I'll just add this. Don't let it sway you from liner or frame lock just because this can occur. Its still a very good design for most all things we do with our knives. Do we have to take the cuts that far down? No we don't. I personally wish makers or manufacturers offered some kind of tough use option or "He Man" option of their own to allow one to get a knife a bit stiffer and thicker. Its too much to ask though. I've sold some that folks have returned for me to thin more so they were not so hard on thumbs. Its not for everyone. With lock cuts left thicker comes a host of other things. Flipper its not. The detent ball really works and holds the blade closed well, sometimes the spring tension is such that you can really feel and hear the ball on the blade and other times the lock is so stout that if you are the type that likes to flick your knife open and closed a lot its just going to cause pre-mature carpel tunnel and a really sore thumb or a really big callus if you keep it up. Makers and manufacturers have to please a lot of folks. Its better if the action is easy and smooth and thats what everyone wants. So they do what they feel is needed to make it strong enough to serve, yet weak enough to be easy to use. There is a price for that and you are looking at it in that picture. It doesn't happen often but it happens.
EDIT: Oh my bad. I thought that was a Strider but I see its an Emerson now. Should have seen the lock cut on the inside. Speaking of which that means nothing. Where you put the lock cut has no connection with how the lock behaves in my experience. I've seen them go all ways and the lock cut on the outside or inside seemed to matter very little if any at all as to how the energy traveled or what the lock did. Like the liner lock in testing there is no rhyme or reason to how it behaves or why at times.
STR
