An interesting note about the controversial spine whack test

[Matriculate]

At work yesterday I watched the Spyderco Dealer video. It was very cool! It showed the making of their knives and all kinds of cool tests they do to them. Anyway, once the knives got to the quality control phase it showed employees spine-whacking them. They weren't just spine whacking liner locks, they did it to all the different folders they make.

Just thought it might interest some of you who say that it's a useless test and it's abuse of the knife. I guess Spyderco doesn't consider it abuse. They obviously wouldn't "abuse" a knife and then ship it to you.

BTW - They did show them breaking locks and that was cool. This arm thing came down on the the handle while the blade was held in a vice. Pressure was applied until SNAP! It was also cool to see the different steps such as the laser cutting. The video opens and closes with a laser cutting the patented spyder-hole out of a piece of steel. VERY COOL VIDEO!

 

[AF]

Sounds like a cool video. I don't place too much stock in the spine wack test but I've done it on my Benchmade 812 and 750. They both passed but I didn't wack all that hard. I agree that it is not abuse.

 

[Tom Anderson]

What I want to know is....

Was everybody at the factory snapping the knives open with their wrists as hard as they could?

 

[knifenerd]

Interesting. I'm generally one of the "nay-sayers" when it comes to spine-whacking. I'm not saying it has no reasonable bearing on the lock-strength issue, just that it tends to get assigned too much importance in relative terms.

I still prefer the slow, twisting action to see if my liner locks can hold.

But the info is much appreciated. I'm always listening and willing to learn.

 

[C4]

I saw Tom Mayo preform the spine whack test on his frame lock TNT. He left the table we ate at on Friday night at the Blade Show MUCH the worse for wear...

My computer table is the same from my TNT...

What does it prove??? I don't have a clue, except maybe that strong locks don't easily fail....


Michael

 

[tom mayo]

I think those two beers that I drank caused me to get carried away a little!!!!!!
What really worried me was the look on Jerry Hossom's face.... guess he's never been in jail before!!!!!!!