Anyone ever tried converting a knife to a comp lock?

K

kram115

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Jan 21, 2011
Messages
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Seems like it could be a daunting task but I want to try to change my favorite EDC, native, to have my favorite lock. Figure I'd take the lock off of a pm1 and fit it to the native. It looks like the back of the blade on the native would work with a comp lock. Is this too crazy of an idea? Has anyone tried/succeeded?
 
Aw man, I think the hard part isn't working with the liners, it's that when your working with the tang of the blade. it's not for Comp-lock so....
 
Dao.Hung_105 said:
Aw man, I think the hard part isn't working with the liners, it's that when your working with the tang of the blade. it's not for Comp-lock so....
Click to expand...

Exactly. Its just not gonna work, the lock face on the tang of the native and the para are not even in the same place. Even if you manage to get the pieces to fit together in some mangled way, the lockup would be essentially non-existant. You're basically talking about completely re-engineering the natives locking mechanism, a daunting task on a small knife even for spyderco's engineers.
 
Note the shapes of the tangs and the relative positions of the blade pivots. Put simply, removing metal is easy, adding it isn't. Probably would be easier just to build a knife from scratch.

backlock.jpg
compresslock.jpg
 
Damn, thanks deacon. Looks like it'd be impossible to modify a liner. What about just making one? Any idea how to do that?
 
Well, you start by deciding whether to forge the blade or grind it out of bar stock. Then you'll need to have it heat treated. If your Native is FRN, it has no liners, so you'll have to cut the handle in half lengthwise and mill the pieces down to make room for them, then cut the new liners out of something, drill all the necessary holes in the exact locations within a thousandth of an inch, and put it all together correctly, something that only a handful of makers in the world are able to do reliably.
 
yablanowitz said:
Well, you start by deciding whether to forge the blade or grind it out of bar stock. Then you'll need to have it heat treated. If your Native is FRN, it has no liners, so you'll have to cut the handle in half lengthwise and mill the pieces down to make room for them, then cut the new liners out of something, drill all the necessary holes in the exact locations within a thousandth of an inch, and put it all together correctly, something that only a handful of makers in the world are able to do reliably.
Click to expand...
Don't forget getting approval from Spyderco to use a patented lock.
 
You should also consider that the blade widths are different--that's just going to add to the problem.
 
The Deacon said:
Note the shapes of the tangs and the relative positions of the blade pivots. Put simply, removing metal is easy, adding it isn't. Probably would be easier just to build a knife from scratch.

backlock.jpg
compresslock.jpg
Click to expand...

If you start with a Native that has liners I don't see why it couldn't work. You would need a separate lock pin and stop pin, and it probably wouldn't be a very good lock, but it could be done. (if you count the addition of a second pin as making it "not a compression lock" then I'll agree that it's probably impossible.)
 
Dear Spyderco,

Please do this. I would love a N5 with a compression. Awesome idea. Or alternatively, build a smaller PM2.
 
The Deacon said:
Note the shapes of the tangs and the relative positions of the blade pivots. Put simply, removing metal is easy, adding it isn't. Probably would be easier just to build a knife from scratch.

backlock.jpg
compresslock.jpg
Click to expand...

Actually, once the blade has been hardened, removing the metal isn't easy...in fact, it's a screaming b!tch unless you have access to (and the training to use) some very expensive equipment, and doing it to fine tolerances would be much harder than that. :(
 
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