Are frame locks considered stronger than liner locks?

badmatt said:
Wait... you guys use your knives?
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I don't even see the handles worn on most of the knives people post here.

I use and lose knives - everything is temporary, so I have fun with it while I still have it. Respectfully, though, you'll never see me turning a screw with the blade.

As for the liner/frame locks... the concern isn't about the strength. The concern is the design. They can fail if you have a tight grip. Combine that with a heavy job and you've got a potential disaster. Seems a lot of people are unaware of this (lack of experience).
 
Silent H said:
I'm sorry, but this is another wild misconception with no basis in reality. Any force that's strong enough to bend steel or titanium isn't going to be stopped by your grip strength. And if your grip strength is the only thing holding that frame lock from slipping, then you have a defective frame lock.
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It’s not a problem for me. I only need the lock to hold the blade upright. I learned long ago to cut and apply pressure only to the forward edge. For anything more involve than that I will use a fixed blade, or another more appropriate tool.

n2s
 
If you're using a Chris Reeve Sebenza, Hinderer, or Zero Tolerance knife you can use your frame lock with a lot of confidence. You can even feel good about the Kizer Gemini. For a lot of other knives you might want to either use a different lock system or maybe go easy on the max force goon work. Use heavily built knives for heavy work and lightly built knives for lighter work. So maybe don't use your CRKT CEO for batoning or as a pry bar.
 
Frame locks are considered stronger, but they shouldn't be. There is nothing inherent that makes them stronger.

I would put money the perception of frame locks being stronger comes from (1) most early frame locks being thicker titanium and (2) lots of cheap liner locks out there. On the first, people saw the thicker, metal handles (even if the cutout and geometry is what matters) and felt it to be true.

When Spyderco had the frame lock Military, lots of folks convinced themselves it was stronger than the thin liner version. Later Spyderco came out and said they were engineered to be the same strength.
 
Don't forget: Before liner locks and frame locks there was the lockback.

I've never had a liner lock fail on me. Haven't owned or used a frame lock.
While I've never heard of a backlock failing during normal use, I still follow the adage "Trust NO blade lock!"

If I'm going to be doing something and I'm concerned about the lock failing (or the blade closing on my digits), I'll grab one of my fixed blades and use it. "Problem" solved.
 
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As has been said, it depends on the design.

I once used a Benchmade Darkstar liner lock folder to pry a bathroom door open when the internal mechanism of the knob broke and I was trapped inside. It was all I had, I expected it to break, to fail miserably, but it didn't. I was able to pry the door far enough over for the spring bolt to clear the door jam. Needless to say, the performance of the knife surprised the hell out of me. It just goes to show that you never know what a knife is capable of until you put it to the test.

On the other end of the spectrum, I had a Gerber Fairbairn/Applegate Combat folder, and the liner lock would disengage completely with just a little pressure placed on the back of the blade, and I mean just a little. One of my biggest knife regrets. It ended up in the trash. At this very moment it resides in a landfill, no doubt covered with a thick layer of compressed earth, which is exactly where it belongs.

I like liner locks. My favorite knives have liner locks. I've owned one frame lock (Bradley Alias), and I like that one too. Never had a problem with the Alias.

Here's a pic of my liner lock "pry bar" (Darkstar). If you held it in your hand you would never guess it had been used to pry a door open. It suffered no noticeable harm, and still locks up tight.


yuTc58Q.jpg
 
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Owen K. said:
BOTH locks are super DANGEROUS! Just get a Buck 110. @rhino
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Any kind of lock is dangerous, friend. Fixed blades all the way. :D

Kidding aside, I only have one liner lock, with another on the way (A Civivi Praxis I'm curious about). My Spyderco Resilience is plenty reliable enough for the job.

I speculate that thicker framelocks could potentially be more rock-solid than a thinner liner?
 
kreole said:
Frame locks are considered stronger, but they shouldn't be. There is nothing inherent that makes them stronger.

I would put money the perception of frame locks being stronger comes from (1) most early frame locks being thicker titanium and (2) lots of cheap liner locks out there. On the first, people saw the thicker, metal handles (even if the cutout and geometry is what matters) and felt it to be true.

When Spyderco had the frame lock Military, lots of folks convinced themselves it was stronger than the thin liner version. Later Spyderco came out and said they were engineered to be the same strength.
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Wow, I never knew there was a framelock Military, haha.
 
ALittleHigher said:
Here's an unanswered question of mine. I get those sometimes and I usually leave them be.

I've gotten the impression over the years that frame locks are usually considered more robust than liner locks but I'm challenging that now. In my mind, I just can't get over this: both the liner lock and frame lock styles are limited in the stiffness of the lock bar or liner by the strength of the average user's thumb. Frame locks are thinned down to bend more easily, and liner locks are of a uniform thickness of the liner but narrow enough to not provide too much resistance to unlocking.
If failure occurs at the weakest part of the frame lock (rather than the big beefy part people see near the pivot) what makes them more inherently strong than a liner lock? A liner lock could be made that was very difficult to unlock if a very wide portion of the liner was dedicated to the lock, or the liner was very thick. My Rat 1 seems to have a stiffer liner lock than some frame locks I have.

Could it be that before the framelock became popular liner locks were the only thing around so people remember cheap liner locks they might have come across?

Any thoughts?
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A good question, I am glad you asked. I have always questioned this also. Enjoying the thread.

For my own two cents, I'll just say, I can't help but think that thicker materiel (i.e. frame locks) would be more sturdy, with all else being equal.
 
pvicenzi said:
Every knife user should have to use a slip joint for a few years before they can get a locking knife. That way, they will learn how to properly use a knife and lock strength would become the non issue that it really is.
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Lucky enough that my first misadventure with a knife only resulted in a few stitches. Left a lifetime impression on pre-teen me, though.
 
Wouldn’t a framelock be a bit less prone to fail just by the fact that you press the lock in as you hold on to it?
 
Blackfish775 said:
Lucky enough that my first misadventure with a knife only resulted in a few stitches. Left a lifetime impression on pre-teen me, though.
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Very similar here. A SAK, no less. Closed on my index finger because i held it wrong, inadvertently.

The Spyderco Military comment above in #26 is interesting. Most linerlocks that I’ve seen have stainless locks. The Military’s lock is different steel than the other liner in that knife ... also, there are many different framelock implementations: e.g., the Spyderco Tuff with thick and very short lock, the Hinderer Fulltrack with G10 cover, etc. My point being that the answer to the OP’s question is implementation dependent. And both locks can fail - in case of doubt, use a fixed blade.
 
353 said:
Wouldn’t a framelock be a bit less prone to fail just by the fact that you press the lock in as you hold on to it?
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I believe so. Also, you are likely to feel the lock bar moving or shifting before it lets go.

n2s
 
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nevertakeadayoff said:
As for the liner/frame locks... the concern isn't about the strength. The concern is the design. They can fail if you have a tight grip. Combine that with a heavy job and you've got a potential disaster. Seems a lot of people are unaware of this (lack of experience).
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My lack of experience has led me to believe that liner/frame locks do not fail with a tight grip. They don’t fail with a loose grip either. They fail when people do stupid things with a folding knife.
 
Silent H said:
I'm sorry, but this is another wild misconception with no basis in reality. Any force that's strong enough to bend steel or titanium isn't going to be stopped by your grip strength. And if your grip strength is the only thing holding that frame lock from slipping, then you have a defective frame lock.
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Isn't the ability of the average human hand to easily bend steel or titanium a requirement for using these locks?

There are two different, albeit related modes of failure here: the lock face slipping off the tang (forcing the lock to open) and the lockbar itself folding in on itself. The first mode of failure (lock face slip) can happen for a bunch of different reasons, including insufficient lock tension or poor geometry/fit. The second one is likely only going to be caused by a (hopefully) significant amount of force on the lock, would also result in the lock face slipping because the lockbar ends up out of alignment.

If you had two knives that were identical except for the ability to manually add a lateral load to the lock interface, the one with the additional force should make lock face slip much less likely, since the amount of friction on the tang would be dramatically increased, essentially eliminating that mode of failure. In practice, this should only really make a tangible difference when the amount of force needed to slip the lock face exceeds the force needed cause the lockbar to bend.
 
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