Bent Marbles ?!?!?! How Is This Even Possible ??

[BrotherJim]

Guys all the traditional pocket knife manufacturers krink blades. I'm talking present and past too. It's just part of the build process and one of the jobs of the cutler. Why do you think they go through the trouble of annealing the tangs up into the shoulder on virtually every blade? Certainly not to add a needless step to the assembly process. It's so that the blade isn't snapped in half when krinking. I'll bet that at least 80% (and likely more) of the knives out there made by Case, Queen, Schrade, Imperial. and yes even GEC have blades in them that have been krinked. And I'm talking virtually every pattern. Pins twist, bend and warp ever so slightly when hammered and this tends to throw a blade's alignment off. The longer the blade the more noticeable it is. Krinking is a necessary step to correct this alignment. Now if you're a custom maker you can spend all day putting a single knife together and taking it apart, making corrections each time until everything is perfect, but on a production line where guys are paid as pieceworkers and things have to keep moving, that process just doesn't work. Krinking was developed to solve the problem of slight mis-alignments as well as to fit multiple blades into a small space. Actually it's needed now more than ever with collectors' obsessions with centered blades. In the old days if a piece of paper could be slid between the blade and the liner without rubbing the knife would pass regardless of whether it was centered perfectly or not. The OP's knife is on the extreme side of krinked blades but it's definitely not the first one I've seen. Pretty certain the pivot pin got torqued a bit throwing the alignment off on that one or possibly the spring is warped a bit.

Eric

Great reply Eric and no sugar coating. Thank you sir

 

[Peregrin]

Guys all the traditional pocket knife manufacturers krink blades. I'm talking present and past too. It's just part of the build process and one of the jobs of the cutler. Why do you think they go through the trouble of annealing the tangs up into the shoulder on virtually every blade? Certainly not to add a needless step to the assembly process. It's so that the blade isn't snapped in half when krinking. I'll bet that at least 80% (and likely more) of the knives out there made by Case, Queen, Schrade, Imperial. and yes even GEC have blades in them that have been krinked. And I'm talking virtually every pattern. Pins twist, bend and warp ever so slightly when hammered and this tends to throw a blade's alignment off. The longer the blade the more noticeable it is. Krinking is a necessary step to correct this alignment. Now if you're a custom maker you can spend all day putting a single knife together and taking it apart, making corrections each time until everything is perfect, but on a production line where guys are paid as pieceworkers and things have to keep moving, that process just doesn't work. Krinking was developed to solve the problem of slight mis-alignments as well as to fit multiple blades into a small space. Actually it's needed now more than ever with collectors' obsessions with centered blades. In the old days if a piece of paper could be slid between the blade and the liner without rubbing the knife would pass regardless of whether it was centered perfectly or not. The OP's knife is on the extreme side of krinked blades but it's definitely not the first one I've seen. Pretty certain the pivot pin got torqued a bit throwing the alignment off on that one or possibly the spring is warped a bit.

Eric

Excellent explanation, Eric! I learned something today. Thank you!

 

[PointyThings]

Speaking of Queen-made knives like the Marbles, I have a Queen S&M pearl wharnie whittler I bought new in the 1990s that arrived with the master blade slightly warped/curved. The curve is quite visible. Wondering if it might have been a tempering issue. I'll try to dig it up and post a photo.

Didn't return it to the dealer at the time because I didn't examine it closely when it arrived. I discovered the curve many months later.