Carbon fiber for frame lock

Z

Z34Phoenix

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Jan 3, 2011
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Was wondering if it is possible to heat cf to bend it or some other way to make the lock portion for a frame lock? If nit can this be done with g10, acrylic or other composite? I'm not a fan of liner locks and want to stay away from aluminum. Any other suggestions would be great! Thanks for the help
 
I've occasionally wondered the same thing about carbon fiber. Subscribing to this thread in case someone knows anything 'bout it.
 
Depending on the epoxy used some carbon fiber is flexible. The downside of the stuff I have seen is to be flexible enough for a knife it would have to be very thin, probably less than .5 mm, and if you repeatedly bend it in a small span it will delaminate.

There may be some made for an application like this though. I have to say while I have been around some CF I certainly haven't seen everything available.

I haven't seen any G-10 that is flexible. It is very strong but if you apply enough force it snaps.
 
Eric
Carbon fiber has a couple of drawbacks in frame use. For this application in order to remain resilient I would think you would need to manufacture in the lock flex. This could require some very expensive molds. Additionally the strike on the lock bar would not be resilient enough to handle the wear...not even close. Which would require a hardened piece of steel be built in for the lock, which is not terribly difficult...but really WHY?

Titanium is appropriately named; it is the metal of the gods. Even if you did get a working model I would be surprised if it would outperform Titanium overall. They are equally bad to work with in different ways so not sure what there would be to gain???? Mattbrook gave you the answer.

For starters scrounge up Bob Terzoula's book TACTICAL KNIVIES, it is out of print but you can find it on Ebay or Amazon. He makes and shows some steps for doing inset lockbars which works well. Or follow the Strider approach and build a framelock with the lock side in TI and the presentation side in CF.

Best of luck,
Eric
 
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The strongest material for a framelock is heat treated stainless steel.

Composites won't work due to poor wear resistance and impact strength.
 
Marcus has a suggetion that will work too, stainless steel is good....but there are trade off between the two.

Eric
 
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