Detent Discovery

[SVanderkolff]

I am absolutely certain I am not the first to think of this but I have never seen it described anywhere. As I said in an earlier post I had the dilemma of not having enough overlap on my spring in order to fit the detent ball into the spring. But after thinking about it for a while I saw no reason that the detent had to be in the spring. So I moved it into the body of the folder. By locking the blade and the liner into the correct closed position I drilled with a #60 bit where I wanted the detent to be. I drilled thru both liners and the blade. I then drilled out both liners to a #53 and inserted 2 detent balls one on each side. This has the added benefit of not pushing the blade off center when it is closed. The detents stick out just a couple of 1000's further than the .010 washers. You can see the line on the blade where the detent touches. But the only time the detent touches is just at the time of almost closed. The extra little hole just above the detent was where I screwed up the first drilling. This method seems to work really well.
Any questions or comments please let me know.
Steve

 

[Chuck Gedraitis Knives]

Steve,
The purpose of the detent is 2 fold. One is to keep the blade closed and the other is to keep the lock from rubbing on the blade as it opens and closes.

To keep this from happening in the future you need to make the lock longer, thus making the tang of your blade shorter.

Jason Williams used to do something similar. He put a detent on both sides, one was on the lock and the other was on a small spring that he cut out of the liner. This basically had a detent on both sides keeping the blade centered with equal spring pressure on both sides.