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- May 1, 2004
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How I cut open my favorite knife with a Roto-Zip.
A small backstory; I purchased the knife from Newgraham.com in late August 2004. It was my first name-brand "tactical" knife and I gave it a fairly excellent review here. Flying in the face of my usual convention I purchased this knife before I actually needed it; being that it was sometime later when I found my other folders were rusting in the environment I worked in and this funny looking knife I had purchased earlier was virtually impervious to such issues. All told I carried this knife for a total of 2 year and 4 months, using it a bare minimum of 15 times a day; that comes to a lowball average of 12,000+ open and close cycles over the 3 years I owned this knife. As mentioned previously the knife served as my work knife as well as my EDC. The duties performed by it were endless; including small amounts of prying and chopping as well as the more common knife tasks that actually involve cutting something. At the time of this report the knife was still fully-functional, wear included a much looser pivot, allowing inertia openings from any conceivable grip, minor damage to the FRN around the pocket clip and some rusting around the rivet support washer. Although the lock on the knife functioned fine it would fail a spine whack test and it had become possible to break the lock with just hand pressure, this being the first instance of such behavior I have experienced firsthand. No bladeplay was noted before or after the damage to the lock.
However, the wear on the lock was not directly linked to normal use but to abuse subject to the knife 6 months ago. At that time the knife was used to strike a heavy glass bottle with the spine in a moderate half-overhead swing. Upon striking the bottle the lock failed and caused the knife to partially close, no injury occured. It was noted immediately afterward that there was a small raised area on the lock-grove of the blade, caused by the impact and subsequent lock failure. Shortly after observing this several spine whack tests were performed; varying in force and impact location on the blade. The lock failed on all but the lightest impacts nearest the pivot. The knife was retired from use and hung on a lanyard in my shower where it sat until last week when I reconnected with it and started carrying it as my EDC again. The knife performed fine during the week but the lock failed during normal use a few days ago. During a light vertical stab into a paper cap on a bottle of soap the lock broke and the knife partially folded, again no injury occured but I was convinced the knife finally needed to be retired for good.
Not the lack of force needed to hand close the blade, I didn't even feel the need to dull the edge before doing it.
Now, as any fan of Spyderco knows, posting a detailed problem report in their forums usually entices a response from Mr. Glesser to send the knife in to get checked out. Often there is no report made by the company, which is normal behavior on their part and excellent service to the user anyway. The problem is the by and large most of the users are not privy to the why and how of lock failures. After thinking about it for a short time I decided to deconstruct my knife in the name of furthering the knowledge of the user base. I paid a around 50$ for this knife 3 years ago and I feel I have received my money's worth and have no expectation of making or receiving suggestions to return this knife.
After a small but delicious lunch of Chipotle I pulled out my rotary tools and went to work. First I attempted to grind the heads of the rivets off with a Dremel tool, this approach worked excellently. Rivets removed I begun to cut around the handle, the cutting disk could not spin fast enough to effectively finish this task so I brought out a much larger tool, the mighty Roto-Zip. Making short work of the FRN and creating quite a bit of debris I popped the handle off and begun the investigation into what made the lock fail.
Pictures first, theories to follow.
Note the fouling where the lock and the tang meet, this was a combination of oil, lint and small pieces of metal. It's hard to capture just how minute the damage to the lock is, it's obvious to eye but not to the camera.
The small red circles note the location of either rolled metal from stress or wear marks that do not seem to come from regular use as studied after disassembly.
The knife before disassembly, note the reflecting light from the tang this is rolled metal that can be felt with finger and is very obvious to the eye.
Same as above.
How I cut open my favorite knife with a Roto-Zip.
A small backstory; I purchased the knife from Newgraham.com in late August 2004. It was my first name-brand "tactical" knife and I gave it a fairly excellent review here. Flying in the face of my usual convention I purchased this knife before I actually needed it; being that it was sometime later when I found my other folders were rusting in the environment I worked in and this funny looking knife I had purchased earlier was virtually impervious to such issues. All told I carried this knife for a total of 2 year and 4 months, using it a bare minimum of 15 times a day; that comes to a lowball average of 12,000+ open and close cycles over the 3 years I owned this knife. As mentioned previously the knife served as my work knife as well as my EDC. The duties performed by it were endless; including small amounts of prying and chopping as well as the more common knife tasks that actually involve cutting something. At the time of this report the knife was still fully-functional, wear included a much looser pivot, allowing inertia openings from any conceivable grip, minor damage to the FRN around the pocket clip and some rusting around the rivet support washer. Although the lock on the knife functioned fine it would fail a spine whack test and it had become possible to break the lock with just hand pressure, this being the first instance of such behavior I have experienced firsthand. No bladeplay was noted before or after the damage to the lock.
However, the wear on the lock was not directly linked to normal use but to abuse subject to the knife 6 months ago. At that time the knife was used to strike a heavy glass bottle with the spine in a moderate half-overhead swing. Upon striking the bottle the lock failed and caused the knife to partially close, no injury occured. It was noted immediately afterward that there was a small raised area on the lock-grove of the blade, caused by the impact and subsequent lock failure. Shortly after observing this several spine whack tests were performed; varying in force and impact location on the blade. The lock failed on all but the lightest impacts nearest the pivot. The knife was retired from use and hung on a lanyard in my shower where it sat until last week when I reconnected with it and started carrying it as my EDC again. The knife performed fine during the week but the lock failed during normal use a few days ago. During a light vertical stab into a paper cap on a bottle of soap the lock broke and the knife partially folded, again no injury occured but I was convinced the knife finally needed to be retired for good.
Not the lack of force needed to hand close the blade, I didn't even feel the need to dull the edge before doing it.
Now, as any fan of Spyderco knows, posting a detailed problem report in their forums usually entices a response from Mr. Glesser to send the knife in to get checked out. Often there is no report made by the company, which is normal behavior on their part and excellent service to the user anyway. The problem is the by and large most of the users are not privy to the why and how of lock failures. After thinking about it for a short time I decided to deconstruct my knife in the name of furthering the knowledge of the user base. I paid a around 50$ for this knife 3 years ago and I feel I have received my money's worth and have no expectation of making or receiving suggestions to return this knife.
After a small but delicious lunch of Chipotle I pulled out my rotary tools and went to work. First I attempted to grind the heads of the rivets off with a Dremel tool, this approach worked excellently. Rivets removed I begun to cut around the handle, the cutting disk could not spin fast enough to effectively finish this task so I brought out a much larger tool, the mighty Roto-Zip. Making short work of the FRN and creating quite a bit of debris I popped the handle off and begun the investigation into what made the lock fail.
Pictures first, theories to follow.
Note the fouling where the lock and the tang meet, this was a combination of oil, lint and small pieces of metal. It's hard to capture just how minute the damage to the lock is, it's obvious to eye but not to the camera.
The small red circles note the location of either rolled metal from stress or wear marks that do not seem to come from regular use as studied after disassembly.
The knife before disassembly, note the reflecting light from the tang this is rolled metal that can be felt with finger and is very obvious to the eye.
Same as above.
