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The BladeForums.com 2024 Traditional Knife is ready to order! See this thread for details: https://www.bladeforums.com/threads/bladeforums-2024-traditional-knife.2003187/
Price is$300$250 ea (shipped within CONUS). If you live outside the US, I will contact you after your order for extra shipping charges.
Order here: https://www.bladeforums.com/help/2024-traditional/ - Order as many as you like, we have plenty.
Lava blue G-10
- Thread starter mcvasnut
- Start date
- Joined
- Mar 13, 2005
- Messages
- 2,026
More specific please? Gritty or excessive friction in opening? Angle of thumb opening motion is awkward or poorly designed (not in my experience with the SS version)? Cannot get a good grip? I use the clip to help mu fingers to support the thumb motion...
I would agree with Spyder328, if there is zero blade play and there is a lot of resistance, try loosening the pivot a bit, but not too much. If it does not improve and you loosen it to the point where it starts developing blade play from that, than I suppose your problem would likely lie somewhere else.
Mine was tight and "gritty" feeling. I opened it up to find the washers were beat up and not smooth, yes brand new by the way. I flattened and smoothed the washers, greased and overtightened the pivot, worked it in and loosened the pivot and now she's perfect! I looked into it and apparently the japan Spydies just aren't as good in general : ( I do love the knife now however.
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2009
- Messages
- 44,314
Take it with a big grain of salt. Without a significantly large sample size to accurately compare against, it makes no sense. The makers in Seki City do very good work, and yes once in a while a lemon or two slips through the cracks same with any other product you buy.
I've got a Manix2, from Golden, and a Techno from Taichung, both are flawless so I'm disappointed with the Lava. It's great now and I love the knife but for the price vs. size of knife and materials involved I feel the finished product should have been spot on. This seems to be pretty common with the Lavas and a few others out of Seki. I checked on forums, youtube, and spoke to a few people and it seems the general opinion of the japanese Spydercos is they are a step down from the others. I think Seki needs to improve their QC. I really like the brand and surely will purchase another, however I will think twice before getting another from Japan.
- Joined
- Nov 9, 2009
- Messages
- 44,314
All I can say is that it is hard to know what to believe these days. Some YouTube guys have reached infamy by bashing makers, steels, etc. I have a lot of knives from Seki City and while they are obviously not all flawless, I have come to expect a certain amount of wiggle room in my tolerance for what some consider straight up defects. In the end, they are mass produced pieces and if the QC standards increased a substantial amount, the price would reflect that even more.
As far as cost for one knife versus another from the same manufacturer that is an entirely different matter. You have to understand there are a lot of variables at work that we do not know about at all. It's not about size of the knife, area, or volume of materials alone. One designer might command a higher price for his design than another, or the cost might reflect higher or lower depending on the production schedule in the factory itself, or there might be added tooling and machining that needs to be done to realize the project. I don't pretend to know the ins and outs of what it takes to price them, rather I try and learn from what manufacturers share with us about what their challenges are and sometimes they share the cost of production details, others not so much.
Highly unlikely. The Lava is not one of the most "High Demand, fly off the shelves as soon as they are in stock pieces". Those are the ones that get copied more, because there is a higher chance they will go undetected since so many are made.
I'm quite certain it's real. I understand the factors that command the price, that's why I was willing to pay it. I just think for the money, it should have been right. The washers were buggered. Maybe it was put together at the end of the shift on a friday and they hit the floor by accident and the guy was in a rush to get out of there so he threw them in anyway, I don't know. What I do know is from what I've been able to find out, it's pretty common from Seki to have sub spydie standard knives, on certain models, Lava being one of them. As I've said, since I corrected the issue, the knife is fantastic. The rest of the knife is finished very well. My purpose in posting about it was mainly to explain how I fixed mine. I personally will avoid Seki Spydercos until such a time as I've heard enough positive feedback about them to give them another shot. In the meantime my Golden and Taichung models will encourage me to buy from them as they came flawless as I stated.
I've had a few US made Spydercos that had issues, along with a few from Japan. All got fixed the same, in 30 days, by Spyderco.
One of them controls how hard the frame squeezes the lock. If you tighten it too much it will bind the knife. If any of this is too much, send it to Spyderco and they'll make it perfect.
The Lava is a great design made at a great factory.
One of them controls how hard the frame squeezes the lock. If you tighten it too much it will bind the knife. If any of this is too much, send it to Spyderco and they'll make it perfect.
The Lava is a great design made at a great factory.
