Liner Lock with Vertical Blade Play?

knife2Agunfight · Dec 5, 2012

I Just recently bought a Benchmade 913D2 brand new, and when I took the knife out of it's box I realized that it has quite a bit of vertical blade play that actually affects it's cutting ability with plastics and other delicate things. The liner doesn't really come in contact with the tang of the blade. I want to send this back to Benchmade, but they can't replace any parts since they no longer make this knife and therefore don't have the parts for it anymore. Is there any way to adjust a liner lock so there is no vertical blade play?

I was kind of shocked in the first place to find this knife online still, and it's a first production run 0800/1000. Now I need to get the 912.

jeepin · Dec 5, 2012

One way would be to take off the scale where the liner lock is, and bend the lock slightly.

flatblackcapo · Dec 5, 2012

Try pushing the liner lock father in and see if that takes the play out.If the lock is not bottomed out then do what jeepin suggested just remember a little goes a long way when bending the lock bar.Good luck.

symphonyincminor · Dec 5, 2012

Before you go bending the lockbar, check that your pivot screw is adjusted correctly. Sloppy lockup comes from slightly loose pivot screws a lot of the time.

symphonyincminor · Dec 5, 2012

And unless you know what you're doing - don't mess around with it. Just send it back to Benchmade and they'll probably just put a different stop pin in.

knife2Agunfight · Dec 5, 2012

If I tighten the pivot all the way the blade play stops, but now the knife won't even close. Is there a way I can bend the lock bar without taking the knife apart and voiding the warranty?

flatblackcapo · Dec 6, 2012

symphonyincminor is right.If you send it back to benchmade they can make those adjustments for you.If you do want to fix it yourself I am afraid that there is no way (that I know of ) to adjust the lock bar with out taking the knife apart and thus voiding the warranty.Pivot adjustments are made in very small increments some times it wont even feel like you turned the pivot but it will change the tention.

crktm1612m · Dec 6, 2012

A photo of the lockup would really help.

Don't know whether BM's warranty cares if you disassemble or not, so look into that.

The pivot only needs to be tight enough to eliminate side-to-side blade play.

If you're saying the lockup is so early that is doesn't engage: flick the thing open really hard a few times to "set" the lock. That'll very slightly break in the contact points.

If you got that squared away and still have vertical bladeplay:

1. The lockface isn't contacting the tang when the spine hits the stop pin- you need to pull it apart and bend the lockbar over farther. Go slow, just a little bit should do it.
2. The lockface is contacting the tang, but is slipping. Clean off both surfaces with some solvent and do the bending trick- will put more spring into it.

If when you bend the lockbar over, it gets very far to towards the opposite scale and might fall off the other side of the tang: you need to either get a larger stop pin or peen the lockface to bring the lockup back towards the middle of the tang. That's about the time to send it in if you still have a warranty.
Bending the lockbar over slightly will not hurt anything, but make sure you know how the warranty works.

knife2Agunfight · Dec 6, 2012

crktm1612m said:
A photo of the lockup would really help.

Don't know whether BM's warranty cares if you disassemble or not, so look into that.

The pivot only needs to be tight enough to eliminate side-to-side blade play.

If you're saying the lockup is so early that is doesn't engage: flick the thing open really hard a few times to "set" the lock. That'll very slightly break in the contact points.

If you got that squared away and still have vertical bladeplay:

1. The lockface isn't contacting the tang when the spine hits the stop pin- you need to pull it apart and bend the lockbar over farther. Go slow, just a little bit should do it.
2. The lockface is contacting the tang, but is slipping. Clean off both surfaces with some solvent and do the bending trick- will put more spring into it.

If when you bend the lockbar over, it gets very far to towards the opposite scale and might fall off the other side of the tang: you need to either get a larger stop pin or peen the lockface to bring the lockup back towards the middle of the tang. That's about the time to send it in if you still have a warranty.
Bending the lockbar over slightly will not hurt anything, but make sure you know how the warranty works.

I can tighten the pivot, and that gets rid of the side-to-side blade play. The lockup isn't early, it just doesn't touch the tang of the blade. The lock bar needs to go more to the right side of the blade in order to stop the wiggle. I'm thinking that maybe flipping it open and closed a few hundred times might just move the bar over a little bit, but it is a titanium liner lock, so I doubt that will happen.

Here's a pic of the lockup. You can't really see the gap between the tang and the liner lock, but you can feel it when you wiggle the blade up and down. It looks like a perfect lock up, but it wiggles ever so slightly.