Looking for folding pocket knives brand that don't use ball bearings for blade swinging

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QSP and Kizer have a lot of back flippers using washers. I have only the thumb stubs (personal preference) models from them, one each brand, because they are cheap, but they are super smooth to open, too smooth to open even.

SOG, Boker Plus line, Black Fox line and some other also has some models at similar price.

Also, how is 7Cr17Mov cheap while 8Cr13Mov isn't? One is the composition name of 440B and the other is the composition of AUS-8.
 
Deino said:
QSP and Kizer have a lot of back flippers using washers. I have only the thumb stubs (personal preference) models from them, one each brand, because they are cheap, but they are super smooth to open, too smooth to open even.

SOG, Boker Plus line, Black Fox line and some other also has some models at similar price.

Also, how is 7Cr17Mov cheap while 8Cr13Mov isn't? One is the composition name of 440B and the other is the composition of AUS-8.
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I read 8Cr13MoV is better steel than 7Cr17MoV which is used in S&W knife that costs only $13!!!
https://bladefun.com/8cr13mov-vs-8cr14mov-vs-8cr15mov-vs-7cr17mov-what-are-the-differences/

I'll check QSP, I searched a lot of Kizer and SOG. I looked at Boker a little also.
 
alan0354 said:
I read 8Cr13MoV is better steel than 7Cr17MoV which is used in S&W knife that costs only $13!!!
https://bladefun.com/8cr13mov-vs-8cr14mov-vs-8cr15mov-vs-7cr17mov-what-are-the-differences/

I'll check QSP, I searched a lot of Kizer and SOG. I looked at Boker a little also.
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Well, neither steel is expensive, but the correct heat treatment is. Then the service and guarantee are factors that add up to the price.

You can get cheap cheap flipper from Sanrenmu (SRM), Ganzo Firebird, Chinese Schrade, cheap Camillus, Frost Cutlery, Boker Magnum line and other odd brands for the letters '8Cr13Mov' to be engraved on the blade, but the quality is not remotely the same to the steel from better known manufacturers. Hence no one even recommend these brands to you. If for pure beating and having spare time to maintain the blade all day, you can go ahead with the brands above instead of my previous post.

Also, correction, 7Cr17 is more of 440A, still, good stuff. Kansept is a recommendation to add to the list.
 
Deino said:
Well, neither steel is expensive, but the correct heat treatment is. Then the service and guarantee are factors that add up to the price.

You can get cheap cheap flipper from Sanrenmu (SRM), Ganzo Firebird, Chinese Schrade, cheap Camillus, Frost Cutlery, Boker Magnum line and other odd brands for the letters '8Cr13Mov' to be engraved on the blade, but the quality is not remotely the same to the steel from better known manufacturers. Hence no one even recommend these brands to you. If for pure beating and having spare time to maintain the blade all day, you can go ahead with the brands above instead of my previous post.

Also, correction, 7Cr17 is more of 440A, still, good stuff. Kansept is a recommendation to add to the list.
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Thanks

The problem is most are made in China, I do not trust anything from China, so even the middle of the road brand can have blades that are not heat treated well.

BTW, I thought heat treat is a lot more tricky for larger blades, for this kind of 3" blades, don't they use automation to do it instead of like Forge in Fire that does it one by one. I would imagine for the cheaper ones that they sell in large quantity, everything is done by automation already and they should be optimized.

Yeh, for my purpose, edge retention is not a high priority, just don't break. All my knives are super sharp, none of them came even close to sharp, I had to sharpen every single one of them. I don't use them to cut anything, just carry in the pocket. I make it a point never cut anything so they stay sharp. Not like other people use it for opening envelopes, cutting boxes. I have box cutter for that.

Another thing that I deem very important, it has to have long flipper tap as shown in the picture of my 3 favorite knives I have:


I feel it is very important to prevent the knife from shoving back into my hand when thrusting. All the ones I want has to have a deep arch like in the picture. I find a lot of expensive knives don't have that, a lot of them are slim and stylish. I just want a good old ugly ones with wider blade that can hold up, everything has to be thick so it has a better chance to survive. Believe me, I look at A LOT of knives. The 3 in the picture I have are very good already. Just want to try some without ball bearings.

I will be receiving two this week, we'll see whether I can make them as easy and smooth to deploy as the ball bearing ones. They likely need work like polishing the washers to make it slick.
 
I received the S&W today.
It's better than you people give S&W credit. Only problem is I cannot tighter the pivot screw, it will make the blade bind. I just need to use a little thread lock, it flip smooth enough to deploy the blade.

Mechanically, it is not too bad, better than a lot of more expensive knives I bought/return. At least for the money!!!

It is SHARP!!! It is sharp in my definition. I don't even have to sharpen it. 10+ knives I bought including Kizer, two Off-Grid, two Kubey, Forsail, Carimee, two Sencut, three Laurisilva, three Kershaw. They ALL were NOT sharp(to put it politely), I had to sharpen every single one of them. Some of them are like $70. I had to work on most of them to make them work good. I am not saying this S&W knife is good, but it is NOT particularly bad.

I really think people put too much emphasis on the name and the price, like designer handbags. If you want the name, you have to pay more. But does paying more get you a better knife in terms of studyness, reliability? You really have to judge everyone individually. Cold Steel seems to have the goods in term of toughness that worth the money according to the testing. But I don't like the lack of the flipper tap and they are very huge to get the toughness.

So far, if my life depends on it, I trust this Laurisilva:
The cheapest of the 3 knives I said are robust with ball bearings. Thick blade, thick side plate in the handle. D2 steel blade(0.14" thick). Only $25. BUT it is funny that I open 4 of the same model, the thickness of the part of the blade at the pivot area is DIFFERENT. I have one at 0.06", two at 0.05" and one at 0.04". I return the 0.04" as it's too thin. 0.05" is the low limit I would accept. That's one thing I would not all out recommending this one. Well, at least I got mine.

I can't wait for the Steel Will Lanner to arrive. That's a middle of the road knife at $60. I hope it's as smooth as the S&W that is without ball bearings.
 
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I received the Steel Will Lanner today. Same thing, the pivot screw has to be loosen for the blade to swing freely and can do flipping. The blade is NO WHERE as sharp as the S&W, just typical sharpness of the 10+ knives I bought so far. The difference is this one is $60 and the S&W is $24. Honestly, I don't like neither one enough to keep.

I'll take my other CHEAP Laurisilva any time of the day over these two. Might be the end of the road for me, the only one left is the Cold Steel Crawford Model 1. I just need to confirm it's legal in california to have a locking slide switch on the side on top of frame lock.
 
I have to take it back about the S&W. It started out as I cannot tighten the pivot screw or else the blade would be stuck. Usually it's easy to fix, a lot of knives I bought were like that and I just fixed all of them. BUT upon opening it, something is REALLY WRONG. Below is the drawing to explain what is wrong and it cannot be fixed.



I first notice the blade is not tight in lateral direction(ORANGE arrows on the left). Also the pivot screw has to be loosen for the blade to swing freely. I looked into why and I discover a very disturbing problem. Attached is a drawing to describe the problem. The left drawing is the problem of the knife. The right drawing is how normal knives should be and how all the other knives I have are like. Basically the blade(GREEN) is sandwiched between two metal plate(dark blue) that forms the frame. The blade pivot on the pivot screw(RED).

In normal knives drawing on the right, the pivot main screw in RED is long enough that it goes through the TOP FRAME. So the pivot main screw is FIXED by both the top and bottom frame. The blade is not allowed to move up and down.

In the drawing on the left, the RED screw is TOO SHORT and not reaching the hole on the TOP FRAME. This create a slack that the RED screw can move as show in the RED arrows. This will let the blade moves as shown in the ORANGE arrows.

I don't know they put the wrong screw or it's a design problem. This knife definitely is defective. I am returning it.

I returned the Steel Will Lanner also. One side of the handle is just non metal material, only one side has steel frame lining. I want steel frame lining on both sides and has to be at least 0.06" thick!!!

I bought the really heavy duty Steel Will Warbot,https://steelwillknives.com/our-knives/urban-series/warbot-f10-33s.html

Hopefully it's heavy duty enough, it has 0.16" thick blade, two sides steel frame looks to be at least 0.06" thick. No ball bearings. Just hope this is a good one.
 
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Danke42 said:
If you have a $4 life get a $4 knife
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I am an engineer, I don't go for the price, I look at all the details, looking for logical weak points. Like I said, after all the knives I bought so far, my go to knife is still the Laurisilva cheap knife even though I have a lot more expensive ones. You don't go by price.

I am just hoping the Steel Will Warbot is better than the Laurisilva I have.
 
I haven't read through the whole thread (sorry) but maybe look at the boker urban trapper. Vg-10 and damn smooth.
 
If you want the thick blade and frame construction, you might as well go with MTech, Ultra X or other bottom of the barrel or hardware brands, like Milwaukee or Dewalt .

Non metal material is more than enough strong for the task that most pocket knives get to be used for. If you want a durable pocket knife to the point that no metal liner is an issue to you, then you should avoid liner lock in the 1st place and look for something like compression lock or button lock flipper.
 
Deino said:
If you want the thick blade and frame construction, you might as well go with MTech, Ultra X or other bottom of the barrel or hardware brands, like Milwaukee or Dewalt .

Non metal material is more than enough strong for the task that most pocket knives get to be used for. If you want a durable pocket knife to the point that no metal liner is an issue to you, then you should avoid liner lock in the 1st place and look for something like compression lock or button lock flipper.
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So you notice the cheaper ones might be sturdier than the more expensive ones?!!! So people pay more for the name, the designers, that it's different even though they are inferior in terms of survival? Now, I really learn something.

I don't even have to go that cheap, I still want D2 steel blades or equal quality. Still, you can get good ones in $30 to $40 range.



Seriously, as an Engineer, there is an easy way to make it cheap and STURDY, RUGGED and DEPENDABLE. The problem is so so easy to fix. I have knives that has ball bearing, not too heavy but very strong all around just by design. You should see the stupidity of the design on some of the more expensive ones. It's IGNORANT to equate price and quality together.
 
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If you are an engineer, you might have heard the "Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands."

It does not translate in a literal sense in this case. Though: Overbuild is easy. However. to get things lighter, yet performance, cut longer while still durable at their job. In order to do so, despite using less raw materials, you need higher quality machines and workers. It all cost money to do, even in mass production. The cheaper price that you get is from the cheaper workers somewhere the world, labours in developed countries are more expensive, so of course there is the price/quality difference.

You are an engineer, but do you get a look at the cost of what you do and why, or you just do what they tell you to do? You, as an engineer, I don't know from where, but I can tell you that they can outsource your job to someone else, somewhere else, if they can, simply because you cost for them compare to the guy oversea. They would love to do it if not for all of the regulation they have in the first world countries and unions to stop that from happening to you.

I'm merely a tradesman, I have to use my tools to work, I use my knives to cut. I use pocket knives to cut food, shave wood, or poking things that I don't want to use my hand. I'm someone who use knives in that 40-50$ range, in Canadian $. I'm don't see knives as jewellery.

Again, I don't know what you want to use knives for that you ask for high toughness/durability.
 
This is NOT what I am talking, not about cost, it's stupidity or design without using any common sense. Here are the two most disappointing examples. Both are supposed to be at least out door, or survival type of knives, not the dressy slim pocket knives that thinness, light weight, small foot print that are the most important.

1) Off-Grid Enforcer:https://www.offgridknives.com/EnforcerXL/
This looks like a heavy duty knife, but the name and by the looks. It's heavy enough, thick enough with thick blade and thick handle. Everything looks robust on the outside. It's Tanto tip so the tip is strong. BUT, if you look at inside. At the blade pivot point, the blade part is thick, but look at the two side plates that form the handle:
[url=https://postimg.cc/QKst1qmk][/URL]
That part is milled paper thin on both side plates. This definitely a very weak point of the knife. It is so easy to mill part of it on the blade as the blade is very thick without changing the dimension of the knife at all and you can get that part very robust. Cost is absolute minimal.

The kicker is I bought the Off Grid Baby Rhino, it is smaller, thinner and lighter in all dimensions. It was well designed, they milled just on the blade on both sides, they managed to give the thickness of 0.07" which is very robust.
[url=https://postimg.cc/cvQdM3KF][/URL]
They know how to design, both are NOT cheap knives, why they screwed up that bad on the Enforcer and made the Baby Rhino that good?


2) Sencut Acumen:https://www.sencut.com/products/sen...-handle-2-98-black-stonewashed-9cr18mov-sa06c
Look at the looks and the dimensions, it's NOT a slim small knife, it's obvious is meant for outdoor or survival purpose, not a dress up pocket knife. The dimension is quite thick with big handle. The side plate is 0.06" thick, same as a few other heavy duty knives. BUT, if you look carefully the pivot hole on the blade. It's very thin. ONLY 0.03" thick.
[url=https://postimg.cc/8jbS7SxY][/URL]

There is no reason for that. I have smaller knives that has thinner handles and are thicker (double that to 0.06") at that area. People manage to do it without extra expense and extra effort or sacrifice the dimensions and weight. It's so easy to fix and no extra cost. These are example of STUPID engineering, that is NOT for cost cutting or other limiting factor.

Now, I am not saying this area is the most critical part of the knife, the tip of the blade is obviously most critical. But you can easily see how tough is the tip of the blade by looking, not DECEIVING like my examples. Both have wide blade tips that make it very strong, but the bottle neck is the pivot point.


THIS is NOT about what you said to design barely to meet the spec for cost or time cutting. This is pure stupidity. You see too many products fail due to lousy engineering, you'd be surprised how many so called engineer don't know how to design. If you work in the industry with engineers, you'd be amazed how lack of common sense some people are even graduated from a good college. When I was still working as the manager of engineering, I don't even put a lot of weight on their education or pass experience. I gave candidate test questions. It's not that hard you need text books and all. Just very common sense questions. You'd be amazed how few can pass the exam. They don't pass the exam, I don't even want to talk to them, just a few polite words and sent them away!!!!
 
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I put this in separate post. I am NOT say the pivot point is the MOST critical part. The tip of the blade is much more important. BUT that is easy to see as you can choose a Tanto blade of a wider blade. This problem is HIDDEN. You cannot look at the outside, or even trust one company that already have one good product. Look at the Off-Grid knives!!!

Also, don't say I am asking for impossible. I ALREADY found 3 knives that I consider very tough. I just want to find others also. See post #24, those are TOUGH knives and they are NOT that expensive.

There are reason why Cold Steel, Steel Will produce expensive knives using BRONZE bearings, not ball bearings to keep that part strong. DO NOT say I am over thinking about this. Obviously there are companies sacrifice easy flip open with more robust pivot point.
 
Ha you say you don’t want an expensive knife now, but keep hanging around here, and I can see your future posts already… “which is stronger the XM-24 or the Medford On Belay?”
 
tony281sc2 said:
Ha you say you don’t want an expensive knife now, but keep hanging around here, and I can see your future posts already… “which is stronger the XM-24 or the Medford On Belay?”
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I actually like the XM-24, super long flipper tab on the blade to protect the hand, tanto, thick blade...........Everything looks good.....................EXCEPT.............$600!!!!

I am born cheap!!! My middle name is CHEAP!!! I limit the cost to $100 or under.

Two ways I can go, I can concentrate on Bronze washer or take a chance to buy one with ball bearings, then return if not to my liking. There are good ones out there, I already found 3 of them shown in post #24. One I might do that is Off-Grid Rhino V2:https://www.offgridknives.com/RhinoV2

Hopefully it's design is like the Baby Rhino instead of the Enforcer. You should see that little Baby Rhino, the metal is the thickest of ALL the knives I have. If the big Rhino is like that, I'd be super happy.
 
These Twosun knives have bearings, but none of them were more than $50 at time of purchase-
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