A little backstory first... 
(Skip to the fourth paragraph if you're in a hurry.)
Because of some ignorant mistakes, I ended up being forced to replace the ball detent in my Strider SnG. Originally, it was a hardened steel bearing that I happened to ruin the heat-treat of. So I decided to replace the little 2mm steel bearing with a "better" silicon nitride ceramic bearing. After ordering the wrong size because I guessed at the size, I finally got the proper bearing and pressed it into the lockbar.
The point of that story is that I'm particularly referring to ceramic ball detents and I'm unsure if this method works with hardened steel ball bearings.
After searching through many threads about gritty, noisy detents I found no solution. Most threads said to lubricate the detent, which only worked for ~20 openings, then it would be gritty again. If you've never experienced this, you are lucky. It was baffling how grabby and suprisingly noisy the detent would get.
So, onto the solution... After angrily giving up on lubrication I left the knife dry (no lubrication) for over a month. A long, squeaky, gritty, annoying month. A few weeks ago I decided to see if it had broke in or perhaps became irreparably rough. One small dab of Finish Line Extreme Fluoro grease and it has been perfectly smooth for weeks. One application and it has been smooth for weeks. Awesome.
I doubt the type of lubricant matters. I'm guessing that the ceramic needed to wear into the hardened steel blade without lubrication. I tried keeping the detent well-lubricated for months but it needed constant lubrication otherwise it would get rough again. I feared that the unlubricated detent ball would gall the blade steel and make it even rougher but everything seems to have worked out. Yay.
I hope this helps someone. These small details can be extremely annoying, especially in an expensive, high-end knife.
Perhaps some roaming tribologist can add something intelligent to this thread.
(Skip to the fourth paragraph if you're in a hurry.)Because of some ignorant mistakes, I ended up being forced to replace the ball detent in my Strider SnG. Originally, it was a hardened steel bearing that I happened to ruin the heat-treat of. So I decided to replace the little 2mm steel bearing with a "better" silicon nitride ceramic bearing. After ordering the wrong size because I guessed at the size, I finally got the proper bearing and pressed it into the lockbar.
The point of that story is that I'm particularly referring to ceramic ball detents and I'm unsure if this method works with hardened steel ball bearings.
After searching through many threads about gritty, noisy detents I found no solution. Most threads said to lubricate the detent, which only worked for ~20 openings, then it would be gritty again. If you've never experienced this, you are lucky. It was baffling how grabby and suprisingly noisy the detent would get.
So, onto the solution... After angrily giving up on lubrication I left the knife dry (no lubrication) for over a month. A long, squeaky, gritty, annoying month. A few weeks ago I decided to see if it had broke in or perhaps became irreparably rough.
One small dab of Finish Line Extreme Fluoro grease and it has been perfectly smooth for weeks. One application and it has been smooth for weeks. Awesome. I doubt the type of lubricant matters. I'm guessing that the ceramic needed to wear into the hardened steel blade without lubrication. I tried keeping the detent well-lubricated for months but it needed constant lubrication otherwise it would get rough again. I feared that the unlubricated detent ball would gall the blade steel and make it even rougher but everything seems to have worked out. Yay.
I hope this helps someone. These small details can be extremely annoying, especially in an expensive, high-end knife.
Perhaps some roaming tribologist can add something intelligent to this thread.
