Need opinion which way to go on the blade stop pin.

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alan0354

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I bought a knife that looks to be very robust. It uses ball bearing pivot which I want to change to bronze washers. Nice thing about this knife is they do not thin out the pivot area either on the blade or the liner. So it's easier to change to bronze washer to make it tougher and also thin out the knife a little. Below is the picture of the internal of the knife.

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Notice the stop pin is not a simple dowel type. Instead it's like shown in (C) below.

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Because the stop pin is like that, changing to bronze washer will make the thickness at the pivot point like 0.03" thinner than the area at the stop pin. The blade can be wobble. I have to somehow make the stop pin narrower to make it solid.

Ideally, is to make the stop pin a little shorter shown in RED in (C) above. But it's not easy. Next is to open up the liner a little shown in (D) above. But that's not easy to get a clean SQUARE edge to give the best support on the stop pin.

What I did is shown in (E) above. I just find a drill bit that is the same diameter as the stop pin and drill down just a little. THIS WORKS. BUT you can see there is a little on the stop pin that is UNSUPPORTED as shown in RED and GREEN in (E) as the tip of the drill bit is NOT SQUARE.

So the next thing I can think of is to change to a straight dowel pin of 3mm or 1/8" diameter. This is have to drill through the liner plates. If this is the best way, what drill size should I use for 3mm and what for 1/8" diameter to get a tight but movable fit?



If you have other suggestions, I am all ears.

Thanks
 
Mr.Wizard said:
If you have or can get washers that give you the correct thickness why are you seeking a different solution?
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I want to knife to the a little thinner. The pivot is too short to start, so the thinner the knife I can avoid putting shims around the pivot.

I just want the knife thinner.
 
Why do you want to make the knife thinner?

And what makes you think washers are going to be stronger than bearings?
 
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The True North said:
Why do you want to make the knife thinner?

And what makes you think washers are going to be stronger than bearings?
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Reason is the ball bearing is not the metal cage bearing. Just cheap plastic with balls in it as shown.



Good thing about this knife is they did not ream out the pivot area of the blade or the liner to fit the bearings. but result is there's not protection for the ball bearings. they are very thin ( 0.03"), I looked around, all the metal caged bearings are over 0.05" thick. Or else, I might consider buying the ones with metal cage.

But no matter what, the pivot is stronger using bronze bearing.
 
Bearings do distribute pressure more acutely than washers, and can sometimes wear tracks. I think proper thickness washers, even if you have to stack them up, makes more sense than machining down the stop pin, standoffs and/or backspacer.

Not only that, but changing the thickness of that knife in that way could change the way the lock meets the blade tang (assuming that knife was engineered for great lockup to begin with).
 
The True North said:
I suppose that’s probably true.

I suggest that you look for a knife with a metal bearing race next time.
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But most of them make the pivot area very thin to fit the ball bearings. This is one of very few that doesn't do that. It's a cheap knife, I just want to modify to my liking. It's a good design in my book as shown in the internal picture. Only thing I can criticize is it uses a 0.2" diameter pivot instead of 0.25" like Steel Will. But a lot of supposedly strong knives use 0.2" or smaller diameter pivot ( even Cold Steel). This can potentially be a very good survival knife.
 
alan0354 said:
But most of them make the pivot area very thin to fit the ball bearings. This is one of very few that doesn't do that. It's a cheap knife, I just want to modify to my liking. It's a good design in my book as shown in the internal picture. Only thing I can criticize is it uses a 0.2" diameter pivot instead of 0.25" like Steel Will. But a lot of supposedly strong knives use 0.2" or smaller diameter pivot ( even Cold Steel). This can potentially be a very good survival knife.
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It most certainly isn’t a survival knife. It’s a cheap folding knife.

And using Steel Will as a measure of good design seems like folly.

Gotta say I don’t understand your motives here.
 
The True North said:
It most certainly isn’t a survival knife. It’s a cheap folding knife.

And using Steel Will as a measure of good design seems like folly.

Gotta say I don’t understand your motives here.
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It is strong for a 3" knife. For the weight Steel Will has very good design.
 
The True North said:
🤷‍♂️
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I know the other brand is Cold Steel, problem is they are HEAVY, and I don't like how they open. I like the flipping tap instead of the thumb tap. I bought the SR1 Lite, I kept it for a week to play with it. I just don't like it enough to keep it. I don't think I like the AD-10 either.

To each their own, I don't want to impose my idea on others. I am more interested in fixing this to my liking.:)
 
alan0354 said:
I know the other brand is Cold Steel, problem is they are HEAVY, and I don't like how they open. I like the flipping tap instead of the thumb tap. I bought the SR1 Lite, I kept it for a week to play with it. I just don't like it enough to keep it. I don't think I like the AD-10 either.

To each their own, I don't want to impose my idea on others. I am more interested in fixing this to my liking.:)
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The engineer who created those heavy duty Cold Steel locks (Andrew Demko) once said something about ease of operation being in opposition to lock strength. Hard to get both from the same knife.

Have you considered adding a “wave” device so that the knife can snap open when pulled from the pocket? They can make it so that you get great lock strength and quick opening.

Examples:
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alan0354 said:
I want to knife to the a little thinner. The pivot is too short to start, so the thinner the knife I can avoid putting shims around the pivot.

I just want the knife thinner.
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Do you think .03 of an inch is really going to make much of a difference in the thickness of the knife? You'd have to have tiny hands in order for it to really matter much.
 
Well I can confirm it's going to cost a lot less to rebuild a production knife to be thinner than to just buy a thinner knife to start.
 
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