Recommendation? New old Ti millie lockup question

S

Stolenives

Joined
Jul 12, 2017
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Just got lucky and got a great deal on one of the old school full-Ti military's.

When I pulled it out of the box, it was in great shape considering, but the action was horrible; which I was actually happy to see because I own 3 other pre-CQI military's and enjoy fine tuning them.

This specific example is the one where it doesn't have a steel lockbar insert.

-There were scratches on the scales and the lock side was warped toward the pivot
-There was lateral play in the blade when locked open and when the blade was being opened
-Washers were gunky with the factory grease and prohibited free movement of the blade so it was a two hand open and close action
- The lock face was smashed in about 2 mm by the blade tang either through regular use or something silly like batoning

After I disassembled it without issue, I went through the components and gave them a little TLC. When I reassembled the model it came together great. I was able to get the scratches out and flattened the scale back to true square, fixed the lateral play, cleaned up the washers and polished them using a ceramic ultra fine benchstone.

The knife has a great action and locks up solid now; needs wearing back in but as a result the lock up went from a lose 55-60% to a 85% proper lock up.

I am not going to fool around with it unless the lock bar travels over to 99% and starts developing up and down play BUT I was doing some research to learn about what remedies there are to extend the functional life of a direct Ti-on-steel-tang engagement.

I saw one video where you take a chisel or flat-head screwdriver and drive the head into just behind the lock face on the inside of the knife just north of the detent ball---yeah; no thank you. (unless someone can teach me more on this method)

The other provision is to widen the stop pin so you change the angle at which the blade hits the pin earlier so the lock engages at an earlier angle.
As I understand it, there are knives out there that have stepped pins that do this exact thing. ---Has anyone done this in an elegant way?
I don't want to wrap the stop pin in tape or dental floss which can come off or compress after a couple times using the knife as intended.

After seeing these, I thought "Maybe I can install a steel lockbar insert".
But that seems like something I could easily make a mistake doing and not to mention you have to consider tolerances and this is the first time doing something like this which means getting it right the first time isn't going to happen.

Any thoughts, suggestions, or previous experiences?
 
Try NOT spine-whacking it for a few years, or beating it with a stick, or any of the other stupid things people like to do to their knives these days. If you clamp the lockbar securely in a vise and use a centerpunch to displace a little metal toward the engagement area you can compensate for wear, at least temporarily. The steel insert would require some very precise machine work. Spyderco might do that for you, but I would not suggest trying it yourself unless you are a professional machinist experienced with titanium, in which case you probably wouldn't have started this thread. The simplest long term fix would be to make a new oversize stop pin.
 
yablanowitz said:
Try NOT spine-whacking it for a few years, or beating it with a stick, or any of the other stupid things people like to do to their knives these days. If you clamp the lockbar securely in a vise and use a centerpunch to displace a little metal toward the engagement area you can compensate for wear, at least temporarily. The steel insert would require some very precise machine work. Spyderco might do that for you, but I would not suggest trying it yourself unless you are a professional machinist experienced with titanium, in which case you probably wouldn't have started this thread. The simplest long term fix would be to make a new oversize stop pin.
Click to expand...


I don't know where people learn to treat their tools like that but maybe we should make a folding hatchet with a pocket clip and a lanyard hole and sell them to people who hate fixed blades.

I like the centerpunch idea since its more in my wheelhouse. You're right in assuming I have no business machining a lockbar but making a new oversize stop pin is something I can manage.
The knife isn't in danger of not locking up properly for a while as it sits.
The geometry of the tang is such that the ramp increases in grade as you move closer to the show side which, in my mind, should exponentially slow wearing down as you go.

Maybe I can try out a few stop pin designs or save up for a carbidizer in the meantime.
 
Unless you got the said millie for sub $100, I would not say its a good deal. Sounds to me it has lots of issues.
 
sharp_edge said:
Unless you got the said millie for sub $100, I would not say its a good deal. Sounds to me it has lots of issues.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I hear you and I thought that exact thing when I was sorting it out. At the very least it gave me something to work on. In my experience the pre-CQI models have been fussy and not as fine-tuned as, say, the sprints that are being released now so I didn't have the same expectations going into it. I was able to negotiate a deal I was happy with on my all time favorite model. No regerts
 
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