I always liked to have some response to my postings, but this is a little too much honour for a simple Dutchman like myself.
For the record, i will tell you my experience with the Strider SNG once more, and as good as i can recollect.
Here it goes,
I have been collecting and using knives for as long as i can remember.
My hobby even landed me a job in an internetstore selling knives and writing about them.
I own around 35 Spyderco's, some Cold Steel, Buck,Benchmade, and even a small Sebbie and an Umfaan.
I had never owned any Strider knife however, but once i got to hold the model SMF from a friend for a few minutes, and together with some pictures on the net and several postings on this and other forums my interest sparked for it's smaller brother, the SNG.
I did a search on sellers and after reading only good comments about them, decided on True North Knives.
Now i did not mention the name before as i consider the problems with my SNG to be hick-ups from the Strider factory, so not in any way related to True North Knives.
I have found Neil to be a great guy to deal with and i am planning on buying more knives from him in the future.
Anyway, i ordered the SNG on a friday, and it was delivered at my work in Holland the next monday, talk about a speedy delivery.
At first glance, everything seemed alright, even the later to become infamous stop-pin in the blade behind the opening hole did a good job opening the blade, and it did not feel loose at that time.
However, i saw that it was not set under a clean 90 degree angle in the blade, but instead a little off, resulting in it to only touch the G10 part of the SNG when open, not the titanium side.
When the blade was in the open position, the lockbar travelled to about halfway of the blade-tang, but it did not touch, there remained a minute amount of space between the lockbar and the tang, you could see some light between them, and as a result the blade could rock back and forth a little.
The first thought that came up to me was; i can fix that, and so i did.
By disassembling the knife very carefully, bending the lockbar a bit further with hand pressure alone, and then assembling the knife again.
Maybe i should have contacted Strider or True North Knives, but that thought did not cross my mind.
Now i don't claim in any way to have the same capabilities as fellow forumist STR, but when there is something not working properly around the house, i try to fix it, sometimes with succes, sometimes with a little less succes.
I like to think my treatment of the SNG was a succes, as i succeeded in eliminating the bladerocking.
Furthermore, i didn't like the thought of sending the knife back overseas, that played a part as well.
Now, in this process i never touched the stop-pin in the blade behind the opening hole, nor did i exert any force on it.
So after assembly everything seemed in good working order.
I then proceeded in reprofiling the edge by hand, as it was much too obtuse for me.
For this, i used a small Smith's Abrasives contraption where a small diamond coated stone is guided with a metal rod under a certain angle.
This worked out fine too, as in the end the edge angle was about 25 or 30 degrees, and i convexed this with Sic paper on rubber.
It was only some days later while i was reading the forums and in the meanwhile opening and closing the SNG that suddenly the stop-pin slid out of the blade.
My first reaction was to laugh about it , as i could not believe it.
I had done no more to the knife than opening mail, i did not cut anything else.
For me, this incident had to be made public on Blade Forum, not to bash, but to inform, and to learn if there were others with similar problems.
This i did, and boy did i get a response.
In the meantime, i got convinced i could fix this pin problem too.
The pin had no thread on it, but instead some bite marks which seemed to be made with a pair of pliers, just as you would clip off some metal wire, but stopped because it was too hard to cut.
I still had some Loctite 648, i applied it to the stop-pin and the hole in the blade as well, inserted the pin and let it cure overnight.
After a few days, i must say that it still feels rocksolid, and it also seems that the pin has seated itself a little better, meaning that in the blade open position the pin now touches both the G10 and the titanium, be it only just.
The lockbar engages about 80 to 85 percent of the blade tang, but it doesn't bother me, and there is zero bladeplay in all directions.
Ofcourse we wil see how everything holds up in real use, but for now, i am satisfied.
Any questions ?
