Skyline Choil/Lock Relief Mod

[flashlife]

The Kershaw Skyline is a great knife, and gets good reviews here.
One downside, though perhaps minor, was that the linerlock was difficult for me to
release due to the scale choil nearly covering it up...as shown in the production pic below.

Skyline, as produced...

My cure for this issue was to relieve the choil somewhat, using a Dremel tool, with rubber/abrasive disks.
To prevent abrasive dust intrusion into the works of the knife, poke some bits of toilet tissue into the
front and back frame openings, and between the blade and the scales.
I then used a half-round machinist's file to 'fair' the Dremel work smoothly into the lines of the G10.
This leaves the glass fibers of the G10 exposed, but these are easily polished up using Carnauba or
Beeswax, leaving a shiny surface. The pic below shows the finished mod, and the tools used.

With this slight scale relief, the lock is now easily released with gentle thumb pressure.

Skyline, with choil relief...

 

[qqfob]

Rich J is doing something similar to my Shallot. The Skyline doesn't give me as big of a problem as the Shallot.

 

[Trigcure]

Looks like it was made that way, good job.

 

[blan]

Great Job, I haven't grown fond of the skyline for exactly that reason, the liner is so hard to get to. I might have to try this!

 

[flashlife]

Blan,
Yeah, I kept tearing up my thumbnail digging for the linerlock.
I find most Zytel, G10, FRN scaled linerlocks set too deep, so I usually 'relieve' them like this.

Just go carefully and slowly with the Dremel, and think about wearing a mask 'cause it will kick
up lots of glass-fiber dust...don't want to breathe that.
An X-acto knife works instead of the Dremel to take off bigger shavings, but the glass in the
G10 will dull it within a cut or two.

When Dremelling, open the blade partially, so that the blade holds the linerlock out of the way.
Also, rinse the knife with Zippo lighter fluid when done to get out all the abrasive particles, then re-oil.

I've done this trick on numerous synthetic scaled folders...works for me.

 

[vic2367]

great mod,,,thinking of trying it,,

 

[Peter Parker]

I just got mine today and the liner is hard to release left handed but friendly on the right side. To me my old Needs Work could have used some more room, and if I had kept it I would have done some kind of modification. Good job!

 

[Benson X]

I ramped the choil area on my Skyline last night. The close tolerance of the thumbstud was too hard to access with my fat thumbs. It's much better now - might add some jimping to the blade spine and scales next.

 

[REK Knives]

^^ great job, love the ESW!

I did the same thing, although this wasn't mine if it were it's a SWEET mod! I made it a little larger on this one.

 

[victorf]

I ramped the choil area on my Skyline last night. The close tolerance of the thumbstud was too hard to access with my fat thumbs. It's much better now - might add some jimping to the blade spine and scales next.

All good mods. This particular ^^^, for blade deployment, when properly placed, especially like ^^^ this, appearing to be rather smallish, but it acts much like a guide/load ramp on an auto when cycling/loading the successful round into a semi-auto's chamber....

Further examples on couple of my production, top two shown smallish, all without weakening handle slab structural integrity, with well engineered ramp guide for thumb access, provides mindless homing access to thumb stud, enabling choices of lightening fast deployment of chambered blade or slow and deliberate silky smooth, controlled rotation of blade deployment:

Also, much like OP's mod, below picture shown these two production's subtle thumb ramp, also having small intersecting right angle milled curvature, serves easy access on well design liner lock's milled grooves for an easy release: