Hello all,
I recently purchased a Sog Mini Vulcan plain edge from a local sporting goods store.
At the store I noticed a bit of side play in the blade but figured I could adjust it out. After getting it home I also noticed some vertical play in the blade. I called and spoke with the warranty dept to see if there was a known issue with this model and what constituted an "acceptale" amount of vertical blade play. She stated that there was no acceptable amount and it shoud be rock solid.
Since I wasn't really interested in paying to send in a brand new knife for warranty repair and told her I'd check the other knives at the store where I purchased it.
So, I headed back down to the store. I tried every single SOG they had on display (probably 10 different models). Each and EVERY one of them had vertical blade play, some far worse than mine.
This was compounded in my mind by the fact that I bought my son a Benchmade 556 Mini-G for his birthday (for considerably less than the Vulcan) and it has absolutely NO play in it in either direction.
So I called the SOG Warranty dept again, and spoke with the same person. She seemed very surprised at this and asked to put me on hold. When she came back she said she'd gone and spoken with the repair guys about it in case she was mistaken about "acceptable" levels of vertical blade play. According to her the person she spoke with took apart a knife and explained to her that the area where the locking pin contacts the blade heel when opened is rouhg and has to "wear in". But once it does it will be rock solid. She also said that if the blade had more than 1/64 play in it that they wanted to see it and they would grind/polish that area to make the locking pin mate correctly.
I thought it sounded like a reasonable explanation as I had already noticed that the end of the matign are had already gotten a bit shinier from the pin. (As some one who was a machinist in another life I also thought to myself that if that surface wasn't so striated from whatever they used to cut the notch that it would have fit better and not had any play.) So I told her I'd try and let the pin and blade break in as I felt once they did the fir would be better than someone manually removing material.
I settled down for the weekend with the intent of "excercising" the lock in an effort to break it in faster. While doing this I was peeking through the holes in the Arc Lock guide in the handle this weekend I noticed something blocking the "path" in the liner where the locking pin moves which would block it from movign all the way forward in the locking position. Initially I thought it was a bump on the heel of the blade but I soon realized that it was part of the bushing on one side of the blade, which I wasn't pleased to discover appeared to be made from some sort of nylon.
The nylon bushing also explains why everytime I very carefully adjust out the blade side play it shows back up again a few hours later. I had assumed the pivot pin was woakring it's way loose but I made a small line on it with a sharpie to see if it was moving and it wasn't. So the problem is that the plastic (PLASTIC?!) used in the bushings is compressing after I snug it down.
All of this leads me to ask all of you 2 questions.
1. Does/did anyone else have vertical play in their Arc Lock folder and if so did it go away after a "break-in" period?
2. Am I correct that the bushings are made of some sort of plastic? Is this true of all SOG knives?
I had assumed that since it was a Seki blade from Japan it would be as high quality as the knife I'm replacing. My 20 year EDC (yes 20 years, EVERY day) Spyderco Co-Pilot which even today has less play in the blade as this Mini Vulcan.
At this point I'm hesistant to send a new knife in (at my cost) for warranty repair when I'm not really confident that they'll actually fix it to my satisfaction. This saddens me as I absolutely love the blade shape, although the handle and clip designs need some tweaking.
I find it difficult to beleive that Field and Stream would award a "Best of the Best" award to this knife if they got one with blade play in it.
I am however very open to your input.
Thanks very much for reading my rather verbose posting.
I recently purchased a Sog Mini Vulcan plain edge from a local sporting goods store.
At the store I noticed a bit of side play in the blade but figured I could adjust it out. After getting it home I also noticed some vertical play in the blade. I called and spoke with the warranty dept to see if there was a known issue with this model and what constituted an "acceptale" amount of vertical blade play. She stated that there was no acceptable amount and it shoud be rock solid.
Since I wasn't really interested in paying to send in a brand new knife for warranty repair and told her I'd check the other knives at the store where I purchased it.
So, I headed back down to the store. I tried every single SOG they had on display (probably 10 different models). Each and EVERY one of them had vertical blade play, some far worse than mine.
This was compounded in my mind by the fact that I bought my son a Benchmade 556 Mini-G for his birthday (for considerably less than the Vulcan) and it has absolutely NO play in it in either direction.
So I called the SOG Warranty dept again, and spoke with the same person. She seemed very surprised at this and asked to put me on hold. When she came back she said she'd gone and spoken with the repair guys about it in case she was mistaken about "acceptable" levels of vertical blade play. According to her the person she spoke with took apart a knife and explained to her that the area where the locking pin contacts the blade heel when opened is rouhg and has to "wear in". But once it does it will be rock solid. She also said that if the blade had more than 1/64 play in it that they wanted to see it and they would grind/polish that area to make the locking pin mate correctly.
I thought it sounded like a reasonable explanation as I had already noticed that the end of the matign are had already gotten a bit shinier from the pin. (As some one who was a machinist in another life I also thought to myself that if that surface wasn't so striated from whatever they used to cut the notch that it would have fit better and not had any play.) So I told her I'd try and let the pin and blade break in as I felt once they did the fir would be better than someone manually removing material.
I settled down for the weekend with the intent of "excercising" the lock in an effort to break it in faster. While doing this I was peeking through the holes in the Arc Lock guide in the handle this weekend I noticed something blocking the "path" in the liner where the locking pin moves which would block it from movign all the way forward in the locking position. Initially I thought it was a bump on the heel of the blade but I soon realized that it was part of the bushing on one side of the blade, which I wasn't pleased to discover appeared to be made from some sort of nylon.
The nylon bushing also explains why everytime I very carefully adjust out the blade side play it shows back up again a few hours later. I had assumed the pivot pin was woakring it's way loose but I made a small line on it with a sharpie to see if it was moving and it wasn't. So the problem is that the plastic (PLASTIC?!) used in the bushings is compressing after I snug it down.
All of this leads me to ask all of you 2 questions.
1. Does/did anyone else have vertical play in their Arc Lock folder and if so did it go away after a "break-in" period?
2. Am I correct that the bushings are made of some sort of plastic? Is this true of all SOG knives?
I had assumed that since it was a Seki blade from Japan it would be as high quality as the knife I'm replacing. My 20 year EDC (yes 20 years, EVERY day) Spyderco Co-Pilot which even today has less play in the blade as this Mini Vulcan.
At this point I'm hesistant to send a new knife in (at my cost) for warranty repair when I'm not really confident that they'll actually fix it to my satisfaction. This saddens me as I absolutely love the blade shape, although the handle and clip designs need some tweaking.
I find it difficult to beleive that Field and Stream would award a "Best of the Best" award to this knife if they got one with blade play in it.
I am however very open to your input.
Thanks very much for reading my rather verbose posting.
I have a 15 year old lockback Air SOG that has half as much play and I have cut a helluva lot more than cardboard with it.