Somebody help on a Howard Viele please!!!

[hardys]

I recently bought a used, but mint Spyderco Howard Viele. One thing that I notice (and sort of bugs me) is that when opening the blade to the locked position, there is a stop (almost locked, but not quite).

When pushing the blade open just before lockup, the liner lock drops into what seems to be a detented area of the blade inside of the handle, and further movement of the blade finally drops the liner lock behind the blade completly. Is this initial "hangup" or "detent" normal with this knife? This is particularly noticeable when opening the blade slowly. I've not seen this happen on other liner locks. Thanks for any response.

 

[Burke]

Hi hardys, I think what you are feeling is the ball that forms the detent for the liner lock riding on the surface of the blade, then slipping off once the tang of the blade moves past it. It's sloppy then because while being opened, the detent ball puts a little more pressure on the blade; once that pressure is gone there is a tiny bit of play. I'm not sure what your experience with other liner-locks is, but often custom knives leave out the detent for greater smoothness in opening, while cheapies leave it out for greater ease of manufacture. The "bump" when opening is something most of my liner-locks have.

 

[Firebat]

Just to further expand on what Burke already said (and to figure out if the sig link I added is working, hehe..)

The ball detent also serves to hold the blade in place when the knife is closed. The Viele is one of those knives that has an exaggerated detent (my words) which lends it a very nice feel I think. It's true though, that if you swing the blade open just after the ball slips off the tang, it will pause and give resistance should you try to close the knife back up from there.

As to Burke's comment about custom makers leaving out the ball detent altogether, that's news to me. I'm not sure how you would prevent the blade from just swinging freely out of the handle if that was the case!

My Viele feels the same way yours does hardys, but I wouldn't say that's a bad thing. Mine's VERY smooth, about the smoothest of any production knife I've ever owned. The "pause" just doesn't bother me I guess. I've also had a few customs in the past that had similar feeling ball detents and were still buttery smooth.

So, yeah, this is normal. I'd also check your other liner locks very closely. I'd bet you find that they do this as well, it's just that the ball is much smaller, so the effect is considerably less. Nothing to worry about though.

Firebat

 

[hardys]

The guy I bought this knife from read my posting here and posted the following response somewhere on The Knife Forum and also emailed me to be certain I saw his fury.

Good ole John Doe is a real cheese~dick ! Check this out:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=180185
The knife that he puchased from me wasn't, "used, but mint !"
The knife was "brand friggin' new ~ NIB ~ never carried ~ never used."
What he's describing ~ is the normal operation of the knife ! Jesus H. . . .
The problem is that he doesn't understand dick about "liner locks or frame locks !"

I changed my name here to John Doe, but he had the audacity to post my real name after doing business with him. I won't post his name, although I do know it. What's up with this guy? I never mentioned him in this post and said nothing bad about the Viele. I'm confused on his defensiveness and why he needs to use the Lord's name in vein to make his point.

I also wonder why he has this fixation on the male penis! What's up with that Gigone?

I've had plenty of experience using custom Ralphs, Mayos, Sebenzas, etc. that are liner or frame locks that didn't exhibit the same amount of detent that the Viele does, but he reaches for straws and accuses that I've no knowledge of other knives.

I'm not complaining, as it's the smoothest production knife I've owned. Oh yeah, although he sold it to me as NIB, there was some light scuffing on the micarta handle. I never complained about it until now. (A little bit of false advertising there Gigone.)

I guess when you deal with people on the internet, you never know what you're going to encounter.

Stay away from this unstable "knife nut", or you may find yourself being slandered buy him somewhere on the forum or at another place in cyber space.

 

[brembo]

Ohhh those Viele's are smooth. When I go harass my dealer, I always get a couple of opening/closing in on that model. Butter smooth, sexy lines. I know I'll walk outta there one day with a big smile and the Viele.

 

[Randman]

I'm on my second Viele. I sent my first back not because of the liner lock issue you describe but because the first one that was sent to me was AUS-8, not VG-10.

My first one behaved just like you are describing, if opened slowly, it didn't lock all the way. No problem when opening at a normal rate. When I received my second one, I couldn't make it not lock up all the way no matter how slowly I opened it -- a definate improvement.

I have no idea if there was any redesign of the lock tolerences on the newer VG-10 models of if this a sample to sample variation as these are the only Viele's I have ever handled. The VG-10's also have an adjustable pivot but this I think is unrelated to the lock issue.