Source for ceramic detent balls?

cpirtle

cpirtle

Leathercrafter
Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
Mar 28, 2001
Messages
4,609
I have a folder that has a cheesy plastic detent ball in it, it kind of pi**ed me off when I figured it out because this is an expensive knife (~$400). Not sure what it's called but it's a silicon based plastic that's slippery, problem is it's wearing down fast..

Anyway, I want to replace it with a ceramic bearing and can't seem to find any.

I would only need 3 or 4 not 1,000 which may present a problem also.

Any suggestions?
 
I would do a general search BUT im sur if yiu start with ebay you be able to get some hits. Good luck.
 
If its a 400.00 dollar knife, then call the customer service dept and complain.
I broke my 50.00 gerber multiplier, I shipped to oregon and they shipped me a new one.
No issues.

Frank
 
I might be wrong here, but common sense tells me that if you replace the detent with a ceramic ball, your going to run into another issue...scoring the blade along the detent path. Don't know if that would be an issue for you or not.
It also occurs to me that the company MAY have intentionally put a detent ball in the knife that is softer than the blade....so that the detent wears rather than scoring the blade along the detent path. I would think it would be less costly and labor intensive to replace a detent than to fix or replace a scored blade. ...... just some thoughts.

Obviously the ideal situation would be that nothing wears/wears out on a knife like that, but consider all your options before doing something that might create more problems than it solves.
 
A ceramic ball does score the blade but it then burnishes it and polishes the path. An advantage is that you don't have to mask it when you anodize.
 
Boca bearing sells ceramic balls in a variety of sizes from quantity 1 to N
 
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