Ti clip bending gizmo - or how are you bending your Ti pocket clips?

T

tmickley

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Apr 4, 2001
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A few years back I stumbled onto a web site that had fairly detailed pictures of a manual bending press I guess you'd call it made specifically for bending titanium pocket clips. You could bend a piece of tie past 180 degrees to take into account spring back around a rod and then bend a nice little crook in it for the end. I've looked till I'm blue. Any one have recollection of such a deal? Is it still around? ...or got any pictures of your own?

I know it wouldn't be that hard to design one but this one was really slick and well thought out.
 
Severtech knives use titanium clips. I can take the clip and bend it back really far, and it springs back to normal. Opposed to the Microtech clips I've seen, bend permanatley.


Bill
 
Gerberblades said:
Severtech knives use titanium clips. I can take the clip and bend it back really far, and it springs back to normal. Opposed to the Microtech clips I've seen, bend permanatley.


Bill
Click to expand...

Interesting, i would have thought that a springy steel would be best.
 
Ti works a bit better as the thinner spring steel only can flex so far before it's out of form.

I usually machine out the clips, but when I do the bent clips I usually drill my holes first, then cut them down from .025 or .030 Ti. Once they're cut, I heat them up a good amount while clamped in a vise.

I made some jaws for the vise that have a simple S (with straight lines instead of an arc for the S bends).

Once the clip is hot enough, I just tighten down the vise and it forms out the clip.

You don't even have to do the jaws, you can simply heat and bend using the vise, it's just slower that way.

Shoot me an email if you want some pics of them.


MT
 
I've used .040 for all the titanium ones I've made from day one. .030 seems too weak and .050 is too hard to bend if you are folding them over by hand. It has a higher % of tearing in places compared to .040.

I made the first clips for Brian at Knifewerks and he told me how he had some trouble with .050 when he tried to do his own using that also. I sent him some .040 to try and as I recall that is what he uses now. Later Brian used his background to come up with a break to fold them easier so he could make his own but I never saw it until today. I'd say thats for sure a necessity if you want uniformity from one to the next and are doing all your clips the same way and doing more than just a few at a time.

Unfortunately for me the clips I've made are so varied that I make as many with curves to fit the folder and in different widths depending on requests as I do ones that are straight that its something that requires either several breaks or to just do them with hand tools. I opt for the later method.

If you are just making a few clips you can do all you need to do it once you have the blanks cut by simply using two pair of duck bill metal bending vice grips and a stove top to heat the clip up and bend it progressively. For slight bends you should not have to heat it up. Its only the S bend and the fold overs that need heated first.

Folding over the titanium to make a low rider is something that needs to be done in steps because the ti cools down very fast. Once its cherry red you have about a 3 second window to make the fold. If you don't do it within that window it tears. So its best to take baby steps and bend, heat, bend heat and do it in like three stages. Otherwise you'll just waste a lot of titanium by tearing it where it snaps or starts to break and this is particularly true the thicker your stock is.

STR
 
Hey, that's my page!
I only 1st made it like a year ago though.
Hell, it's only 2 years ago last week that I made my 1st knife!

Sorry STR, I thought I sent you a link to that page when I made it.
I meant to.
I actually use .050 Ti right now.

A trick I have learned using my brake is to heat the brake, not the ti.
Sometimes, I have to add a little heat at the 180, but mostly not.
Clean, 180 degree bends without discoloration!

I have never checked the temp of the brake itself, but I throw it in the EvenHeat, and take it up to 1100, once it alarms out, I yank it, and start bending.

I do all my deburring, and corner rounding work before the bend.
I only need to smooth out part of the 180 that "puckers" a bit during the bend
 
Hi Brian. Good to hear from you.

Yes I forgot to mentiong the pucker effect. I've called some of the early ones ones with "Horns". :D Thats sometime a real issue on wider clips. Interesting that you found a way to work with .050. I have done them but its not as certain for me as the thinner. Right now I've got some .044 thats been working though that Halpern sold me for a good price since it had a bow in it down the middle. No big deal for clips though and its worked well for quite a while since it was a huge sheet.

I've had two or three computer crashes since we last talked. All those old emails are stored but in a seperate file not easy to yank to look at currently.

If you sent it I don't recall seeing it. I knew it would be state of the art though as are your folders. In hindsight I should have swapped the initial work for all those clips when we were trying to come up with something you liked for one of your folders before you got famous. :thumbup::D

I am rather proud of the fact that the clip you currently use was worked out with me though. I've not mentioned it a lot but it meant a lot to me that you asked for my input and that we came up with something you could work with in the end by working together on it.

Tell us a bit about your break though. Is it aluminum? I can't tell looking at it.

Did you machine it out yourself and if one wanted how difficult would it be to machine out one for curved clips? Many guys that order them through me want what they've called "fat boy" clips as well as some that gently follow the curve of the handle and that often times makes it very difficult to make them look just alike if you have to do too many without a break to help out. The ones I do for my own custom folder are very uniform but I have a pattern and set up for just those since they are the same. Its been hard to find that option on custom clips for productions of all make and model though.



STR
 
Horns, that's a good way of putting it, there are horns when you bend it.
I think I left those on the few I sent you so that you could see them raw, right off the brake.
You were an immense help in the development of these clips, thank you.

I did design and machine the brake myself. I used 303 Stainless, because we had a bunch of it at work. Glad I did too, since there are a lot of thermal cycles involved in making these clips. Hopefully the SS will hold up for years.

Curved ones would be a bitch, though I am sure it could be done.
One way I have thought of is to make it wider, bend a fat clip, then shape it to suit.
You are limited on how fat you can make it though, due to the weakness of the 1/8" dowel you are bending around...
 
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