Triad lock stuck?!

mwhich50

mwhich50

Joined
Jan 18, 2011
Messages
3,236
I just received my 'Summer Sale' Golden Eye, and Swift 1. Both had fingerprints all over the blades (?).
After only a half dozen deployments the Golden Eye's blade is STUCK in the open position. The backlock won't budge a mm. I think I have seen this problem reported in the CS forum before. I don't remember what the suggested fix was, but I think it worked. I don't want to take it apart, or mar the G-10 trying to force it, and I don't want to send it back in the open position. :(
Any assistance would be appreciated.
 
Disassembly might be your only option. If you can force it to unlock lube it good and cycle it if not take it apart and you should be able to see what's hanging up and lightly sand it.
 
Try the edge of table or something stable to get it depressed.
Once opened use a liberal amount of oil in the tang area and try to cycle it a lot.

This happened to me with my Counterpoint XL but in the end I took it apart and polished the mating parts.
It is actually way easier to take apart than most backlock knives.

Good luck with it.
 
Have you tried putting the blade in a vice and hanging 800 lbs from the handle yet?

I just got a golden eye and broken skull from the same sale, and my broken skull's lock is pretty sticky as well. I'm planning to drop some 3-in-1 in there. I think there was some extra paint on a few parts of metal and so I'm thinking it needs flushed out. There were some visible flecks of paint hanging off near the pivot that I picked off.
 
I had a brand new backlock from a different brand get stuck like that. There was a little wire edge of metal off the liners or lock bar (can't remember) that had been left during production, and after a handful of openings, it broke off and lodged in there. Disassembly and cleaning solved it.
 
I grabbed my rubber mallet, and gently tapped the back lock. It disengaged on the 6th tap. The G-10 was unaffected. I had already oiled it before it got stuck, so I tried opening, and closing it again. It got stuck again, and disengaged with three taps. I opened, and closed it x10, and it has not jammed again. Cold steel is the only brand that can have a major malfunction, and still be a perfectly functional knife. Pretty weird. Thanks for the assistance everyone!
 
I really like the Golden Eye. Pros: blade shape, handle color/ergos, and boy is it thin/light! The only thing I don't like so far is the sharp thumb hole. My thumb tip is a little sore. I don't mind the gold hardware. If you guys haven't grabbed one yet, you may want to before they are gone. It is a terrific deal for the $.

The Swift is pretty good too. It has the lock on the handle which works really well. The handle texture is moderately grippy, and not cheap looking. The ergos are really good. It deploys really hard. I can understand why it might break. We'll see what happens.
 
Last edited:
When I get a sticky Tri-Ad that does not improve after several openings, I disassemble and gently sand the tang where it interfaces with the lockbar. That has worked for me. I have also just cycled the lock but it can take hundreds of openings to improve.
 
:) I've had more than my share with "lock stick " .

Use table edge or some non marring tool to depress lock . Lubricate , then open & close briskly ~10,000X ! :eek::poop:

Even the worst ones EVENTUALLY smooth out perfect . :cool::thumbsup::thumbsup:

Or , I've read , you can take apart and polish up the lock faces manually . That's what you are doing more slowly by just opening and closing . ;)

The "leaving the blade half open " is to help with hard opening detent (not lock stick ) .
 
I have an Ultimate Hunter with a lock that jams open on hard use or snapping the blade open. When jammed I have to whack the lock upside down on a table edge to release it.
It's not a huge deal because I use the knife when camping only. But it's annoying as hell to always have to look around for something to whack the knife on after I use it.

I've disassembled and on the lock bar removed all visible tooling scratches, filed up to 1000, and Dremel buffed to a mirror with jeweler's rouge on the 3 surfaces that touch the stop pin, closing pin, and spring.
The lock is smoother and silent to depress now with the spring ramp glass smooth, but it still jams in the open position.
There's thin gun oil on everything and it still jams.
I also tried light grease and still no joy.

Is this just a feature of the design? Do I have a manufacturing defect?
The lock bar seems designed to wedge itself in between the stop pin and closing pin. It's essentially a wedge shape in the front and any further filing is going to mess up the geometry, allowing the front of the lock bar to start dipping underneath the handle spine.

The only other CS I have is an AD15, so I can't compare it.
Do any of you have Tri-ad locks that do NOT jam open on a hard flick open?
Does the AD10 wedge itself stuck open like what I am describing?
 
Chappy Puzz said:
I have an Ultimate Hunter with a lock that jams open on hard use or snapping the blade open. When jammed I have to whack the lock upside down on a table edge to release it.
It's not a huge deal because I use the knife when camping only. But it's annoying as hell to always have to look around for something to whack the knife on after I use it.

I've disassembled and on the lock bar removed all visible tooling scratches, filed up to 1000, and Dremel buffed to a mirror with jeweler's rouge on the 3 surfaces that touch the stop pin, closing pin, and spring.
The lock is smoother and silent to depress now with the spring ramp glass smooth, but it still jams in the open position.
There's thin gun oil on everything and it still jams.
I also tried light grease and still no joy.

Is this just a feature of the design? Do I have a manufacturing defect?
The lock bar seems designed to wedge itself in between the stop pin and closing pin. It's essentially a wedge shape in the front and any further filing is going to mess up the geometry, allowing the front of the lock bar to start dipping underneath the handle spine.

The only other CS I have is an AD15, so I can't compare it.
Do any of you have Tri-ad locks that do NOT jam open on a hard flick open?
Does the AD10 wedge itself stuck open like what I am describing?
Click to expand...

That is not normal, but may improve with use/break-in. The lock bar lug kind of "hooks" onto the blade tang at a slight inward angle, which is one of the reasons it's such a strong lock. Sounds like yours may have some tolerance stack-up that's causing it to wedge too tightly between the stop pin and blade tang. Did you also polish the lock bar lug and blade tang contact surfaces (circled below)?

Screenshot_2021-01-21-14-17-25_kindlephoto-187167041.png
 
jlauffer said:
That is not normal, but may improve with use/break-in. The lock bar lug kind of "hooks" onto the blade tang at a slight inward angle, which is one of the reasons it's such a strong lock. Sounds like yours may have some tolerance stack-up that's causing it to wedge too tightly between the stop pin and blade tang. Did you also polish the lock bar lug and blade tang contact surfaces (circled below)?
Click to expand...
I polished the lock rocker surface in the white circle, the rocker surface to the left of the circle, and the spring ramp curve to a mirror finish.
Now that you mention it, I didn't polish the hook mating surface on the blade. I'll try that next.

Thinking about it, the stop pin surface didn't need to be polished as the geometry is relieved, but the machining tool marks were visible. Maybe 0.0010" to 0.0015".
The quality on my unit seems kinda sub par IMO. I have $20 Eafengrow knives that are better fitting and no tooling marks.
It's a Taiwan model, but I guess they can half-a$$ it just as good as a hung-over American grinding through a morning on a wake-n-vape and 3 coffees.
 
I just got one of the new S35VN Talwars. Not sure if they are still called Talwar XL or not, but it is the same size as my old OD green black blade XL.

Wicked lock stick on this one when whipped or pocket deployed had me thinking I might send it back to exchange. Never had that with my old one ever. Edge of table didn't even do it a few times, and had to tap the lock button with a hard object and that seems the way to get it going. Kept deploying and it seems to have gone away. These things sometimes reappear, so I will keep testing it. Gorgeous knife otherwise. Zero blade play and smooth action, so if it was just needing a dozen deploys, that's fine with me. That's what it looks like right now for this small sampling. I didn't lube - lots of oil on the blade that was cleaned off so I figure that is enough for now. Maybe some of that worked into the lock. Clip is too tight too, but easily adjusted/bent. Prices came down to the sane range on these new ones ($150 ish) A good knife for the price IMHO. I think my old one, pre-buyout, pre-discontinuation was $120 IIRC.

wIiRqlul.jpg

OQaWfeyl.jpg
 
Last edited:
i posted this a while back......

"This happened a few weeks back but not had time to post...

The knife in question was a new s35vn talwar xl and it had been used a bit but after a few wrist flicks the lock stuck so bad I had to use a block of wood to hit the tri ad lock to open it.bit was so tight I didn't think it would ever close again!

The good news is I opened and closed it many times before trying another wrist flick, this stuck but I could just close by hand with all the force I could muster... fast forward and opening and closing maybe 70-100 times its now so smooth and won't stick no matter how hard you flick it open...

I didn't take it apart to adjust anything. All I did from new was to add a drop of nano oil. since the stick went I added a solid set of phosphor bronze washers to replace the half and half set it had originally.

I may have been lucky but just persevere and make your thumb sore....

I have seen a few reports of lock stick on the new Talwar so I thought this experience was worth sharing"
 
I haven't had a chance to play with it since I first got... still EDC the boring old ZT 0452CF... trusty ZT. I am actually here to look for a 0452ti... do love the ZT's. I will test the Talwar soon. Hopefully the lock stick is all gone.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top