Vertical play on a compression lock

Peakbagger46 · May 23, 2018

My first Spyderco, a Shaman, has a bit of vertical play. Tightening the pivot helped some, but a clicking can be felt and heard in the locked position.

Is this normal with the compression lock? Any way I can tweek it and eliminate the play? Any chance of the lock failing?

yablanowitz · May 23, 2018

No. Yes. No.

There is almost no chance of the lock failing. I have corrected that type of problem on a Yojimbo, but I suggest sending it in rather than messing with it yourself. They are a bit finicky to get adjusted right.

lieferung · May 23, 2018

Send it in. I've never had any lock issues with a Spydie before but I know the Golden team will take care of you.

jstn · May 23, 2018

Spyderco will take care of you. It sucks to get a new knife and have to wait a few weeks, but it is better in the long run to let pros handle it.

sharp_edge · May 23, 2018

OP - vertical blade play is difficult to get rid of. Send to Spyderco for warranty repair.

Peakbagger46 · Jun 3, 2018

Thanks guys. It seems to have gotten a bit worse now, even with a tight pivot adjustment. Looks like I will be sending it to Golden.

QKantaris · Oct 13, 2018

yablanowitz said:
No. Yes. No.

There is almost no chance of the lock failing. I have corrected that type of problem on a Yojimbo, but I suggest sending it in rather than messing with it yourself. They are a bit finicky to get adjusted right.

How did you get the play out of yours? I have a factory second shaman so I can’t send into warranty to fix but is identical to OPs explanation.

yablanowitz · Oct 13, 2018

The one I fixed was used when I got it, so I don't know it's history. Judging by the damage I found when I took it apart I'd guess it had seen a lot of hard inertial openings and a lot of spine whacking. The locking tab was mushroomed on both sides, the stop pin was flat in two places and there was a groove hammered into the blade where it contacted the pin. The holes in the liners for the stop pin were also oblong instead of round. I carefully hammered the locking tab back to flat, filed both sides and the top and bottom bearing surfaces smooth and square, used a center punch to displace metal around the damaged pin holes to shrink them, deburred all the surfaces with a ceramic stone and rotated the stop pin to a new position when I reassembled the knife. Keep in mind, I have done a substantial amount of metal work over the last half century, and that experience contributed to my success in this case. This whole thing falls under the heading "if you have to ask how, you aren't ready to try it" in my opinion. You could quite easily render the knife unrepairable doing this.

QKantaris · Oct 13, 2018

yablanowitz said:
The one I fixed was used when I got it, so I don't know it's history. Judging by the damage I found when I took it apart I'd guess it had seen a lot of hard inertial openings and a lot of spine whacking. The locking tab was mushroomed on both sides, the stop pin was flat in two places and there was a groove hammered into the blade where it contacted the pin. The holes in the liners for the stop pin were also oblong instead of round. I carefully hammered the locking tab back to flat, filed both sides and the top and bottom bearing surfaces smooth and square, used a center punch to displace metal around the damaged pin holes to shrink them, deburred all the surfaces with a ceramic stone and rotated the stop pin to a new position when I reassembled the knife. Keep in mind, I have done a substantial amount of metal work over the last half century, and that experience contributed to my success in this case. This whole thing falls under the heading "if you have to ask how, you aren't ready to try it" in my opinion. You could quite easily render the knife unrepairable doing this.

Any chance you’d be willing to take a look at mine?

I don’t carry it because it bothers me and I don’t have the expertise you do to fix it. I had one friend take a look and he noticed the same thing with the stop pin holes and he fixed that but the vertical ply is there.

yablanowitz · Oct 13, 2018

I'd be willing to look at it, but I can't promise that I can fix it. Like I said in my first post in this thread, they can be finicky to adjust. If you want to contact me, I have a Gmail account under the same username as here.

ourgon · Jul 18, 2022

yablanowitz said:
The one I fixed was used when I got it, so I don't know it's history. Judging by the damage I found when I took it apart I'd guess it had seen a lot of hard inertial openings and a lot of spine whacking. The locking tab was mushroomed on both sides, the stop pin was flat in two places and there was a groove hammered into the blade where it contacted the pin. The holes in the liners for the stop pin were also oblong instead of round. I carefully hammered the locking tab back to flat, filed both sides and the top and bottom bearing surfaces smooth and square, used a center punch to displace metal around the damaged pin holes to shrink them, deburred all the surfaces with a ceramic stone and rotated the stop pin to a new position when I reassembled the knife. Keep in mind, I have done a substantial amount of metal work over the last half century, and that experience contributed to my success in this case. This whole thing falls under the heading "if you have to ask how, you aren't ready to try it" in my opinion. You could quite easily render the knife unrepairable doing this.

I'll try this on Amalgam.