Vertical play on a compression lock

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Peakbagger46

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

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.
 
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.
 
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.
Click to expand...
I'll try this on Amalgam.
 
Old thread, but it's the first that comes up when searching for info on fixing a worn out comp lock, so I'm adding my experience here.

I basically did as yablanowitz yablanowitz did. Smacked the junk out the top part that hits the lock stop. I didn't have to refinish the lock face though. It might matter that I had already refinished the face due to lock stick.

One thing I noticed, it seemed the outer side matters more than the inside. That is, not the side where the detent ball sticks out (interfacing with the blade), but the outer side facing the scales. Getting that part extended made the lockup get earlier quickly, while just working on the other side had very little effect. I'd suggest just starting on that side, and the inner side might not even need to be touched.
 
kreole said:
Old thread, but it's the first that comes up when searching for info on fixing a worn out comp lock, so I'm adding my experience here.

I basically did as yablanowitz yablanowitz did. Smacked the junk out the top part that hits the lock stop. I didn't have to refinish the lock face though. It might matter that I had already refinished the face due to lock stick.

One thing I noticed, it seemed the outer side matters more than the inside. That is, not the side where the detent ball sticks out (interfacing with the blade), but the outer side facing the scales. Getting that part extended made the lockup get earlier quickly, while just working on the other side had very little effect. I'd suggest just starting on that side, and the inner side might not even need to be touched.
Click to expand...
I'm having a hard time visualizing this, do you have a way of showing a pic or diagram? Are you basically pounding the liner on a bench with a hammer trying to deform the metal outwards?
 
stillshot2 said:
I'm having a hard time visualizing this, do you have a way of showing a pic or diagram? Are you basically pounding the liner on a bench with a hammer trying to deform the metal outwards?
Click to expand...
It's basically what you said, but I used a pin punch (flat end punch) rather than just hammering directly on it. Every couple hits I'd throw it together to see how the lockup was and continued til I got it where I wanted it (around 50%). I put the liner down on a mini 9lb anvil and used a quick clamp to hold it down. (A thick steel plate and a c clamp probably would be better, but I didn't have the plate, and a c clamp wouldn't work with the anvil. You just want to get it flat against the harder bottom surface and need to defeat the spring.)


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For placement, right there as in the pic on the lock bar is where I started. Flipping the liner over and peening that side in the same place is where I should've started because it seemed to adjust the lockup quickly, while the side on the pic didn't. I had worked both sides a bit, though, so maybe you just need to peen both sides.
 
Ok that makes sense. I gave a pm2 to a friend with a slight amount of vertical play but now I'm curious if they'd let me try to improve it for them. Probably not though they love it just how it is haha
 
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