Viper Free

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schmalhaus

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Sep 27, 2010
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How smart is Tecnocut's new Smart Lock?

[video=youtube;_0-zPTrTNuw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0-zPTrTNuw[/video]

Stefan
 
Stefan- Thank you for a great vdo. This is a fantastic folder!
I would love to see a tanto blade in the future.
rolf
 
I'm surprised more have not commented on the Smartlock. This improvement on the Walker-lock has been a long time coming.
rolf
 
Thanks, Stefan -- another enjoyable review.

I don't care much for secondary locks, but this one looks interesting.
(I do wish it wasn't necessary to engage the smart lock to get rid of the side-to-side blade play. I wonder if that is the case only with your sample or with all the rest.)
 
flash900 said:
Thanks, Stefan -- another enjoyable review.

I don't care much for secondary locks, but this one looks interesting.
(I do wish it wasn't necessary to engage the smart lock to get rid of the side-to-side blade play. I wonder if that is the case only with your sample or with all the rest.)
Click to expand...

This tiny amount of blade play is nothing to be worried about. I think it's inherent to the system because the liner gets stopped midway and can't freely adjust itself to the tang. The blade play is compensated by the second component of the SmartLock, the spine slide. By pushing the slide backwards the lock bar is rotated towards the tang and gets blocked.

Stefan
 
Stefan, a nice review as usual ;)!

On the lock design, my opinion is that it does not resolve anything but adding problem. Moving lockbar inward (towards the spine) is defeating the design geometry. If anything, it should be moving outward, though preferably not at all.

By moving inward, the triangle formed by stop bar, pivot and lock-tang engagement getting narrower, thus the force applied to the lockbar would increase.

Just my opinion, based on basic geometry. I might be wrong though.

On the other hand, the pure backlock is interesting! :thumbup:
 
I think what is actually happening is the lock bar no longer needs to rely on tiny tolerances, hence the blade play without the secondary lock engaged. The benefit being a knife that may actually have to catastrophically fail at the lock bar for the knife to shut unintentionally. Rather than a gentle slope or curve, these surfaces appear to be almost completely square leaving no angle to slide the lock bar out of the way. Very clever IMO. The stop on the far side from the lock bar prevents it from just sliding all the way over when its opened.


The secondary lock only exists to remove all blade play as no one would buy a knife with that amount of play and no way to defeat it. It literally just takes a different angle to accomplish this.

Probably not the be all, end all of Walker "improvements", but certainly one of the more interesting innovations in the past couple years or so.
 
Thanks for the review, love that blade shape, enough so that I ordered one ;) would have preferred a satin blade but the coated was all that was in stock right now, hopefully it will be here by the weekend.

The blade shape reminds me of the CRK Insingo a little bit, if anyone has both, it would be interesting to see a side by side photo or video.
G2
 
Gary,

Eager to hear what you think of yours. I like the blade shape for the same reason as you, just not sure about the lock.
 
She arrived today, mail was running late :( but, that's ok they do the best they can but the wait is killer ;)

Ok the blade, great! shape is really nice, blade is ground fairly thin but still some beef so you are not afraid to cut heavier duty stuff.
Handle also nice, corner radiuses very smooth and comfy to grip, clip doesn't dig in, but you do know it's there, I'd prefer tip up just to be able to really use the lanyard/fob hole. Also the spine of the blade is nicely rounded as well, making a really finished look to the blade and the jimping is quite good on this, in fact I find that you can start the blade to open with your thumb and then reach with your index finger and place it on the jimping and you can snap the blade open almost like opening a knife with a flipper, I guess more like flicking a bic lighter kinda thing.

Lock, well the lock is 'different' as they tell you at the get go, I was/am a little worried as I first opened the knife, eyes on the blade...of course, and then I noticed that the lock did not engage, the lock bar was still behind the side of the tang, after snapping the blade open a little firmer, the lock bar did move over and lock the blade in place, as Stefan mentioned the slide on the back is also a little stiff to move by thumb pressure alone, but once it's locked in place, there was no blade play at all, the slide would help secure that plus limit any accidental closures too, which is a good thing. Please note, after a few openings it still doesn't lock in place, I need to flick the blade open which then allows the lock bar to move into place, no matter how firmly I try to thumb it open, it's not strong enough/hard enough to do the trick.

So right now, the jury is out on the lock, but I think it's just a break in period so my worries are slight to none. The blade, ah, the nice blade, very well done, smooth opening, can't quite flick it open like a spyderco hole due to the shape of their hole, but also as Stefan mentions, it is easy to open the blade.

So a thumbs up on this folder, will comment more later on or instead of hi-jacking Stefan's thread, sorry about that!, I may start one myself, but it is probably good to have it in one place for quick reference to this knife.

Thanks again Stefan for your excellent video review, it was certainly enough to make this one person to take the leap and purchase it :)
G2
 
Last edited:
Thank YOU sir, and one other point about the lock bar, I had noticed in the video and of course now that it's here, you will see that the very tip of the lock bar has a nub sticking up, my thinking is that is for future times when and if there is any lock wear, that small bit will then be striking the tang to help keep it locked up solid.
G2

edited to add this photo of the lock bar tip

Viper_Free_lockbar.jpg
 
Last edited:
Gary,

Thanks for your photo. In this case, then actual contact point of the lockbar to the blade tang might not change even if the lockbar is 'pulled back' by the tab, in respective to the blade tang. It then doesn't make the support point narrower.

Stefan,
On the video with the diagram, it seemed to make the support point (triangle between pivot, stop pin and lockbar contact) smaller. If it doesn't then I applaud the design :D .. very smart then, I stand corrected :p
 
The more I look at it in relation to the rest of the liner, I think it was just happenstance that there is a nub sticking up, where it's been cut by an EDM machine, you can see that if it hadn't been cut the slope upwards would match with the rest of the liner, so my 'guess' was just that I think, a guess that it was engineered to be an extra catch for lock bar contact...
Just picture that lock bar pressed back against the scale and you can see how it will match up with the rest of the liner.

Sounded good in my head ;)
G2
 
Gary,

Sorry for not being clear. I was not talking about the nub, but the extra lockbar area where upon rotating it back, will match exactly with the tang. In this case, there's no reduction of torque point of the lockbar-tang contact. It seems to always be on the furthest part of the tang (against pivot). To me, that's smart engineering :D.
 
TriviaMonster said:
I think what is actually happening is the lock bar no longer needs to rely on tiny tolerances, hence the blade play without the secondary lock engaged. The benefit being a knife that may actually have to catastrophically fail at the lock bar for the knife to shut unintentionally. Rather than a gentle slope or curve, these surfaces appear to be almost completely square leaving no angle to slide the lock bar out of the way. Very clever IMO. The stop on the far side from the lock bar prevents it from just sliding all the way over when its opened.


The secondary lock only exists to remove all blade play as no one would buy a knife with that amount of play and no way to defeat it. It literally just takes a different angle to accomplish this.

Probably not the be all, end all of Walker "improvements", but certainly one of the more interesting innovations in the past couple years or so.
Click to expand...

Would not buy this knife, nice looking knife, But the lockup system is going to fail in time-------Knifemaker-----------THANK YOU
 
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