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What is lock up??
- Thread starter Civil PE
- Start date
Steel130
Gold Member
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- Sep 17, 2010
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Lockup is essentially how far the locking bar/mechanism has traveled across the surface it locks against. The best example will be a framelock or liner lock.Being a newb I see folks post up about it locks up at 40% or such. What exactly is lockup and how is it measured. What is good or bad number for lock up?
Thanks!
So with a framelock the very edge of the locking bar that touches the tang cutout would be 1%. If the knife had 1% lockup just the slightest bit of the framelock would be engaged against the tang cutout. So 50% would be half of the locking bar's face would be contacting the tang cutout.
As far as the ideal number, that depends on what a person likes. Generally earlier lockup is desired, because it indicates that the lockbar ahs more life left before it wears all the way across the locking faces. However if lock geometry is well done, even a knife with late lockup can have years of wear in it still. It will reach a settling point per say. Chris Reeve knives are an example of this.
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I've never heard of a knife rendered useless because of 100% lock up. If the lock up is done well it may wear in a bit, but then stay still. Having the largest contact patch between the blade and lockbar is ideal. A sticky lock is when the lockbar "jams" because there is static friction between the two faces. That happens because the titanium lock face (usually only happens with titanium) is not contacting the entire area of the blade lock face all at once. Sometimes a small portion of the lock face will contact, usually the edges and corners, and the rest does not. That concentrates the pressures on those small areas and deforms and wears away the titanium. That can be a good thing sometimes. It means the lock faces are wearing into each other and eventually the contact patch will become large enough that wear is minimal to non-existant. Also if the lockface is more sharply angled like it is on Sebenzas and titanium FL Spydercos there is less of a "sliding" action into lock and more of immediate contact into lock, and hence: no sticky. My Strider has a nearly level lockface (90deg angle) and it's been sticky since day one.