Originally posted by jmxcpter
While I'm all for technical innovation, I just can't build enough confidence in the axis lock to buy one. Besides my concerns about the lock disengaging, the Omega springs concern me as I've seen a few posts about them breaking. The lack of closed blade detent pressure also concerns me, although it does allow the Axis lock knives to open very quickly and smoothly.
Hmm. Hopefully I addressed some of the "lock disengaging" worry. I don't think it's possible to look at reports and come to any conclusion other than the axis lock is significantly more reliable than most other forms of locks, and as reliable as the best.
Spring breakage is rare, but it occurs; it's perfectly reasonable to be concerned about it. Luckily, the two-spring "fail safe" design has worked 100% of the time, according to all reports. We've never heard of a case of both springs breaking simultaneously. On the rare occasion that one spring breaks, the other continues to keep the lock working fine. There have been a few cases of people continuing to use their knife with one spring broken, and in a few cases, the second spring subsequently broke a month or two later. That gives you plenty of leeway. Even if you're out in the bush for a couple of weeks, your knife will still work -- when you get back, send it in for repair.
I'm not sure what you mean about the lack of blade detent pressure. The ball detent system in liner locks is about the least reliable blade closing mechanism, and liner locks open up in the pocket all the time. The axis lock doesn't have as much spring closing pressure as a very strong lockback, but it does have significant closing pressure. Enough to make it safe for tip-up carry, unlike a liner lock. Your friend's accidental opening is the first I've heard about, we'll keep our eyes open for others.
I'm also not nuts about BM's no-dissassembly warranty.
YOu and me, brother.
From my understanding of mechanical stresses (No, I'm not an engineer) the Microbar lock is significantly stronger than a liner lock. A liner lock is generally a thin piece of bent non ferrous liner material. By the nature of the forming process, the liner is curved or bowed. Assuming that it even engages properly, that curve is much more likely to collapse under extreme stress than the Microbar. Instead of an arc shape the Microbar maintains a straight path from back of the blade to a recess in the milled aluminum handle. It seems to me that you would have to exert enough force on the back of the spine to cause a catastrophic failure of the knife handle itself before it would allow the blade to close.
This is about reliability more than strength. There's a lot of critical geometries in this type of lockup. It isn't just the strength of the liner. In fact, I've written at length about a custom maker who makes gents' folders with paper thin liners that
I could not get to disengage! I put pressure on those liners until they bent so ominously I thought they'd snap. Torqued, spine-whacked, you name it. Never got a single failure across multiple knives on this guy's table (with his permission!). Meanwhile, I can often fail overbuilt tactical liner locks pretty easily.
So don't look at the integrity of the liner itself as the critical factor. Even a very rigid liner can slip off the blade tang, depending on the geometry (and how the geometry changes as the knife is torqued). That's why we've heard on bladeforums about Microbar failures under even light load, and pretty much none about axis failures. The lock geometry is hard, microbar, liner lock, or whatever. Spyderco gave up and put in a compression pin to really fix the problem, an approach that seems to have worked.
It's unlikely that you could hold the knife firmly enough for that to happen. I have owned several liner lock knives and was always amazed about how irregular the engagement of the lock was from one opening to the next. My Socom lock has never once failed to fully engage in the many (hundreds, possibly thousands of) times I've looked at it after opening.
Just another note here, how far the lock has engaged on teh tang is not a good predictor of how good the lockup is. I've seen locks barely engaging that hold firm, and locks fully engaging that feel like they locked up like a vault that fail without much trouble.
As to the speed of the WAVE, perhaps I let my ego get in the way on that comment as I've never used or seen anyone use that feature up close. I do know that I've been carrying and opening folding knives for many years and I can usually have whatever knife I'm carrying open just after it clears my pocket. People in work situations sometimes double take when there's a box to be opened and my small sebbie is open before they even realize I've reached for it and I never flick it (it's not a very flickable design IMO). I think I can actually open the Socom faster just using the thumb stud than flicking it, but the flick is much flashier and still very fast. The Emerson's still probably faster, but I bet we're talking about less than a second.
For sure less than a second. And again, I think sometimes people make too much of this: given an opening that is "Fast enough", then security and reliability of that opening becomes a higher priority. Which is why I don't like wrist flicking.
For lock backs, I agree that there is potential for them to open under stress, but I carried a Buck 110 for many years, followed by a Puma Game Warden for several more years and then finally a Cold Steel Medium Voyager for a couple more years before buying my current duo of EDCs. I never had one of them close on me and I used these knives for all sorts of stuff (some well thought out stuff and some less so).
A well-done lockback is excellent. Most failures seem to come from accidently disengaging the lock release with hand pressure, and from failure to lock open because lint gets into the lock notch. I"ve never had the first failure happen to me personally, but I've seen plenty of the latter firsthand.
Joe
But, this is one of those cases where theory and reality are completely mixed up. You may think the axis lock might be easy to disengage accidently, but it just doesn't happen. In reality, the axis lock is so much more reliable than the liner lock, microbar, etc. (IMO), it is a decisive advantage over all the competitors named here except the SOG, where it is just a marginal advantage. 
