Help fixing Detent ball on Brand New DIREWARE

S

shanedog1

Gold Member
Joined
Aug 2, 2016
Messages
27
Hello.

Without going into exhausting detail here, I can not flip open my DIREWARE Tailwhip unless my fingers are place directly on the pocket clip and I mean precisely. I have sent back to Eric Tullis at Direware on 2 occasions and he send hot back with the same problem that he doesn't address. Looking for a blade smith to fix this problem.

Thanks
 
Yeah, I would say you've discovered the beauty of framelocks.
For the money you've spent the guy should at least explain it to you - don't push on the framelock while opening the knife.
 
I've received 2 framelocks in the past year that had the same issue, a detent that is so hard that it'll easily cut your finger (front flipper) opening it too many times in a row. The issue is either the detent ball is protruding a tiny bit too far out, making it hard to bypass the detent, or the lockbar has a bit too much pressure on it. Looks like yours is a standard flipper, and the pocket clip doesn't rest on the lockbar, so yeah you'll have to keep those fingers on the clip, or anywhere else besides the lockbar. I wouldn't normally recommend someone new to start messing with lockbar tension and what not, but you've been here for a long time. I've adjusted the lockbar tension on quite a few knives, it's pretty easy. You just need to adjust tiny bit by tiny bit, and after each time you make a slight adjustment, fully reassemble the knife and see how it opens and how it locks.

Or you can just send it to someone else like you said. I can't think of anyone off the top of my head, someone here might do it for ya. If not, there are a lot of knife modders on instagram.
 
115Italian said:
Would a detent ball ramp help the situation?
Click to expand...

The first thing that comes to my mind is- if it was sent to the maker twice, and he sent it back the way it is, perhaps it's meant to be that way.

But, assuming that it's not meant to be that way, or, if it were mine and I was really unhappy with the opening/detent, the first thing I would try is some white lithium grease in the detent divot, just to see if the opening improved, and to satisfy my curiosity before actually altering the knife.

If the grease didn't help (and it needs to be lithium grease), and if the issue is what I described (the edges of the divot are too crisp/sharp), then I would want to sand/polish the edges of the divot a bit to SLIGHTLY round them over. I would do this by blunting the tip of a sharpened pencil, wrapping the tip with 1000 grit sandpaper, and carefully twisting the tip/paper around in the divot, then switch to 2500 grit to polish the edges a bit. Such sandpaper can be found in the paint section of auto care stores.

Of course I haven't examined the knife, so I can't say if this is your issue. But this is one action I would consider if I had a knife with a detent divot that was too sharp. For such an issue a "ramp" wouldn't be applicable.
 
Hello and thank you all for your comments. I have attached a picture of 3 Direwares. Two open perfect, but the one on the left is the real problem. ?
 

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