I'm gonna post this here as Bryce started this thread about his centering issue and Jimmy posted what turned out to be a great solution to his problem. Bryce re-thought his initial negative response after coming to understand what Jimmy was getting at and used his technique to get his blade centered. Our OP showed a lotta class by not deleting his initial text at Post #6 and editing in his apology and subsequent thoughts.
Anyway, I too have had a few knives that resisted centering. Most approaches utilize the same principle of racking the scales while the body screws are loosened and then re-tightening. This is similar to the way we rack pre-hung doors on the job to get the margins even. With my knives I've tried the usual scale shifting and wedging referred to in Post #6 and generally have had success, but a knife or two has failed to come all the way to center.
Jimmy's technique utilizes the increased leverage afforded by the open blade to force a little more shift through the axis of the pivot. That axis doesn't have to move much, but it requires a fair amount of force to be applied and held until the body screws can be retightened. Factoring in trying to hold that flex in place while accessing the screws, I came up with the following methodology.
First, here's a pic of my 710 that had never come quite all the way to center. The knife was bought used in"good" shape off the big river site and I've put quite a bit into rehabbing her. The Delrin backspacer has been replaced with Gnoleb dumbbell-style standoffs and you can judge the poor alignment against the center portion of the back standoff.
I folded a piece of corrugated cardboard for protection and clamped the blade in the bench-vise. With the knife set up thusly it's easy to access the body screws from either or both sides as required.
My blade was off to the left as viewed in these pictures. Jimmy talked about pushing the blade in the direction that it's off (which he described as seeming "backwards").
With the open blade fixed in the vise, I loosened the two body screws and pushed the handle to the left--indicated by the torx-driver--so the blade, when closed, would move to the right. Holding it firm with my left hand, it was easy to access the torx screw heads on the right side to re-tighten them.
After tightening everything up, the blade was actually a tiny bit too-far-right and the action that had been fairly free-dropping was stiff and tight. Backing off the pivot in two slight increments brought it back to dead-balls center and loosened it right up without resulting in any blade-play whatsoever. In fact, the action is even better now, completely free-dropping closed using only my thumb--pure Benchmade heaven!
Bryce started a
feedback thread for Jimmy over at GBU by way of a thank you for his excellent tip and also to mention that it's great to have a Benchmade forum mod active and engaged here at BF now. Jimmy's a regular knife guy too and we've had a nice exchange regarding a shared appreciation of my Micarta Grip.
for both you guys!
Maybe I'll edit this a bit and post again at Maintenance and Tinkering....
--Steve
