Just a caution: when I fixed it (stoning the lockbar face), it developed vertical blade play when open. It's better than having a loose blade, but not perfect. As others have said, I still love the knife.Got me the AirLite finally and after playing with it for a few days....the same thing - loose blade. When I push the lock bar the blade immediately closes. So I'll have to disassemble it and fix. Thanks God and Bladeforums I already know the cure method
P.s. The knife is freaking good anyways. I LOVE IT!
Wait, so you think it's just the spring not seating properly? It's hard to imagine how that would cause the lockbar to not press against the blade when closed. I hope that's all it is though.
Sounds familiar man! I had the same thoughts, and took the same steps. Now mine also has vertical blade-play when open, but it's only slight. That said, I can also still get the original loose-blade issue to happen, but only if I work at it. So, I still carry it, but I doubt there's a real, solid fix for this issue.Just got a brand new Air Lite tanto today, and after a couple of hours I noticed that it had the "loose blade when closed" issue and remembered this thread. I'm used to my CS knives needing to break in, but this issue is a new one for me.
Long story short, my attempts to fix the problem turned a defective knife into a broken one. That's never happened before, and boy is it ever humbling. I thought I'd be safe gradually working through the maintenance ideas in this thread, but I screwed up. I can't in good conscience return the knife, and what was originally a (presumably) covered warranty issue is now clearly end-user damage. Expensive lesson learned.
I clearly filed it too far, because it now drops all the way into the "hook" on the tang and there's an unsafe amount of front-to-back blade play. Along the way I also damaged the tiny hole in the G10 that seats the metal pin in the backspacer located closest to the spring well. That's a small, shallow hole and I bet my stronger spring blew out one edge of it.
- I started with just a careful disassembly, cleaning, and reassembly. That didn't fix the loose blade issue.
- The next least-drastic measure seemed to be increasing the spring tension, so I tried that. No luck.
- Now able to see that the issue was the stop pin preventing the lockbar from seating deeply enough when closed (which I confirmed by simply removing the stop pin, resulting in perfect closed detent), I filed down the lockbar interface.
I love this model but I'm honestly not quite sure how to go about acquiring another one. The issue didn't show up immediately, only after a bit of use -- and pandemic aside, it's not like I can play with one in the store for two hours to see if there's a problem.
TL;DR: If you're at all hesitant about trying to fix this issue yourself, do what I should have done and either return it to the dealer as defective or send it to CS for warranty repair/replacement.
You have to post pictures. There has to been a reason there’s play. There has to be a way to fix it. I worked on this knife and found the problem and fixed it. I cant see how it would cause blade play. I want to help. Throw up some pictures with the scale off, internal parts in still.Just got a brand new Air Lite tanto today, and after a couple of hours I noticed that it had the "loose blade when closed" issue and remembered this thread. I'm used to my CS knives needing to break in, but this issue is a new one for me.
Long story short, my attempts to fix the problem turned a defective knife into a broken one. That's never happened before, and boy is it ever humbling. I thought I'd be safe gradually working through the maintenance ideas in this thread, but I screwed up. I can't in good conscience return the knife, and what was originally a (presumably) covered warranty issue is now clearly end-user damage. Expensive lesson learned.
I clearly filed it too far, because it now drops all the way into the "hook" on the tang and there's an unsafe amount of front-to-back blade play. Along the way I also damaged the tiny hole in the G10 that seats the metal pin in the backspacer located closest to the spring well. That's a small, shallow hole and I bet my stronger spring blew out one edge of it.
- I started with just a careful disassembly, cleaning, and reassembly. That didn't fix the loose blade issue.
- The next least-drastic measure seemed to be increasing the spring tension, so I tried that. No luck.
- Now able to see that the issue was the stop pin preventing the lockbar from seating deeply enough when closed (which I confirmed by simply removing the stop pin, resulting in perfect closed detent), I filed down the lockbar interface.
I love this model but I'm honestly not quite sure how to go about acquiring another one. The issue didn't show up immediately, only after a bit of use -- and pandemic aside, it's not like I can play with one in the store for two hours to see if there's a problem.
TL;DR: If you're at all hesitant about trying to fix this issue yourself, do what I should have done and either return it to the dealer as defective or send it to CS for warranty repair/replacement.
When the knife is closed the lock bar cant travel down that far. I can’t understand what’s happening. There’s a pin that the lockbar falls on to that prevents it from travel down too far.
I was just posting a cautionary tale and data point, and figured this knife was a lost cause (not this model, this specific one...because I broke it).
