Help! The case of the seized pivot

dkb45

dkb45

Joined
Dec 16, 2012
Messages
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I bought a Real Steel Griffin recently, and I love the knife. I actually got the upgraded version with titanium and M390 for a mere $100 (super thrilled at that price!), but out of the box the action seemed a little meh. Little oil helped almost none, so I figured I'd pop the knife apart and clean it.

So far I've damaged my Wiha driver a tiny bit on this pivot. I've tried heating it with a soldering iron to no avail, and even tried baking it in the oven for an hour at 200° and the damned pivot screw will not budge.

I tried emailing Real Steel to absolutely no avail (not really surprised, they are a Chinese company with little to no US support), and I really don't want to have to drill the pivot out because I don't have a replacement screw set. I'm kind of at a loss, because I know heat normally frees threadlock, but I don't know how hot I can take it with the handles having CF inserts.

The soldering iron somehow managed to disperse the heat completely, I used an IR thermometer to find out that the whole pivot area, after having the soldering iron on the knife for nearly an hour, only went up about 20°, it wasn't even too hot to touch (the soldering iron does peak out over 400° though).
 
It takes over 300 degrees to soften thread lockers.
Your best bet is to stop disassembling your knife before you ruin it.
 
I use a heat gun, goes over 1000deg (Mines got a dial every 100deg or so to choose your temp) . gotta make sure you don't heat up that blade and cause an issue with the temper. Others have tried boiling in water which I don't think gets to the required Temps but some had it worked for them. Spyderco use a shock method that I'm not sure is a great idea. I've tried it like a caveman and never worked for me, but I don't have what ever tools spyderco uses to do it the way they do.

Some cheaper soldering irons won't work cause they just won't get hot enough. Like the ones that just plug into the wall. Want an adjustable one with a dial to turn it up.
 
Pivot is not free spinning. What is the temperature where M390 can get the temper damaged, also would an oven be better for temperature control over a heat gun with only low and high, or would that melt the resin in the CF inserts before the threadlock?
 
For cf it depends on the resin used. It's anyones guess what real steel uses. Should be fine between 200-300f. just don't keep a constant heat over it. With a heat gun I rotate the gun over the area vs keeping it in one spot.

Temper after heat treatment for m390 depends on the mfg. Sometimes they do a temper better 200-400 in an oven for anywhere from an hour to a few hours. I've not heat treated any blades,you'd need to research it in the forum. Not sure how it will be affected if you do another temper in that range. Could reduce the hrc a point but I'm not a knife maker so I dunno, if the heat isn't that long it may not be an issue.
 
The knife gods have smiled upon me this day! I got the damned screw apart after heating it with the heat gun. Weird thing is that the screw threads look like there's no threadlock in the, but there had to have been. The screw exploded my Bondhus driver and marred the tip of my Wiha.
 
Real steel has really good hardware. Must have been something gumming up the threads. Locker maybe? Clean the threads before you put it back together.
 
Grats. Happy you got that sucker worked loose.

Let's see some disassembly shots.
I wasn't able to find any.
 
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