Little knife tricks that work

Dadpool

Dadpool

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One of my favorite quotes, from the author Mercedes Lackey, is, "If it is stupid but works, it isn’t stupid." In that vein I thought it would be fun to start a thread to share what I think of as little knife tricks.

The collective wisdom here on BF is a beautiful thing. I've learned so much here over the years!

I have three of my own little knife tricks to contribute. :)

Taming rough G10 without sanding
Sanding G10 produces nasty fiberglass dust, so to avoid that I use this method. I didn't come up with this, but it's been almost a decade since I stumbled across it and I have no idea where I saw it (probably here!). [Note that SharpBits points out in post #17 below that this method does still produce fiberglass dust. I'm not a fiberglass PhD, proceed at your own risk. :thumbsup:]

Find an old pair of jeans you're willing to sacrifice, take off the knife's pocket clip, rest the jeans on something stable (I usually use my thigh or the arm of my office chair), and rub the knife back and forth vigorously on the jeans. I usually estimate 15-30 minutes per scale for an Emerson, which is the roughest G10 I regularly encounter. When you're done, blow the knife down all over with a can of compressed air. I put on a TV show to pass the time.

This essentially reproduces the G10-taming effect of months of pocket wear in under an hour. I've been using the same sacrificial pair of jeans for 5+ years and there are still viable patches of denim (turn them inside out to double their lifespan). 😂

I don't recommend this technique for light-colored scales, as I've encountered some that will easily absorb the dye from jeans. This method also does produce a lot of tiny particles of jeans-fluff, which likes to gather in hard-to-reach places like around scale screws.

Helping a detent ball wear a path during the break-in period without disassembly
Fold a scrap of paper in half, or just use a bit of index card, open the knife, disengage the lockbar like you're going to close it, and -- before actually closing it -- slide the piece of card along the tang until it's "depth" reaches the detent ball. Then slowly close the blade; the detent ball will ride on the card rather than the blade, cleaning its little path. Then open the knife again, disengage the lockbar, and slide out the card.

Some folders don't need much of a break-in period, but many do (I do this with all my Hinderers, for example). In my experience keeping the detent ball's path clean this way helps smooth out and speed up the process.

I like this method because I don't need to disassemble the knife, and it doesn't involve oil or any real work whatsoever.

Dadpool's patented detent strength scale for locking folders
😐 Salt shaker: I can shake the knife as hard as I would a shaker of salt when seasoning my food and the blade stays closed. This is the bare minimum for a detent I consider safe.

🙂 Stubborn ketchup bottle: You know when you shake a ketchup bottle really hard because no ketchup is coming out? A knife that passes that test has a solid detent.

😁 Fastball special: If I can whip my whole arm down at the floor like I'm throwing a fastball and the blade stays in place, detent nirvana has been achieved. I haven't encountered many knives that can hit this mark.

It's a bit silly...but it works! This scale is great if you're chatting with a seller and trying to establish a common framework for detent strength.

How about you?
What little knife tricks do you use all the time?
 
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pure tung oil for wood maintenance, imho it's great (but does require some time to absorb and dry properly, I use a very small amount normally unless it's completely untreated & freshly dried)

stropping: in general, a good leather strop with some diamond paste is amazing for most edge maintenance ... new knife enthusiasts almost always waste too much steel in pursuit of poppin edges

...
other little things like knowing when NOT to use a knife... i.e. paint cans, it takes 2 seconds to get a flathead screwdriver
... or if you MUST abuse a knife, keep a mora handy, they are almost indestructible and even if you do ruin one, the cost is very low
 
Awesome thread. I use some of these too, and learned a couple new ones!

*For centering a blade that's off center, open the blade and push the side of the blade against a table towards the scale that the blade favors. This ones a little hard to explain without pics, but if your blade favors the presentation side scale when the knife is closed: Open up the knife, hold the knife with the presentation side scale up towards you, and press the blade down against a table. Start with lower pressure and work your way up until you center it (or get close). If the blade favors the clip side, do the same except press the other way. This technique can seem a little counter intuitive, but it works many times. It surprised me the first time I did it and it worked.

*Always keep the lock faces (lockbar lockface and lockface on the blade tang) clean and de-greased on a framelock or linerlock (some people do differently). If you have lock-stick, clean the lock faces with a tiny bit of rubbing alcohol on a Q-tip. Grease or oil on the lockfaces often creates lockstick. If they're both completely clean and you still have lock-stick, draw on the blade tang side lock face with a pencil, cycle the knife a few times, and draw on it one more time. Blow the excess graphite out.

*Sharpy on the lockfaces can also help lockstick.

*If your action gets nasty, use the technique that Dadpool Dadpool talked about, with using a index card/stiff piece of paper to clean the detent ball track, and then put the tiniest dot of oil/grease on a q-tip and try to just hit the detent ball with the grease. It should be running real smooth if you get the lubrication on the detent ball.

*My other main routine when I take apart a knife for the first time is clean and degrease everything with rubbing alcohol, then put a little bit of metal polish (like Simichrome) on a small section of an old strop/old denim glued to a piece of wood, etc., then place the washer down on the strop and push it around in a circle or figure-eight about 10-20 times, flip it over and do the same to the other side. Do this until the washers are bright and shiny. Then degrease them again and re-assemble the knife with whatever lube you like to use (I use CRK grease or Hoppes #9 oil). The knife's action should be very much measurably better, unless the knife was already super broken in. (you'll probably still feel a difference even if the knife's broken in because you'll get rid of the corrosion on the washers). I like this technique because it's not enough abrasion to mess with the tolerances, but makes a massive improvement in the action.

I'll see if I can think of anything else.

Edit:
*I like to seal the part of a fixed blade where the stick tang of the blade goes into a sealed handle (like a Mora etc.) Water can get in between the blade tang and the handle where they meet and cause corrosion inside, or just around that area. I use a little bit of Silicone seal (you can use other stuff too, I just happen to always have that and have used it a lot for other stuff, plus it's clear) and jam some into the cracks all the way around that area with your finger or a flat popsicle stick. Then wipe around it real well before it dries so that you can't see it.
 
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JBoone said:
I have found graphite/pencil helped as well regarding sticky frame locks.
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I have used both and both work well. On a SG Bad Monkey sharpee worked best and lasted longer. On an old ZT0550 (i think that was the one) the pencil worked best. Probably was different things going on with each knife.
 
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Whompping the end of a Torx bit with a steel hammer while the bit is in the screw head to unlock Loc Tite on stubborn screws.
Actually I use that more at work than I do on my knives.
Thank you Sal of Spyderco.
PS: another upside of doing that is it "upsets" the end of the bit and makes it fit tighter in the screw.
 
I'm on a roll . . .
these two are not little, THEY ARE HUGE and they totally changed my knife life that I started being frustrated by from about age six and into my thirties but once learned has made the last thirty years MAGIC :

1. Use a coarse enough stone to sharpen.
2. Thin the blade and or edge as much as possible but still hold up to the work at hand.
 
-Making a hinderer spanner bit by taking the pry arm off of a pair of fingernail clippers

-Removal of Spyderco scales over the flared lanyard tube by sliding the shaft of a driver between the liners and scales (like this)

- For Spyderco lock-back blade swaps, holding the lock compressed with a zip-tie.
 
Dadpool said:
Sanding G10 produces nasty fiberglass dust, so to avoid that I use this method. I didn't come up with this, but it's been almost a decade since I stumbled across it and I have no idea where I saw it (probably here!).

Find an old pair of jeans you're willing to sacrifice, take off the knife's pocket clip, rest the jeans on something stable (I usually use my thigh or the arm of my office chair), and rub the knife back and forth vigorously on the jeans. I usually estimate 15-30 minutes per scale for an Emerson, which is the roughest G10 I regularly encounter. When you're done, blow the knife down all over with a can of compressed air. I put on a TV show to pass the time.
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This is just a slow version of sanding (abrading) the G10. The dust is the same fiberglass you were hoping to avoid now combined with cotton dust. Best to sand under water if you don’t have an adequate dust collection system.
 
SharpBits said:
This is just a slow version of sanding (abrading) the G10. The dust is the same fiberglass you were hoping to avoid now combined with cotton dust. Best to sand under water if you don’t have an adequate dust collection system.
Click to expand...
Well, that's distressing. I was sure that using a soft "abrasive" (jeans) was just the same as inserting and removing the knife from my pocket for a few months, except all at once. I've always taken the knife outside to blow off the dust and never had any issues...but maybe I just got lucky. 😐
 
Dadpool said:
Well, that's distressing. I was sure that using a soft "abrasive" (jeans) was just the same as inserting and removing the knife from my pocket for a few months, except all at once. I've always taken the knife outside to blow off the dust and never had any issues...but maybe I just got lucky. 😐
Click to expand...
If you are as old as I am or close, you grew up when there was still asbestos in brake pads and we breathed that daily. Your minimal exposure to the fiberglass dust is not likely to be an issue.
 
SharpBits said:
If you are as old as I am or close, you grew up when there was still asbestos in brake pads and we breathed that daily. Your minimal exposure to the fiberglass dust is not likely to be an issue.
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I'm in my late 40s. Sounds like it couldn't be worse than smog or sitting near the smoking section on airplanes. 😂

I'll add a little note pointing to your post in my OP.
 
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