Myerchin: Not easily able to open with one hand.

H

Hotrod

Joined
Mar 19, 2003
Messages
978
Hi guys,

My EDC is a Myerchin Lightknife. http://www.myerchin.com/L300.html

Its a rigging knife. Lockback, which unlocks by lifting the marlin spike (used for untying knots) It also has a little red LED built into the handle, which makes it easy to save night vision and check a chart on a late night sail.

As hard as I try, its just to small a knife to hold in my hand open with my thumb. It'll open just enough to start lifiting the lock, and then binds up, and my thumb slides off the hole. Any suggestions for smoothing out the mechanism or other knives with a marlin spike?

Its not safe for a sailor to not have a knife that they can get to with one hand... since the primary reason for having a knife on a ship full of rope is getting untangled!

Thanks for thoughts and suggestions!
 
I've never had one, but these Boye rigging knives use a standard lockback design and should be easy enough to open. They also have an optional marlinspike. The only drawback is they're expensive.
 
no experience with those knives, but what i would personally do would be to take a file to the hole and enlarge it some, allowing better leverage on it.

i have had troubles opening small knives like that before. i just kept at it until my hand got the hang of it, so to speak.

also, depending on how long the knife is, you could put a loop of string through the lanyard hole, or a split ring or something, so that you could put your pinky into the loop and use that for better leverage when opening the knife.
 
How long have you had the knife? If it's still fairly new it may just need to be "broken in" a bit. I've had a few knives that were really stiff when I got them but smoothed out nicely after I used them for a while.

It looks like a nice knife. . . I don't sail, but I still often find that I have use for a marlin spike, and I've always liked that style of folder.
 
Run a cable tie through the hole, snug it up tight, and cut off the excess. This should give you a protruding stud to push the blade open.

Doing this on Spyderco knives will enable you to "wave" them open, but I don't know if the Meyerchin handle allows for this and I guess it's a sheath knife anyway.
 
Thanks guys

Had it about 6 months as my edc. Its been a good knife, done everything I've needed it to... and the marlin spike has saved a lot of nice nylon. Hasn't worn in yet, its almost like it has a positive lock to keep it closed up to a 45 degree angle. Easy up until then, but once there it locks up. (and I work on cars/industrial equipment for a living... so I don't think its my wimpy thumb ;) )

I'll give the suggestions a try, thanks for the tips!

:cool:
 
Question:

Would a dab of fine grinding compound on the mechanism smooth out the action? I wouldn't do it on this knife because the hinge is riveted, but on one that could be disassembled would it work?
 
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