Pivot Problem

You've been leaving your Benchmade too close to your Opinels (wood body knives).
The Benchmade may have picked up some bad habits from them, one of which is that the pivot seizes up when it gets wet.

I'm kidding . I have no idea why this happened to your Benchmade unless the pivot is already kind of overly tight and just the coldness effected the pivot. Cold actually makes my Benchmade 710 pivot more freely so . . . . hellifIknow.

Just tonight I was melting candle wax into the end grain and pivot of one of my Opinels to prevent this very thing. I have had good success with one of my other Opinels doing the wax thing to it.

Do not melt wax into your Benchmade.
Good luck.
I'm pulling for you.
We're all in this together.

 

I have a mini grip that is my edc at work and gets abused. And the last week or so I've noticed after opening the shipping boxes for a stove and a dishwasher it was stiff as heck to open/close for a couple of times.I ended up walking over to the air compressor after spraying it out with wd40 (I hate that stuff but it was handy) and blew it out real good. Free as a bird! Then of course when I got home I put some Go-Juice in it.
I think if your pivot screw is just a touch too tight, it will get water between the washers and more or less hydro lock. Mine had dust between them and was gritty as "F". I may be full of it (wouldn't be the 1st time) but I would back the pivot off just a touch and see how it acts.

 

Might be that whatever liquid was in the hose pushed some grit into the pivot. I’d just wash the mechanism out good with WD40 or Rem Oil. I prefer Rem Oil myself and is what I use in my 551 Griptilian.

 

On the contrary . . . you may have just hit on the next cutting edge / high tech knife lock mechanism of the future !
Everybody seems to not be able to get along with out hydraulic brakes on their bicycle (some how I can . . . cheerfully) so . . . it is only natural to have a hydraulic lock on their knife .

I'll leave it to you to say if I am serious or not.

 

Such a subtle smart ass,lol hydro means water, hydraulic is oil. if you get water between the washers it can create a suction as they move and seize. they get stuck and lock up. hydro-lock.
Hydra lock would be leg cuffs for a Japanese horror film monster.

 

GOOD ONE !
or . . . or . . . the next new cool name for a knife . . . another multi blade Spyderco perhaps ?

Don't be offended, I'm speaking generally (and speaking from 45 plus years as a mechanic ((fifty if you count the years I was working on my 20inch stingray bicycle . . . I put chopper forks on it I made out of EMT ) . . .

water between the washers . . . creating enough suction to actually seize a pivoting joint with a three inch long lever to over come it . . . boarders on fantasy.

The grit theory must be the culprit.

 

No offense taken, and your right, it probably was the grit.In the end, the hydro lock was as likely as emt working for forks on a bike.lol Sissy bar maybe,but....

 

Unless it was some exceptionally heavy duty stuff!

 

Or a skinny butt kid with all the weight tipped onto the rear wheel. I was eight or nine at the time. It may have been some good stuff, my Dad was an industrial steam fitter, I just used what showed up in the scrap barrel.

I was inspired by the guy next door, a member of Satan's Irons Harley Chopper "Gang" (club). He rode and showed show choppers of the first order. Nice guy. He was a surveyor by trade who took me under his wing wrenching wise.
The conduit was 1 inch and never failed. Once I out grew the long forks I used the stuff to make tool handles. Maybe it was RMC or IMC ( I'm not an electrician though I was an assistant for a summer wiring new homes with the Master (and crawling through spaces he couldn't fit in not so new homes).

Keeping in mind the wall thickness of the tubing in the frame that I made that I ride to work every day is 1mm at the ends and down to as little as 0.4mm in most of the middle. 'course it's seamless mandrel drawn Italian alloy steel similar to chromoly.

However my butt has gotten much more robust and I carry twenty or thirty pounds of gear and lunch at three times the speed. It's all relative . . . or it's magic . . . I don't know.

 

• 
  Support BladeForums!
  Paid memberships don't see ads!

I just went down to the shop and measured the tubing from that period that I later used to make a tool handle : wall thickness 1.3mm , OD 23mm
So not 1inch id but bigger than 3/4" id. less than 1/16" wall thickness.

. . . er . . . what the hell was this thread about ? . . . ? . . .
Oh yah . . . I never had any problem with the fork locking up from getting wet.