Mastodawn

How can I fix this S&W M&P 1100078 knife that gets stuck open?

https://sh.itjust.works/post/60822999

How can I fix this S&W M&P 1100078 knife that gets stuck open? - sh.itjust.works

I got this knife as a gift several years ago, I don’t really use it a whole lot but I do like to take it camping and such. However, on a camping trip a year or so ago, it got stuck open. There is some little wire loop looking thing that seems to pop out of wherever it’s supposed to be and blocks the thumb unlocker from working. I can take a tiny screwdriver or Allen wrench and poke around in there and pop the thing back into place, and then it works and closes just fine. And it’ll be fine for a few times, opens and closes correctly, but after a handful of times that piece inevitably pops back out again and locks it open. I’ve tried to use a tiny torx bit to remove the sides to see if I can figure out what’s going on, but the screws just spin. The big screw at the hinge unscrews as expected but all the little ones all act like they’re stripped. What else can I do? Is there some trick to removing the sides? Any help would be appreciated. Here’s what it looks like opened correctly with the little piece still wherever it’s supposed to be: [https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/0c464150-930a-4185-afe4-b25f21e82787.jpeg] And when the piece pops out and gets stuck: [https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/62b3a9a4-c259-4846-977d-32503a2b6959.jpeg] Somewhat useful red circle if you couldn’t see the problem: [https://sh.itjust.works/pictrs/image/fbd8a8dd-a704-4e12-aee2-2fc94790d44a.jpeg]

Show thread

cetan May 26

It appears, from the photos online, that what is holding the knife together is the pivot screw at the front (which you said you can take out) and 2 sets of screws at the back. One set right by the glass breaker and one set right behind the belt cutter. You may need to have 2 torx bit screw drivers, one on each side of the pair of screws turning in opposite directions. Likely there is a barrel with threads on both ends in between the two sets of screws and the barrel is free to spin internally. So you have to leverage one screw driver against the other to loosen them.

This knife is an assisted open knife, so perhaps the spring mechanism inside has figured out how to wiggle itself free (or whatever was holding the spring in place has broken). It might be challenging to put it all back together if you can sort out what might be happening.

If you don’t have additional torx bits and a driver, the cost of those is going to be some good percentage of an exact replacement. Certainly there’s value in learning how this thing is put together, but it might not be repairable in a cost-effective way.

Show thread

ilovededyoupiggy May 26

Thank you much! Using the two opposite screws against each other makes sense, I bet you’re right. I only have one torx bit that’s small enough but I may see if there’s anything else I can make work for that, a little Allen wrench or something maybe.

Totally agree with your comment about the fix maybe not being cost effective, that’s pretty much where I’m at. I would like to try to fix it if I can, but I’m definitely not attached to it enough to warrant spending any money on a fix when I could put the same money into a better replacement and be done with it.

Thanks again!

Show thread

cetan May 26

The one nice thing about having 2 sets of torx drivers is that now you have 2 sets of torx drivers! 😁 One can wander off into some hidden area of a junk drawer or a forgotten tool box or something and you’ll have a backup!

In all seriousness, if you do get it apart, snap a couple pictures and post a follow-up. There’s good info in a tear-down, even if someone never buys the same knife, it’s good to see how things work.

And if you get to the point where you would like any recommendations for a replacement, post that as well. :)

Show thread

ilovededyoupiggy May 27

I found a little torx wrench from a 3d printer that happened to fit perfectly. So I used that, and the bit driver I already had, stuck the thing in a vise, and tried to get it apart. Unfortunately the first screw head stripped itself mostly smooth. It’ll still turn clockwise to tighten but the bit won’t grab anything counterclockwise to loosen. So that’s unfortunate. I’ll maybe give it another shot later, try a different screw, see if I can loosen it up a little without destroying it. I’ll def post teardown pics if I do manage to get it apart.

If you’ve got any recs for something roughly similar in the, say, $25-50 range that’s still decent quality, I’d love to hear them. I do like the size of it, it was a decent little knife for camping and stuff, length and weight and everything felt pretty good for what I needed it for. I liked the thumb lock to keep it open, even though that was this knife’s downfall, it felt safer to use that way than my little Swiss army knife. Don’t need the whole M&P tacticool look necessarily. The glass break and seatbelt cutter were I suppose kind of good ideas for a knife I could just keep in the car door pocket or something, and I do sorta like the idea of “knife, plus extras” as long as the extras make sense, but wouldn’t say I needed them really. (I mean hell, those parts of the knife aren’t broke, so I could still keep the one I’ve got as a dedicated car escape tool, if nothing else.)

Show thread

cetan May 27

In the $25-50 range, the world is your oyster, in the knife world that is for sure. Especially if seatbelt cutter and glass breaker are not requirements. And honestly, most of the glass breaker tips you see on knives don’t actually do a good job doing that. (No experience with your particular knife, just an overall observation).

If you were to look at just KnifeCenter.com and just knives that are in stock today, you get 950+ choices for knives in your price range with blades between 3” and 4” in length.

https://www.knifecenter.com/kc_new/store_store.html?a=folder&instock=t&max_blade=4&max_price=50&min_blade=3&min_price=25&sortType=defaultDe

If you like the combo edge (partially serrated) there are lots of options as well. I don’t think you can filter on that option though so you’ll have to look through.

For trying different lock types (the term for the lock on your knife is: liner lock) you can also filter on the left side. I would highly recommend something with an AXIS/Crossbar lock because they are a lot of fun/very fidget friendly. :) But there are also lots of great knives with liner locks in that list too.

Feel free to ask any questions about brands, styles, etc. once you dig into the list. (Of course, you can buy most of these elsewhere if you have a favorite spot, but the KnifeCenter website is great for filtering/sorting etc. so at least you can get a handle on what’s out there.)

Show thread

ilovededyoupiggy May 27

So I looked through that list and have narrowed down to a few choices. I do like the combo blade a lot for camping and outdoors use.

Kershaw 8100 Funxion EMT, which looks to be a functional replacement for the S&W as far as the extras.
Ontario Rat Model 1 8849, which is just the knife without the tools, but seems to have great reviews.
Gerber Highbrow 30-001638 that has the axis/crossbar lock you mentioned. Doesn’t specify the blade length but based on the overall length I’m guessing it’s similar to the others. I can’t find this one on Gerber’s website, which makes me think it may be an older model on clearance at knife center or something.
Kershaw 2038ST Iridium, which is priced a bit higher than I was really going for but I could probably be convinced if it’s worth it and will hold up well, it does look pretty nice.

I guess my biggest question for all these is, being in the same price range as the S&W, are they “inexpensive” or are they “cheap”? Could any of these be considered anything close to “BIFL” based on an expectation of light/medium duty outdoor use a handful of times per year?

Show thread

dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️May 28

I don’t think you can go wrong with either of the Kershaws. Even among their budget models, Kershaw seems to make a solid knife. I own oodles of knives from them from old to new-ish, cheap to expensive.

Ditto with the Ontario Rat. For what it’s worth, I also have a knockoff (sort of, it’s complicated) of the Rat which I go on about at some length here.

Personally I would give the Gerber a miss, although that’s probably my own bias speaking. Geber is not the entity it once was (some screwball standouts notwithstanding) and it seems these days the majority of their output is low grade Chinese trash. I do like some low grade Chinese trash now and again, but I prefer mine to be cheap enough not to care and at minimum to be honest about itself. The Highbrow in particular seems to run afoul of Gerber Disease, which is a well known disorder to knife aficionados which apparently results in Gerber being pathologically unwilling to admit what kind of steel their low-end knives are actually made out of. It’s hard to take that as a good sign.

Your S&W knife is actually made by whatever faceless Chinese OEM that Taylor Brands, LLC uses to churn out the sum total of their department store and auto parts store bound models. You’re paying a lot for the licensing of the name there, and not an awful lot is left over for the actual knife part of the knife, based on what I’ve seen from all of those that I’ve handled. Your S&W may have retailed for $55 or whatever, but in real terms its actually worth about $15 and possesses roughly the same quality as a modern no-name Chinese knife at that price point. That’s fine and all, but if I’m going to own that sort of thing I’d much rather pay $15 for it than $55…

Ganzo D727M: More Ganzo Journalism - Lemmy.World

Room service just sent this up. To cut the limes. [https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/103f8eae-294c-4aef-803d-9981321fd427.jpeg] It’s a Ganzo D727M, and if you saw it and smelled a rat you were right. That’s because Ganzo is as usual, oh, let’s call it offering “alternative” buying options to knives from other manufacturers. In this case it’s the near spitting image of the Ontario Knife Company’s RAT. [https://ontarioknife.com/collections/rat%C2%AE-folder-series-1] In a previous writing, [https://lemmy.world/post/14810340] we looked at the Ganzo G729 and I ended it with a long bout of introspection on the price of a knife, and its true worth. Undercutting your own countrymen, I decided, can be worth it when the asking price is already too damn high. The case the D727M presents is less clear cut, though. The RAT it apes is not an unattainable dream to the working man – it only runs about $50. But the D727M, by contrast, is only $21 at the time of writing. In the Ganzo tradition, there are also some changes. [https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9ee44d87-7421-4c36-8cf9-1afad2a82ef2.jpeg] Ganzo has seen fit to equip it with their “G-Lock” Axis style lock, as opposed to the liner lock the RAT comes with. Which if you ask me is a lot nicer than the original. [https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e4915083-e3bd-47a6-a5a7-8116c5127af1.jpeg] And rather than the AUS-8 that much of the RAT series comes in, the D727M’s flat ground, satin stonewashed blade is made of D2 tool steel. And it’s a big knife. Near as makes no difference to 8-1/4" long open, 4-5/8" closed, and its drop pointed blade is 3-1/2" long and a stout 0.133" thick. The knife is 0.506" thick across its G-10 scales, not including the clip. It’s 1.345" across in breadth at its widest point when closed, and at 115.8 grams (4.08 ounces) all of that makes it a big knife for big hands, and big jobs. [https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/4bdcbbf0-9ddc-4479-98a5-7ccc7e1f3e36.jpeg] The clip is a traditional design with Ganzo’s now familiar three screw mount, reversible, but with tip-up positions only. It’s not deep carry, and it’s nothing special. It’s sprung with a nice balance of grip force and release, though, providing a nice draw. The whole knife’s construction is very familiar, really. G-10 scales on top of steel liners which, if you peer in the gap, have big holes cut in them to make them lighter. Shiny Torx hardware. Stairstep daibolo spacers. A spine that’s as square and straight as a priest’s collar. But at $21, is it any good? And even then, is $21 worth what it is and all that it entails? In that foul year of our lord, 1972, Richard Nixon went to China. Only he, we are told, could have done it. Nixon opened the gates in the Great Wall and it turned out that the CCP liked their little taste of capitalism. They liked it a lot. Most of all, they must have liked the smell of money. Spurred by Western investment, goods started to leave China for the rest of the world. First a trickle, then a torrent, now a flood. The Party can call themselves “Communist” all they want but they run the whole damn country as one giant export business now, for profit – the world’s factory. And we gave it to them. Oh, how we decry the Sinoist takeover of the manufactured goods sector these days. Why don’t we make anything here anymore? I hate to break it to you, but it’s not some yellow Communist plot. It’s because we’ve been ratfucked by our own; the fatback grosseros on our shores carved it all up and hired China to make it cheaper so they could sell it back to us with a higher margin. “Profits this quarter,” is the refrain. “Fuck the future and the consequences.” We gave China the plans for our products and told them to make it all for us. So they did. And in the bargain, the Chinese knockoff was born. Take Apple, a company as American as, well, Apple pie. They hired China to make the iPhone for them. Gave them the equipment, the bill of materials, and all the plans and blueprints. So Foxconn, and China, know how to make an iPhone. Now, knockoff iPhones are being cranked out by the containerload. And knockoff everything else, too. It’s the same story. We put up the lightning rod and threw the switch; nobody should be surprised about winding up with the monster. So far the American knife industry has nearly, but not completely, escaped the siren call of cheap overseas labor. There are been a few casualties: Schrade, now owned by Taylor Cutlery which is Chinese. Gerber, nearly completely made in China now. But by and large, the American knifemakers have remained resolutely American… Mostly. Almost. Some cheaper models are outsourced to China or Taiwan. Hell, the Ontario RAT is one of them. It’s made in Taiwan. So just like the iPhone, even its original is technically Chinese. So is almost everything from Cold Steel, and a few Kershaw models including my beloved CQC-6K. But that’s just how it starts. So we’ve seen that if you give them the plans, the Chinese can make it for you and if you pay them enough they can even make it well. It’s when they give it a go on their own that things tend to unwind. We’re very familiar with the Chinese knockoff here in the knife hobby. It’s a well worn joke. It’s always the same story: Make it fast, make it cheap. Make it now, sell it now, never mind about tomorrow. Cheat. Corners are there to be cut. Rattly and nasty. Horrible and strange. The purview only of provincial rednecks and desperate teenagers who don’t know any better. Fear and loathing in the glass case at the flea market. And up until just about the day before yesterday there was nothing of value to find there. These are the same factories and drop-shippers grinning while selling you a “12 million lumen” flashlight that runs off of two AA’s, or $12 “Rolexes” made out of plastic and lead paint. But suddenly they’re getting better. In 2019, Tim Leatherman, the founder of the Leatherman Tool and Knife Company, said this: “There’s a lot of knockoffs coming from China. The price is about one-tenth of ours, but the quality is about one-twentieth. Nevertheless, the day is going to come when the price is 50 percent of ours but the quality is 80 percent.” That day is now. I’m holding the proof in my hand, and it says Ganzo on it. [https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/10410246-fd20-4d94-96cc-2ea923eb8e6a.jpeg] The fit and finish of the D727M are phenomenal. Mechanically, there isn’t a single thing about it not to recommend. Flick the thumb studs and it leaps open like a frog from a dynamite pond. Hold back the lock and give it a swing and it’ll snap shut like a mouse – or possibly rather rat – trap. The lockup has all the precision of a Swiss watch. The blade doesn’t wiggle in the slightest. Not the merest scuff nor rough machine mark nor unfinished surface is visible anywhere on it. No shortcuts are visible. The blade grind is even, precise, fully true, and sharp out of the box. And it’s only $21. What terrible progress the Chinese could make overnight if only they could figure out how to apply all this know-how, all this skill, this mastery of mass production to an original design for once. We’re at slack water now. Once the baggage of the copy is cast off and we’re presented with a bespoke product not shoddily run off for a low-effort buck but made to the same standards and for the same price, the tide will finally have turned. And we will be fucked. Past that point there will be no stopping it. There probably already isn’t. As much as we are addicted to buying whatever it is, China is addicted to its manufacture. China is a rich country now because it owns US debt. We’re locked together in this grim waltz, neither ever able to stop because the moment we do the entire teetering edifice would collapse on the spot. [https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/90b6e451-1263-4b84-98b5-1feb1d9c7ed3.jpeg] The Inevitable Conclusion The relentless march of globalization has taught us just how small the world actually turns out to be. But now, should it be normal for something as mundane as the purchase of a pocket knife have ethical considerations stapled to it? It’s easy to say China this, China that, as if it were a single monolithic entity. China is ripping us off and siphoning our jobs. China is selling us back our own American dream, 99 cents at a time. China is repression personified, and China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs. Well, the Chinese government is. And fuck the Chinese government with a cheese grater on a pole. But the Chinese government is no more the Chinese people than the American government is you and me. Chinese jobs are manned by Chinese people – Running the machine shops that are making this knife, for instance. Chinese people who are, hopefully, becoming part of China’s finally burgeoning middle class. And if so, good for them. The fact of the matter is, the D727M is a fine knife. Everything Ganzo makes is, as far as I can tell. Once either is in your hand, there’s nothing between an Ontario RAT and this Ganzo. Pick the one you like. The rest is goddamn politics. [https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/56146414-593e-43a6-88e8-3ea830ba2655.jpeg]

Show thread

dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️May 27

This is, alas, a cheap knife. Now it’s doing cheap knife things. I mirror @[email protected]’s prediction that the part getting out of place and causing you trouble is the spring for this knife’s spring assist mechanism. It’s supposed to have a hook bent into it that rides in a hole in the blade’s heel. The hook may have snapped off, or your main pivot screw may have backed out to the extent that there’s now too much of a gap to prevent the spring from working its way out of place. Based on the amount of gap I can see I theorize it’s the latter.

You’ll probably find something rather like this lurking beneath one of the scales:

How that goes in is the hook on the end goes in the hole in the blade, and the wiggly part of the spring rests flat inside the pocket carved out for it on the back side of the handle scale. There will be one (or most likely, two) positions in the blade’s rotation where the spring is completely slack and won’t be under tension against either the edges of its pocket or the barrel of the pivot screw, and keeping the blade there when you reassemble the knife will make your life a lot easier.

It’s unlikely any screw in this knife has an anti-rotation flat on it, especially the main pivot screw, so you’re undoubtedly going to need to stick a screwdriver in both sides at once to get any of them undone. Cheap screws are likely to strip when met with cheap screwdrivers, or at least screwdriver tips. I prefer Wiha screwdriver bits since they seem to hold up the longest and enact the least amount of violence on cheese soft Chinese screw heads. The body screws are probably threadlockered as well, and you can encourage them to let go by pressing the tip of a hot soldering iron against them for thirty seconds or so. I’d advise against bringing a heat gun or torch anywhere near it.

T6 Torx and T8 Torx are the two sizes you’ll need most often for taking apart knives. You can buy these online individually for a buck or two a piece of you don’t want to shell out for a full set.

I’d categorize this as a learning experience: This is an inexpensive knife that’s not exactly manufactured to a high degree of quality or care. But the way it comes apart and goes together is indicative of most modern folders which includes better, higher quality knives you might own in the future. If you ever have to delve into one of those, the skills and construction methods you learned from this one will be useful.