Knifemaking Tuesdays Week 20 - bearing pockets, detent and lockup Media

Long video for you guys this week! This is becoming like a TV show... The goal for this week was to get the prototype to flip perfectly and lock up solid, but to do that I had to tackle quite a few specific little things. First off, my heat treated blade has two bearing pockets around the pivot, this is the surface where the ball bearings roll on, and these ones weren't flat at all! This caused the knife to bind and have a sticky action, not cool for a ball bearing knife. I took a lot of time and make a sweet fixture that will hold the blade FLAT while I re-machined the bearing pockets. Then I show the process I used to set the detent ball into the handle and how to locate the detent hole into the blade, along with what drill bits I used to do that. At this point, the blade rolls smoothly and has a great detent action, now it's a good flipper! Last thing to do is get it to lock up like a vault. Previous attempts to machine the lock tang in one go have failed miserably, leaving lots of play. This time I made a fancy jig to hold the blade and let me re-machine the lock face as many times as I want until it fits perfectly. Definitely the way to go.

Thanks for watching!