Blade not centered

I can't seem to get my blade to lay in the center of my linerlock.Everything is flat and square.The pivot is snug and the knife goes together easy,nothing in a bind.The point of the blade on the opposite side of the lock is to far over,not much but just enough to be aggravating.It seems that the lock is pushing it over.I have the lock bent to where it just barely touches the liner on the other side.Would washers with a large O.D.help? I'm using 1/2 inch Nylatron washers.Anyone got any ideas on this? Dan

Dan, I had a similar problem a while back, you might like to check an earlier thread called "a small problem" to find a solution. First off I would remove the blade and check that the blade grind is central. Sandwich the blade between 2 flat plates and see if the tip lies in the centre. Sometimes I've found that the spring is too strong and actually forces the blade off centre in the closed position, so I lightened off the spring a tad. I hope this helps.

Regards from Australia.

The liners are not perpendicular to each other. Open the knife, hold the knife with one hand on the blade and the other on the handle. Flex the knife with light pressure at the piviot into the direction the knife blade was closet to the linner when closed. This will aligned liners.

Ray

Howdy all
Another thing to check (once you've done the above stuff) is that you've got your "formula" right i.e. blade + washers = spacer.

All the advice above is right on, but I've found a few other things in my own battles with this issue:

1. Make sure the blade isn't warped. In addition, make sure that the hole in the blade for the pivot pin is perpendicular.

2. Make sure that the hole in the liners for the pivot pin is perpendicular to the liner(s). A good, SHARP drill helps a lot here. I also ream the pivot pin and stop pin holes with a carbide reamer to get good finish and precise fits. If you don't use a reamer, step drill (drill first with an undersize drill and then the finish drill) the hole.

3. Make sure that the screws that hold the liners together don't cause the pivot pin to go off perpendicular. I drill pivot pin, stop pin, and hold screw holes in both liners at the same time, with the liners held together with double-sided tape to make sure all this goes right. I have more than a few scrap pieces of titanium that look remarkably like they were intended to be liners as a result of NOT getting this right.

4. I make my own pivot pins - hardened 440C - ground to a tight fit (usually a few tenths oversized for a 3/16" nominal hole).

5. Before cutting the liner, fit the blade, liners, spacer to make sure it's right. Fix it if it isn't (see titanium collection comment above).

6. I use oversize washers - made from .015" teflon (couldn't find Nylatron sheet) - I make them as large as I possibly can to provide as much support to the blade as possible.

7. Even after all this, I found that once the lock is cut and bent, it forces the blade to one side - but not the side you'd expect! Instead of forcing the blade away from the lock side, it forces it closer to the lock side (but this only happens if everything is right up to this point and there's no slop in the washer-pivot pin fitup). The reason is that the tension created by the bent lock actually causes the whole knife frame to distort in the opposite direction! What I've done to fix this is: after bending the liner (toward the knife center) I then bend rest of the same liner AWAY from knife center - a small amount. The assembled knife ends up perfectly flat and square, with the blade exactly in the center. You actually don't want to over-do this, as after a while the lock bend relaxes slightly and the knife will go off-center again.

If all this fails, you actually can bend the entire knife (but not with bolsters and scales attached) to get the blade to center up.

Hope this helps...

Check the bend on your leaf spring. Is it an even bend that arcs or is it a fairly sharp bend that when you close the blade the leaf is actually pushing against the scale and creating an odd torque effect oo the liner.

Yet another one...even if you are match drilling the liners, it is possible (esp if tapping by hand) to tap the spacer screws off perpendicular, which will put everything else out of whack...if this is the case, then as weird as it might seem it would be a good idea to match drill and tap the spacer fasteners, join the liners (so they'll fall where they should) and THEN match drill the pivot and stop pin holes...
May sound weird but I AM down under after all

Thanks to all who replied.After forcing the blade in the direction that it was closest to the liner it now lays in the center of the knife.You guys are great,I never would have thought of doing that.This forum is priceless,many thanks Dan