New lock mechanism (or not?...)

[Cold Steel Cult]

I think I might have found a new kind of locking mechanism, at least one that i have not seen before. Keep in the mind i am very new to folders, and ask a lot of dumb questions to boot

Okay. My idea is a double lockback knife, which locks in the closed and opened positions. I don;t know what the mechanism is called, but it is the one with the pivoting bar that locks into the notch on the back of the blade. My idea is to make a relatively shallow notch on the same position on the front side of the blade, and the lever would lock into that notch when the knife closed. I am probably describing some well-known method, but i just couldnt get it off my mind that this could work. It would only work with a speciall formed blade, so it would be tricky, but worth a try i think! Please reply, all you folder masters out there...

[Wildman]

Just as you thought, there is hardly anything new in knife making. Just order yourself a copy of Chriss Crawford's "making a scale release auto" and you will see a step by step of the design you described.

Keep working at it and you never know you may come up with something novel and make a fortune.

[Ray Rogers]

Like Wildman said, don't give up trying. If you really want to come up with something new, you're going to have to do a lot of reading. Until you become familiar with the majority of lock mechanisms currently in use there is very little chance that you'll find anything new.

And, just having a different mechanism isn't always enogh. The mechanism also has to have a good reason to exist or no one will really care. For instance, a switchblade opens the blade automatically and that's an advantage over a slip joint style folder (which is about all there was before switchblades were created). Assisted opening knives do the same thing now but their design avoids laws that restrict switchblades so that is their advantage and source of popularity. Axis locks are mechanically interesting and offer a very strong lock supposedly stronger than the common alternatives and that is their advantage.

So, ask yourself in the case of your lockback that locks both open and closed, what is the advantage? If, other than that feature, it works as other lockbacks do then I'd have to say there isn't much, if any, advantage. You can't say the purpose is to keep the blade from opening when you don't want it to because the heavy spring in a normal lockback virtually guarantees the blade cannot open unintentionally.

Being different for the sake of being different has some momentary appeal in the market place but, for real success, you'll need to look for that real advantage........