My anxiously awaited M4 Rift arrived today (#45 out of 50) and I was very excited. I opened the box, locked the blade open and to my dismay has significant vertical blade play. I'm talking worse than I would find acceptable in a cheap lockback, let alone a Rift, as my other one has NO play. What a letdown! The edge is thin at .016"-.017", it is dull but I don't care bacause I always put my own edge on a blade before use, but now the knife may need to go to Oregon and it won't be back before December 15th, my birthday (this was an early present). Any tips on removing vertical play from an Axis lock? I thought it was self adjusting due to the design, but the pivot sure doesn't feel loose enough to cause it, but I can adjust it a tad to see if it helps. I guess if they could replace the blade with an uncoated one as I hope to get mine re heat treated to 65 RC anyway and the coating will need to be removed.

What really sucks is I asked if the knife could be checked for QC issues like blade play prior to shipping to avoid this, but stuff happens. Hopefully I was the only one with a blade play problem and all others came put OK. My 760 came with a terribly off center blade (hitting the handle), I guess I just have bad luck with Benchmade's M4 knives.

Mike

Is there a flat surface on the stop pin? You maybe be able to adjust that and fix the lock up.

No, it has a round pin unlike the pin with flats on my 760. I tried moving the screws on the stop pin to see if anything would change and there was no apparent movement of the stop pin and no help with the blade play.

Mike

Benchmade is going to have UPS pick the knife up from me tomorrow and have it sent next day to them to fix it. They say there are no replacements, period, but they are real confident they can eliminate they play from the blade. I really hope they can get it dead solid and extremely smooth like my regular Rift. A LE knife should be at least as food as the standard model IMO. It just seems I got unlucky to get the one knife with blade play.

Mike

Arrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

quote:

Originally posted by gunmike1:
Benchmade is going to have UPS pick the knife up from me tomorrow and have it sent next day to them to fix it. They say there are no replacements, period, but they are real confident they can eliminate they play from the blade. I really hope they can get it dead solid and extremely smooth like my regular Rift. A LE knife should be at least as food as the standard model IMO. It just seems I got unlucky to get the one knife with blade play.

Mike

Keeps us updated. For an AXIS lock knife it seems the problem should be fairly obvious and easy to fix.

Is the fix to put in a larger stop pin? The Axis bar seems all the way forward, seemingly only leaving the stop pin as the other point that can be adjusted to fix the blade play. I'm just curious, as all of the Axis locks I have and have had were very smooth and super solid without a hint of play. As a side note I'm not especially fond of the stop pins with flats on them as my 760 had one and it really seemed like a PITA when I was trying to get the badly off centered blade in that to not rest on the handles.

Thanks, Mike

quote:

Originally posted by gunmike1:
Is the fix to put in a larger stop pin? The Axis bar seems all the way forward, seemingly only leaving the stop pin as the other point that can be adjusted to fix the blade play. I'm just curious, as all of the Axis locks I have and have had were very smooth and super solid without a hint of play. As a side note I'm not especially fond of the stop pins with flats on them as my 760 had one and it really seemed like a PITA when I was trying to get the badly off centered blade in that to not rest on the handles.

Thanks, Mike

A bigger stop pin seems like a good guess to me. One thing I have noticed about the two Rifts I have (not 1001) is that the axis bar is much further forward when locked than the other axis knifes I have. On one, the axis bar is almost touching the end of the liner cut-out, and its brand new. (no play, but no room for wear either) I was thinking about sending it in but haven't gotten around to it.

Well, on both my standard Rift and and M4 Rift the Axis bar goes all the way forward. The standard model is smooth and dead solid, the M4 stiff, gritty, and with vertical play. The M4 smoothed out with some openings today before I boxed it up but it still had the wiggle. Maybe my standard model will develop play over time with wear since the Axis bar is all the way forward, but since that is 61RC with almost perfect edge geometry I would prefer it got a new stop pin to fix any play if it ever crops up. On the M4 model I'm thinking I'd rather have a new blade that leaves room for wear, but being so limited I'm guessing the stop pin fix will have to satisfy me. The M4 blade does have pretty good geometry, as long as I get an M4 Rift that is rock solid and smooth I guess I can't really complain however it gets that way.

Mike

quote:

Originally posted by gunmike1:
What really sucks is I asked if the knife could be checked for QC issues like blade play prior to shipping to avoid this, but stuff happens.

True that stuff happens, but there seems to be an awful lot of this happening lately. I've seen several things that should have been caught by even a casual examination, and a couple of dealers have made the same observation.