The Paperback of the How to Make Folding Knives: A Step-by-Step How-to by Ron Lake, Wayne Clay, Frank Centofante at Barnes & Noble. FREE Shipping. The Paperback of the How to Make Folding Knives: A Step-by-Step How-to by Ron Lake, Wayne Clay, Frank Centofante at Barnes & Noble. FREE Shipping.

When Blade Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame© member Ron Lake devised the interframe design and gave the world of knives another standard of innovation and excellence, he continued to look for ways to improve the operation of a standard lockback mechanism. He was not satisfied with pushing a bar to release the lock, particularly with one hand occupied or involved in some type of activity that demanded his full attention. The solution was fairly simple and came along in the early 1970s, just a few months after the historic debut of the interframe. Ron added a small steel tab at the end of the knife, offering the user a quicker and safer alternative to depressing a bar. “The tab lock is really not a lock mechanism,” Lake explained. “It is just a tab on the end of a lockback that offers a mechanical advantage. If it isn’t there, I just have a bar to release the lock, and depressing that bar can be hard to do when the hands are soft, cold or wet.

The tab gives you a larger surface to push on. Download O Play Firmware Hack there. ” Ron admits that the tab lock was something of an afterthought, trailing along behind the notion of the interframe. Sometimes the good idea can indeed be made better. As a young knifemaker, he continued to mull over the prospects for a better release.

“I had only been making knives for six years,” he laughed. “I didn’t even know another knifemaker and didn’t know what knives were supposed to look like. I came up with the interframe design and then thought about where I could put a release mechanism. I still make interframes and that’s about all I do make, and they are with the tab.” While it may look like a simple endeavor, the fashioning of the tab lock is not for the knifemaker who wants to take a shortcut or go down the path of least resistance. Of course, the tab-lock style is not seen in great numbers among today’s knives, and Ron says there is a straightforward explanation for that. It just is not the easiest thing to do.

“I can make them now with less effort than it took back then,” he advised, “but first of all I have to machine a piece of metal that goes on the end. Then I have to silver solder it on, and it’s a rough piece of metal with everything large on it. Then I remove the silver solder so you can see a nice radius, machine the sides to the right dimension and radius the corners.

“From there, I hand sand the surfaces and polish them up. So, it takes several more hours of work than a standard knife, and about 15-to-20 percent of my time goes into that part of the knife. I also have to take the whole knife apart and put it together again two more times, which I don’t have to do on some other models. For a few years, A.G. Sapiens A Brief History Of Human Kind Audiobook Torrent here. Russell just thought I butted it up against the end of the lock and soldered it on, but that could get knocked off easily. Later, I explained the process to him, and I can tell you the tab is on there pretty tight, pressed on and silver soldered.” Tab Release Some years ago when Ron, along with Wayne Clay and Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Frank Centofante, co-wrote How To Make Folding Knives, he discussed the geometry of the lockback knife. He remembers visiting Sakai Cutlery in Seki City, Japan, and sitting in the company’s offices, which incidentally included a log cabin from Montana that had been dismantled and reconstructed.

The men from Sakai had eight lockback knives laid out in the office, and the geometry between the pivot and the lock was different on each one. “I asked them who had designed those knives,” Lake smiled, “and they said, ‘We did.’ I asked them why the geometry was different on every one of them, and they told me it was because the toolmaker had made them the way he wanted to do it. To my knowledge nobody had put the geometry of the lockback down on paper until I did. Innovation comes from one-man shops.” That innovation carried over to the construction of the tab lock, which Ron more aptly describes as a “tab release.” The tab lock actually does lock like any other lockback. The secret to its operation is in the release. Long-time friend and fellow knifemaking legend and Cutlery Hall-Of-Famer Michael Walker says he agrees that the idea seems simple enough and makes a great impact on the user when it comes to ease of release.