All About Pocket Knives

I recently bought a Remington R-1178 "Mini-Trapper" and the mainspring is so strong that it will literaly bend my thumbnail backward (can you say OUCH!) when trying to open it! I appreciate a good walk and talk, but this thing is the pits. It's almost unusable. A good candidate for resale, or mounting on the new "Through Thick and Thin" Remington poster I recently acquired. I'm going to make a frame out of some gnarly sticks from the woods nearby and have the poster professionally matted, put behind glass and mill down the back of the sticks, rabbit out a place for it all, then find a couple of twigs that are of the right size and shape to hold the knife at the bottom of the frame. Should make a nice wall hanger in the new "Great Room" we're adding on this summer.

Hard to say what to do. If you are bored, get a knife opener and open it 1000 times, and it might "break-in" or it might break if the spring is brittle. Store it at max spring tension, same results possible. Best solution; if it's new, send it back for a different one.

Is the spring too strong or is it too tight at the joint? There should be a little space so the blade is free to pivot. I've had a few old nail breakers that I was able to gently loosen with a screw driver. Don't do anything drastic to your mint knives based on this advice though. s-k

A drop of valve grinding compound placed on the tang end of the blade will drop the number of openings and closings mentioned from 1000 to just a few. Be very sure you completly remove all of the compound with a good cleaning solution or the knife will not have any snap after it has been used a while.