Category: Balisong Maintenance

Categories
Balisong Maintenance

Balisong Disassembly Tips

Take apart your new balisong without damaging it and how to proceed if you do.

Make sure your have the correct tools.

The easiest way to ruin your balisong is to use the wrong driver size.

Most balisong utilize torx based pivots and using the wrong size or low quality torx drivers can easily lead to stripped pivots or hardware. WIHA brand drivers are considered the gold standard. This spreadsheet is a great resource for determining what hardware your balisong has.

Dealing with Blue or Red Loctite

Determine whether or not your balisong hardware has been loctited and if so what type. You can typically determine this by researching or asking the community. Most manufactures will send their balisongs with blue loctite that should be able to be overcome with simple application of torque.

If you purchased your balisong on the secondary market it is possible that it has been red loctited. If you balisong has been loctited with Red you will need to use heat to break the bond. Some people like to boil the balisong, others utilize a soldering iron or lighter on the pivots or hardware.

Obviously you can’t use an open flame or soldering iron on balisongs with G10 or other non metal construction.

If your pivots or hardware spin while you turn the male side of the pivot you generally can solve the issue with two solutions.

1. You can squeeze the handles aggressively against either the tang or zen pins to create some tension on the blades in an attempt to fix the pivots from spinning freely.

2. You can put down a rubber mat like one used for opening a jar and then hold press the pivots down into the rubber to grip the female portion of the pivot while you turn the male screws.

Great I stripped my Balisong Screws Now What?

Fear not your probably not all that screwed.

Step 1:

Find out what size hardware you need and acquire some replacement hardware. It’s a good idea to buy extra and keep this on hand.

Step 2:
If your screw is stripped but not completely messed up the first thing to do is step away. Stripped screws happen usually because people lose their patience and keep trying to make a screw that isn’t budging budge. See above and make sure that it hasn’t been red loctited.

Step 3:

Make a game plan – if you bought from a reputable manufacturer you can probably send it in for service. This is the option I’d recommend but you’ll be without your precious buttefly knife for a period of time. If you can’t handle that option you may want to proceed with some other more drastic options.

I’d recommend making sure you have a few tools for this job:

  1. Drill bits capable of drilling metal (this is a last case option)
  2. Superglue or some other form of adhesive
  3. Various sizes of torx drivers.

First try is utilizing a bigger Torx driver.

Sometimes you can remove a slightly stripped screw by grabbing a slightly larger torx driver – the next size up and see if you can tap that into the stripped pivot screw. Make sure you apply generous amounts of downward pressure when turning the screw.

The next thing you can try is super gluing the torx driver to the screw.

Obviously you might be sacrificing the driver depending on the adhesive but likely you can remove the screw from the driver after extracting with some concentrated heat. Make sure not to get any adhesive outside of the pivot or you risk making it worse and gluing the pivot into the handle slabs.

The final and most drastic step is to actually drill out the pivot.

If you are going to attempt this I’d recommend a vise for holding the handle steady and drill press or a very steady hand. Utilizing a HSS, titanium or other metal drilling bit you should be able to chew threw the screw relatively easily. Be super careful not to damage the handle itself. 

See here for a more detailed breakdown of the particular steps associated with  removing and cleaning balisong pivots
Categories
Balisong Maintenance

Balisong Maintenance-Pivots

Arc Angel Handles Seperated

Quick How-to for simple maintenance of Balisong Pivots – for todays example I will be cleaning and re-lubricating my Cold Steel Arc Angel Balisong.

Arc Angel Balisong with T9 Torx Driver
  1. Prepare your workspace: Balisong pivots have a lot of small parts that can easily be lost so a clean workspace makes keeping track of your pivots, screws, and washers a breeze. (Protip -work inside a large tupperware bin so that any dancing screws or parts are contained should they fall)
  2. Assemble your tools: For my Arc Angel Balisong that means; Lube, a t9 Torx Driver, small brush like nail brush or toothbrush, Blue Loctite & Acetone. (Protip- use a high quality driver like Wiha or at least Craftsman will lead to less frustration and screw stripping.)
  3. Unscrew You Male Screws from their female balisong pivots. (Protip- if your screws won’t budge they may be loctited with red loctite. Don’t keep trying in vain to unscrew that will yield stripped or broken screws. Heat is your friend – either warm the ends with a soldering iron directly on the pivot, use a lighter sparingly if metal handles or you some have success with boiling the entire knife)
  4. Place screws in small receptical filled with acetone
  5. Use Torx Driver to push pivots out. (Protip- some balisongs like the Benchmade may have press fit pivots. This means you may need to use a punch and a small soft faced hammer to tap the pivot out.)
  6. Place Pivots in same acetone filled receptical.
  7. Seperate Blade from Handles
  8. Make sure to remove washers from handle slabs. Depending on the viscousity of your balisong lube your washers may adhere to the handles or the blade. Pushing them gently with the drivertip should break them loose.
  9. Place Washers in acetone filled receptical.
  10. Use your brush tool to scrub your pivots inside and out, screws, washers, blade and handle to clean of any debris.
  11. Set all clean hardware on a paper towel an allow to air dry.
  12. Insert pivots and washers back through blade taking care to make sure that you have your latch or bite handle marker on the correct side.
  13. Put a tiny amount of blue loctite on the threads of the male screw. (Protip- less is more when it comes to loctite. You never need to add any to the female pivots and little more than a toothpicks worth of loctite will do the job.)
  14. Tighten screws to your preferred tightness taking care not to cross thread. If at any point you feel resistance or your screws will not fully seat unscrew and retry. Resistance is caused typically by either gunk in your pivots or cross threading of the screws. Reclean or rescrew to fix issue. (Protip- I like to screw the pivots to the point of handle binding and then back off a quarter of a turn or so.)
  15. Here comes the absolute hardest part – You Wait! Loctite takes 24 hrs to fully cure. If you want your screws to stay put you need to be patient.
  16. Lubricate your Balisong Pivots once your loctite has cured with your favorite lubrication. (Protip- Mineral Oil is food safe and easily purchased just about anywhere)
Dissassembled Balisong Pivots
This basic writeup doesn't take into account fixing problems such as balisong tap which can be accomplished while doing pivot maintenance but requires replacing your washers with thicker washers and then lapping them to the proper thickness. See this article for more tips on removing tricky balisong hardware
Exploded view of Cold Steel Arc Angel Balisong Pivots

Please keep in mind that some balisongs may utilize more complex pivot mechanisms such as bearings and/or bushings which can complicate this process. The same basic methodology can be utilized but you may want to watch more indepth tutorials before moving forward.