Maybe changing my opinion of Tuff-Glide as a lubricant

[Evil D]

I've had and have been using Tuff-Glide for probably 2 years now. I originally bought it for my M4 Manix 2 as a rust preventative, but obviously expected to use it as a lube since it's marketed as such. Unfortunately I haven't been that impressed with it as a lube, at least not when compared to almost any other kind of lube. This is surprising to me, since you can put almost any oily substance in a knife pivot and gain a smoother action, even cooking oil. For whatever reason, I just never really felt any gain in smoothness when using it in the pivot, so I've stuck to other inexpensive lubes like White Lightning and Tri-flow, the latter being one of my preferred lubes for pivots.

However, I recently bought a used Military, and the pivot action was terrible. It felt like there was sand in the pivot. Not knowing anything about the history of this knife, I decided to take it apart and see what was going on. The pivot was completely dry, but also had some kind of tacky residue all over everything, which could be who knows what. This stuff wiped off easily with a micro fiber towel. I decided to give Tuff-Glide another chance, since this knife's role is most likely going to be outdoor use and will most likely see a lot of abuse so I figured a little rust prevention won't hurt.

So, during assembly, I put some lube first on the liner, then dropped a washer down, then dropped lube on that, then lubed the inside of the pivot hole on the blade and slid it on the pin, then lubed the opposite side of the blade, then dropped a washer on, then lubed that, and then put the other liner/scale on and screwed it together. In other words, every surface that touches and rubs got lube between them. The result is a silky buttery smooth pivot action that is as smooth as any other knife I've handled, save for the Sage series which I'm convinced uses angel tears for lubricant since they're just on another level of pivot smoothness.

So, in the end I have to assume that my issue all along has been working the lube into the pivot well enough to see benefits. This baffles me, since I always thoroughly lube my pivots and work them in. Perhaps there's something with the components of this lube that prevents it from seeping into small crevices? I don't see why else there would be such an improvement vs. other times I've used it. This is however the first time I've felt the need to disassemble a knife and lube it, so that pretty much proves to me that it has to be something related to getting the lube deep down in there. I do/have disassembled knives when testing different lubes, because you need to clean off all the old lube before you try a new lube, but I don't recall ever seeing this much of an improvement. Maybe it has to do with how gritty the action was, and feeling the before and after.

[paladin]

try frog lube...skip the greasy kid stuff

[jujigatame]

The best lubricant in the world doesn't do any good unless gets to where it needs to go to make a difference. With that said your point of the action feeling pretty lousy at the outset giving you a lower starting point compared to other situations is a valid one.

I've always had good results with Tuf Glide but more important to me is routinely checking and cleaning the pivot area. I'm not one to obsess about how fast and smooth an action can possibly be on a production knife. Most times I'm satisfied with "good enough" on that front.