Spyderco Forums

Hi everybody !
First i apologise for my English. This is not my first langage. And as it's my first post here i apologise again if i break any forum rules.

But,as I'm currently waiting on my mantra 2, I'm thinking;
Wouldn't be possible to get rid of those ball-bearing washers and machine some phosphor-bronze to swap ?

Cheers, Nico

drueed wrote:Hi everybody !
First i apologise for my English. This is not my first langage. And as it's my first post here i apologise again if i break any forum rules.

But,as I'm currently waiting on my mantra 2, I'm thinking;
Wouldn't be possible to get rid of those ball-bearing washers and machine some phosphor-bronze to swap ?

Cheers, Nico

Welcome aboard, Nico. :)
Theoretically, I imagine you could swap out the bearing washers for PB washers--you'd just need to make sure to get the exact same thickness on the PB washers so that it doesn't bind up at the pivot. I'd recommend taking a measurement with a set of calipers of the thickness of the blade + the two bearing washers to get an idea for the desired washer thickness. Remember too, you'd also have to take into account the depth of the counterbore for each bearing washer.

Thanks For the advice Michael !

The Mantra 2 is schedule to arrive tomorrow so i'll see if it's one of the crippled ones ..

I'll try to machine some washers in the near future anyway just for the sake of it ..

Cheers, Nico

Mine looks bad as well, no single indents but the bearings have left a circular track on the titanium despite the sheet metal spacer. Also left a circular track on both sides of the blade. The action feels kind of gritty.
At this point I am kind of totally lost.
Bought the knife of eBay, it is an original, however the German distributor will not grant warranty if you are not the first buyer (already had this happen on a benchmade). So wanted this to be my grail when I first read about. Now I am kind of devastated. I love spyderco, but this doesn't live up to the expectation.

vilePossum wrote:Mine looks bad as well, no single indents but the bearings have left a circular track on the titanium despite the sheet metal spacer. Also left a circular track on both sides of the blade. The action feels kind of gritty.
At this point I am kind of totally lost.
Bought the knife of eBay, it is an original, however the German distributor will not grant warranty if you are not the first buyer (already had this happen on a benchmade). So wanted this to be my grail when I first read about. Now I am kind of devastated. I love spyderco, but this doesn't live up to the expectation.

The ball bearing will naturally leave that circular track, that is not an issue. If you don't have indents then you are golden. Clean it better if it is gritty.

David Lowry wrote:If this has been said before, I apologize. I just don't understand the need for bearings on a knife. It makes things unnecessarily complicated. Big fat phosphor bronze washers can be really smooth. No need to make things complicated just to do it. Go back to exposed stop-pins, and PB washers please.

I just don't get it. I have some Benchmade's as well as some Kershaw's that are some of the smoothest knives I've ever felt and they have washers. Bearing knives get gritty after a while and need cleaned more than PB washer knives. Sebenza's are on washers.

The more Spydies that get put on bearings the less I buy.

Go back to exposed stop-pins, and PB washers please.

Well, my experience with bearings has been 100% positive. What I've found is I can tighten the pivot FAR tighter than a non bearing pivot, which completely eliminates any and all blade play, while still allowing the blade to swing freely. I can't do that with most of my bushing pivoted knives. I don't really think about smoothness when I think about bearings, I think about the blade play factor and less friction in the pivot. Smoothness wise, my Manix 2's are all very smooth, as are my Sage's.

I think the only "permanent" solution would be caged bearings.. I have no clue as to how much those would up the price, but i'd consider them, if nothing else to get fewer complaints.
Now, i don't know if the problematic ball bearing knives are in such a minority that a change to caged bearings isn't justifiable. In any case i feel i'd personally rather pay a bit higher price initially to have peace of mind for the expected life time of the knife.

If the ball bearings were replaced with closely spaced roller bearings, I'd bet this issue disappears and never returns.

The total bearing stack thickness could be lowered as well. I assume that either rollers are significantly more expensive, or that there is no pre-made bearing of the correct size, otherwise we would already have rollers in all of these knives.

I don't know what famous maker this anonymous Chinese flipper is copying, but it seems like the bearing arrangement in this knife solves the distorted shim/washer issue by replacing the flat washer with an actual formed race, this would also likely increase strength of the pivot bearings under side load if tolerances were tight enough.

I received my mantra last week. Hesitated reading this thread a few months ago, but I'm glad I got it. Has the smoothest deployment of all my spydies. My PPT (original, not sprint) and pm2 come close, but this mantra outstrips both. I'm hoping this issue was just with the early batches and QC fixed the problem. Seems like it must be just an over torqued pivot and since I don't plan on messing with it, I think it should be fine.

To the OP, thanks for posting and sharing pics. I had considered disassembling to maybe force a patina and grind down flipping tab but seems like a bad idea now without knowing torque needed to reassemble and not dimple the races.

My Mantra 2 exhibited the poor action- it was repaired by Spyderco. I note that some people have complained about a weak detent- mine was alright but not great. It required a deliberate push-button technique and precise finger placement. After I got my mantra back from being repaired, I decided to open it up and tweak the lockbar to achieve a stronger dentent. By slowly bending the lockbar, reassembling and testing, then rebending, I was able to achieve a perfect medium-strong detent. It is now possible to miss-fire but you almost have to try to misfire. On my ZT0808 it's not possible to mis-fire (unless I have a finger on the lockbar) but it takes a strong push to flip. The mantra takes a lot less pressure to flip and has a really nice action now. I do note that even post repair my washers have a track in them. This leads me to believe that the problem may actually be with the bearings rather than the races. For those with issues I recommend sending it back for warranty. If you absolutely have to try to mess with it yourself, I recommend a thorough clean and lube of the bearings. If you attempt your own fix and / or lockbar tuning expect to void the warranty. The standard repair fee is $25 so not a huge deal if you want to try a mod yourself and need subsequent service.

$25? Is that true? Because for all people complain about the Spyderco warranty, that's the normal shipping rate some companies charge for warranty work conus.

I've been carrying my new Mantra exclusively for over a week now, and its action is absolutely fantastic. I guess the detent isn't as strong as some, but for me it fires pretty much every time with no problems.

I found this while doing some research. Any updates to this?

jstrange wrote:I found this while doing some research. Any updates to this?

Not really an update since I'm only a new Mantra owner but I will say that I've had mine for over a week now and it's smooth as can be.

ive had zero issues with spydercos bearing pivots on my 2 dominos.

jstrange wrote:I found this while doing some research. Any updates to this?

Mine is still perfect, no issues whatsoever.

I have a domino that doesn't flip very well either,Stops half way every time.

Does both the Mantra and Mantra 2 have the bearings or is this a Mantra 2 ONLY problem?

willydigger wrote:Does both the Mantra and Mantra 2 have the bearings or is this a Mantra 2 ONLY problem?

Both have bearings