Octane mod - lock notches (pic heavy)

[dbnyc]

I finally got around to grinding lock notches to keep my Octane from falling open in my pocket.  Took about an hour of careful dremel work, and it's kindof uneven, but it works.  I may try to clean it up a bit in the future but for now I'm very happy with the result, it fixes my one major gripe about this tool.

I decided to only do one handle because that will do the job & it's obviously half the effort.  I did the bottom handle so the button won't stick out in my pocket when it's clipped in.

The lockup is very solid and it even reduces some of the rattle in the tool when it's closed.

I took a bunch of pictures but I'm not a camera guy & most of them were pretty blurry - apologies in advance. 

Starting off, the tool open - hi Octane!  You can kindof see something going on down in the slider channel on the bottom handle:



Next, here are the notches.  I did my best, but they're rather ugly - function over form though, they work!



Here the plier head is in the closed/undeployed position.  You can see that the lock button on the "bottom" (clip side) of the tool is engaged - sticking up.  The other lock button is down/unlocked.  You can also see where the dremel got away from me and marked up the side a bit...



This shows the plier head half out, the slider locks are not engaged on either side.



Finally, here's a shot of the 2 lock positions in the bottom slider channel.  Open lock notches on the left, new closed notches on the right side.



That's all there is to it, I just wish it had been made this way in the first place.

-db

[Chako]

Nice job. 

[Freudian Frog]

Nice job indeed. A worthy pursuit!

[damota]

I had the same trouble with the Freehand that has (probably) the heaviest head of most sliders, I cured it by unscrewing the slider screws, pushing one end to the left and the other to the right and tightening up. There is a plastic strip between the 2 screw holes that by twisting as you reassemble cause enough friction to stop the unwanted opening. If this had not worked I had thoughts of making a thin washer out of varnished paper to fit under the plastic slider but never got round to it as the twisting method is still working.

DaveT