Inside the Zilla-Tool (small suprise).

[Spoonrobot]

I've had the Zilla-Tool for 3 weeks now and have been carrying it and using it everday. Today the urge to disassemble finally got the best of me, I pulled out the Torx drivers and went to work.

Here it is:

37 parts with some interesting features. Note the hidden stop pin for the main blade and the ball detent on the plier locking mechanism.

The ball detent.


The suprise: I had assumed erroneously that the Zilla featured an integral pivot spring to provide the spring loading of the pliers. As it turns out there is a small spring that hooks to a tab on the outside plier jaw and the frame of the tool and provides tension for the pliers. Interesting to see how this holds up under long term use.

[NeitherExtreme]

Great pics, thanks for posting that. I had a chance to handle one of those for the first time this weekend, and I really liked it. Not to take this OT, but I had one question: on the one I played with, the 1/4" driver didn't hold the bits very well. The magnet seemed weak and the fit wasn't tight. I'm guessing it was a fluke?

[J-sews]

Great pics Spoon! I hadn't gotten brave enough to take mine apart yet. Now I don't have to!

Great pics, thanks for posting that. I had a chance to handle one of those for the first time this weekend, and I really liked it. Not to take this OT, but I had one question: on the one I played with, the 1/4" driver didn't hold the bits very well. The magnet seemed weak and the fit wasn't tight. I'm guessing it was a fluke?

The magnet on mine is weak too, and the bit socket doesn't have a great fit. Good enough, but not great. 

[Spoonrobot]

Great pics Spoon! I hadn't gotten brave enough to take mine apart yet. Now I don't have to!

Great pics, thanks for posting that. I had a chance to handle one of those for the first time this weekend, and I really liked it. Not to take this OT, but I had one question: on the one I played with, the 1/4" driver didn't hold the bits very well. The magnet seemed weak and the fit wasn't tight. I'm guessing it was a fluke?

The magnet on mine is weak too, and the bit socket doesn't have a great fit. Good enough, but not great. 

My magnet is also weak but fit in the bit socket is very good. I've learned to hold onto the bit after torquing down a screw and moving to the next one.

[supratentorial]

Cool photos!

[Grant Lamontagne]

Which tool did you use to disassemble it?

Def

[Spoonrobot]

I used 2 Husky Torx Drivers to remove all the screws and a Gerber Diesel to help remove some of the posts and the spring, during which I hooked the spring through my index finger like a fish (ouch).

[Tom Munch]

I assume there is a groove in the scale that the spring fits in.  Is that right?

I replaced the bits with some textured ones that fit the hex a little tighter.  I wonder if the magnet could be swapped for a stronger one.

Tom

[M.TEX]

  Is that RUST    under the scale ? 

[David Bowen]

I am definatly suprised  it's always interesting to see what makes these tools tick, especially the news ones. Getting to the meat of the matter can often help us determine how a tool will hold up, mechanically that is.

David

[Spoonrobot]

  Is that RUST    under the scale ? 

Forgot to mention this in the original post, thanks for reminding me.

I use the tool around water quite a bit and have run it through our dish machine a few times since receiving it but saw no rust upon close examination of the disassembled parts. There does appear to be peanut oil residue under the scale remaining from an accidental dunk in our fryer. I wiped down the tool and lubricated everything so we shall continue to see how it behaves around water. So far it appears heads and tails above the bead blast version.

[J-sews]

Can you give us a close-up picture of the blade stop/pin mechanism? Why do you suppose they went with that design? Maybe because the finger-flipper prevented any sort of normal blade stop?

[Spoonrobot]

Can you give us a close-up picture of the blade stop/pin mechanism? Why do you suppose they went with that design? Maybe because the finger-flipper prevented any sort of normal blade stop?

Well, to use a flipper on a folding knife there are a few different implementations.

You can either go with the bladestops on the blade itself where thumbstuds would usually go as seen on a lot of CRKT models. These contact the liners and act as the blade stop, the problem with this is that you need to have room for two large studs on the outside of the handles and then a place for them to contact the liner or frame. To use this method on the Zilla they would have to either move the bit holder outward or only have one stop. There would also be the destruction of the lines because the stops would have to sit outside the handles or there would have to be a cutout for them to nest when closed, probably weakening the lockbar.

Here you can see the bladestops on a CRKT M1 contacting the liners. Note how large the stops are, imagine how they would destroy the lines of the Zilla and probably add hotspots when using the pliers and bit holder.



The next option is to use a pass through lockbar like SOG does on some of it's flipper models. The problem with this is it brings all the baggage of a lockback with it. If this system were on the Zilla it would make the tool much larger and would require re-engineering to put a regular stop pin somewhere.


Here's the pass through lockbar on a Twitch XL. This system also seems to only really work with assisted opening knives since it relies on the shape of the blade tang to keep the knife closed and does not have the ability to increase torque (similar to revving an engine in a car to do a burnout) before launching like a liner or frame lock does with it's ball detent. I took the assisted opening spring out of my Twitch and the flipper wouldn't even flip the blade open more than 10 degrees even with a wrist flick.

The system on the Zilla, the hidden stop pin, seems to be fairly new to production knives. The first knife I saw with it was the Junkyard dog series from Kershaw, although there may be others. The advantage of this system is that it is much cleaner than the other two and needs only modification of the blade to use. It does seem slightly more finicky than the blade stops on the actual blade system. There is also the added problem of having no studs on the blade itself so if it does not actuate entirely from flipping one must either thumb the blade open the rest of the way or wrist flick it, neither of which is ideal.






Note how it appears that the plier lock platform is contacting the edge when the blade is closed. I think this only happens when the scale is removed as the stop pin becomes loose as I didn't see any evidence of edge damage during normal use.

[David Bowen]

You never cease to amaze me Spoonster, I myself enjoy reading the things that you have found out. And for those new commers that are just guests, they are probably thinking that we are frankensteins or whatnot. We take them apart, see what makes them tick....even modify them. It's just some good old fashion fun.

David

[Grant Lamontagne]

What kind of tool guy would you be if you didn't have a bizarre fascination with taking stuff apart?

Def

[J-sews]

Thanks Spoon, you are the King of the in-depth analysis! 


And to whomever came up with that blade stop system, wherever you are, I tip my hat. An elegant engineering solution to a tricky problem.

Bob

[Spoonrobot]

Thanks for the kind words guys! Although sometimes disassembly doesn't always end well. I let curiosity get the better of me and surgically opened my Pacific Salt (link) I'm still toying with just how I want to refurbish it. It will be a pretty in-depth project but should teach me a lot about knives and their construction.

[J-sews]

............Although sometimes disassembly doesn't always end well. I let curiosity get the better of me and surgically opened my Pacific Salt.....

Been there, done that, with a 100-year old Joseph Rodgers tool. It was kinda scary for awhile, but ended up coming out just fine. In the process, I learned a lot about what to do and what not to do regarding riveted knife construction.