![]() The history of the half stop is as murky as its real role in the life of the slip joint. (Case image) The History of the Flat Stop The knife is a member of the company’s Black Sycamore family. Old guys have told me that if you have a whittler pattern, for example, with one blade on either end, you don’t want to open a knife halfway because you double the tension on the spring.” The Case XX Vault Release Copperhead pattern, new for 2021, features a half stop. “It just protects your spring from breaking, in my opinion, or it could be called a safety feature. “A half stop is just a low place in the back of the blade, a flat place that stops the blade and takes tension offthe spring,” he observed. There are plenty of ideas and opinions out there, and longtime custom knifemaker Gray Taylor admits the purpose of the half stop is something of a mystery to him. ![]() Most issues of a square tang not working properly can be traced to poor spring/tang design and/or poor execution.” The second is that the knife has a flush end. One is that a pause to move your fingers out of the way is desired halfway between open and closed. “There are two reasons for a square tang. Russell Knives for a number of years now. “In a traditional slip-joint knife, a half stop indicates the blade has a square tang instead of a conventional rounded one,” explained Phil Gibbs, a veteran knife designer who has worked for A.G. Russell Knives, “In a traditional slip-joint knife a half stop indicates the blade has a square tang instead of a conventional rounded one.” In Detail 2 is a diagram of a tang with a round end in Detail 3 is one with a What a Half Stop Does According to Phil Gibbs of A.G. It hangs around-and in some cases it has been removed. It once had a job, but nobody really knows what that job was. It’s a safety feature it relieves pressure on the spring it’s a mark of fit and finish that the best slip joint makers always include or, just maybe, it’s like your appendix. The slip-joint knife version of the phrase can easily be attributed to the function, or lack thereof, surrounding the half stop, the flattened shaping of the tang that allows the blade to stop in mid deployment. What is a Half Stop?Īn old song includes the lyric, “It certainly is exquisite, but what in the dickens is it?” Safety feature, bell and whistle, or what have you, the half stop stimulates lively discussion.
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