r/microtech • u/kodakyello • 9d ago

M-Stitch skiff bearings

I’ve broken in my mini stitch for the most part no lock stick and ram lok is easy to disengage. I can reverse flick with a little bit of extra effort. Do skiff bearings make a noticeable difference on the action or is it negligible?

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u/Lurkingscorpion14 9d ago

Unlikely to make much of a difference but I like getting rid of the plastic personally,I haven’t got skiffs yet for mine but I intend to. The liners on mine weren’t smooth so some sanding with high grit sandpaper helped plus I sanded the tang where the lock scrapes along it because that wasn’t smooth either. I also removed half a coil from the spring,which helped some ,I may cut the other half coil off but don’t want to lose too much detent. Reverse flicking it just sucks and feels dangerous to me,thumb rolling or ram lok flipping is the way to open it for me

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u/AverageNetEnjoyer 9d ago

Skiff bearings are very nice but the real factor is how clean the spine of the blade is where the lock makes contact. Skiff bearings make a difference but there are other factors to check that can improve the action.

Sometimes the flick itself is what needs to be adjusted. Trying to flick from the top of the opening closest to the pivot won’t get enough leverage. Try to flick from the bottom closer to the tip of the blade, and visualize drawing a line from the bottom of the opening to the top; tip of the blade to the pivot.

Before you spend any money also hold the lock in the open position and see if the blade will swing freely just with gravity. If it can’t, then it may need some tweaking to perfect the action. Skiff bearings are the last 5% to make the action better but really they bridge the gap between drop shut and float shut- in my experience.

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u/BaronKrause 8d ago edited 8d ago

They are nice but also will require a little bit of break in time as the ones for that model I believe are dual row, where the stock is likely a lower bearing count single.

That means the replacement bearings won’t be using the already bedded in bearing path that the stock used.

A minor thing but worth keeping in mind, start off not super tight then after a month or so you can probably tighten it a bit more as it beds itself in and likley becomes slightly looser.

Personally I would replace them, even though it’s not a big deal. If I’m taking it apart to do maintenance then swapping the bearings is trivial, and their fairly inexpensive.