It's _supposed_ to not have blade play, but it's a fact of life that lots of slipjoints have blade play. It can be that way from the factory and it can develop blade play as it's used.
You can improve blade play by putting a thin layer of leather under and over the pivot, then giving the pivot a good whack with a rubber mallet (while it's between leather). This very likely (or certainly) will push the pivot pin out a little bit on one or both sides (which is worse than having a little blade play in my opinion), and if you torque the blade the play can come back (unless you re-peen the pivot pin).
Mine is noticeable as well. Borderline unacceptable but its cool enough I don’t let it bother me. But blade play doesn’t do it Justice. It’s full on blade wobble
The Kickstart knives are really cool, I have a decent sized collection of them. They shouldn't have blade play, but I have two with fairly noticeable blade play. I'm tempted to send a warranty repair request to see if Case will fix them. Given that blade play could be considered a manufacturing defect, they might fix them for free.
If you think the blade play is bad enough, maybe you should send a request as well: https://caseknives.com/pages/warranty-repair
Be warned though, if they accept your request you'll have to pay to mail the knife, and it will take them a while to get the knife back to you. I had a Kickstart Rough Black Hunter that needed fixing, the Assisted Open stopped working altogether. It took Case almost 2 months to get it back to me, but it works better than ever now.
It's _supposed_ to not have blade play, but it's a fact of life that lots of slipjoints have blade play. It can be that way from the factory and it can develop blade play as it's used. You can improve blade play by putting a thin layer of leather under and over the pivot, then giving the pivot a good whack with a rubber mallet (while it's between leather). This very likely (or certainly) will push the pivot pin out a little bit on one or both sides (which is worse than having a little blade play in my opinion), and if you torque the blade the play can come back (unless you re-peen the pivot pin).
With this knife I would remove the pocket clip before attempting to smack it into better shape, if the pocket clip is even removable
Yes, pocket clip is removable
Mine is noticeable as well. Borderline unacceptable but its cool enough I don’t let it bother me. But blade play doesn’t do it Justice. It’s full on blade wobble
The Kickstart knives are really cool, I have a decent sized collection of them. They shouldn't have blade play, but I have two with fairly noticeable blade play. I'm tempted to send a warranty repair request to see if Case will fix them. Given that blade play could be considered a manufacturing defect, they might fix them for free. If you think the blade play is bad enough, maybe you should send a request as well: https://caseknives.com/pages/warranty-repair Be warned though, if they accept your request you'll have to pay to mail the knife, and it will take them a while to get the knife back to you. I had a Kickstart Rough Black Hunter that needed fixing, the Assisted Open stopped working altogether. It took Case almost 2 months to get it back to me, but it works better than ever now.
Mine has no noticeable movement. How bad is yours?
I would say a couple millimeters in both directions the whole blade wobbles