Later, I explained the process to him, and I can tell you the tab is on there pretty tight, pressed on and silver soldered.” Russell just thought I butted it up against the end of the lock and soldered it on, but that could get knocked off easily. I also have to take the whole knife apart and put it together again two more times, which I don’t have to do on some other models. So, it takes several more hours of work than a standard knife, and about 15-to-20 percent of my time goes into that part of the knife. “From there, I hand sand the surfaces and polish them up. Then I remove the silver solder so you can see a nice radius, machine the sides to the right dimension and radius the corners. Then I have to silver solder it on, and it’s a rough piece of metal with everything large on it. “I can make them now with less effort than it took back then,” he advised, “but first of all I have to machine a piece of metal that goes on the end. Of course, the tab-lock style is not seen in great numbers among today’s knives, and Ron says there is a straightforward explanation for that. While it may look like a simple endeavor, the fashioning of the tab lock is not for the knifemaker who wants to take a shortcut or go down the path of least resistance. I still make interframes and that’s about all I do make, and they are with the tab.” I came up with the interframe design and then thought about where I could put a release mechanism. “I didn’t even know another knifemaker and didn’t know what knives were supposed to look like. “I had only been making knives for six years,” he laughed. As a young knifemaker, he continued to mull over the prospects for a better release. Sometimes the good idea can indeed be made better. Ron admits that the tab lock was something of an afterthought, trailing along behind the notion of the interframe. The tab gives you a larger surface to push on.” If it isn’t there, I just have a bar to release the lock, and depressing that bar can be hard to do when the hands are soft, cold or wet. “It is just a tab on the end of a lockback that offers a mechanical advantage. “The tab lock is really not a lock mechanism,” Lake explained. Ron added a small steel tab at the end of the knife, offering the user a quicker and safer alternative to depressing a bar. The solution was fairly simple and came along in the early 1970s, just a few months after the historic debut of the interframe. He was not satisfied with pushing a bar to release the lock, particularly with one hand occupied or involved in some type of activity that demanded his full attention. When Blade Magazine Cutlery Hall-Of-Fame© member Ron Lake devised the interframe design and gave the world of knives another standard of innovation and excellence, he continued to look for ways to improve the operation of a standard lockback mechanism.
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