I've asked questions of a well-known custom knife maker who specializes in Italian style switchblades. He said that the flexing problem gets worse as the length of the knife gets greater. That makes sense, as there's nothing to the body of the knife but the backbone, the liners, the scale material, and the bolsters at each end. I have an 11" knife that has thick aluminum scales, and I can see a slight flexing of the liner when I press the button to open it.
I did look at the liners on one of my knives before opening it more than once, and saw some burrs and other stuff. I filed the burrs, cleaned out the channel, and it really helped.
The knife with the aluminum scales I mentioned was $525. The brass liners on that are highly polished, although I only opened it once when I took it out of the package.
I'm just ticked because I got a really nice 13" model with cocobolo wood scales, and the blade scratches worse than any of the other knives I have.
It seems to me that if the width of the channel were increased, and either washers were put between the tang and the bolster as mentioned earlier, or that section of tang that bears on the liners under the bolsters was thicker, there would be almost no rubbing of the blade against the liner.
I suspect the Italians are doing with knives what they do with so many other products, which is to make them the way they've always made them, regardless of advances in technology.
Azrael256, I don't get the joke, but I've worn Italian shoes before, especially in the 1960's. Cuban heels and pointed toes. That was cool.
