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Hawk Knives Video Takes Knife World Under the Hood of Deadlock OTF

February 27, 2017

Hawk Knife Designs has just released a revealing take down video of the Hawk Knives Deadlock automatic, the first OTF knife with a completely solid lockup. This is the first time since the Deadlock’s 2015 debut that the Hawks have uncovered the entire assembly of the innovative out-the-front mechanism.

“Everyone’s seen how other OTFs work and it’s always the same principle,” says Gavin Hawk, who works alongside father Grant Hawk. “The Deadlock is totally different.” In the 29-minute video, Hawk highlights the important elements of the Deadlock mechanism, including a conical stop pin, which works in conjunction with a stop plate to deliver the rock solid, no blade play lockup that has already made the Deadlock famous.

Hawk tells us the video highlights the relative simplicity of his creation. While it brings more innovation to the table, the Deadlock is comprised of fewer parts than most OTFs. “It has more parts than a Microtech but less than everything else,” Hawk confirms. This efficiency was reached through an intense prototyping phase to ensure each element carried its weight. “We spent a whole year just making drawings and working out several features,” Grant Hawk says.

Gavin Hawk emphasizes that accessibility is an important part of the Deadlock design philosophy. “We want people to be able to take apart this knife,” he says. To that end, the Hawks added retaining clips to facilitate easy disassembly and keep tensioned parts from coming loose during the process. Each knife also comes with all the tools necessary for take down and maintenance. But Gavin Hawk believes the video will have appeal to fans of knife design in addition to lucky Deadlock owners. “It’s an inherently interesting mechanism. I’ve never seen anything like it,” he says.

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Despite intense interest from other manufacturers and companies, the Hawks still plan to keep Deadlock production in-house for the time being. For now, the only way to get your hands on a Deadlock is to hop on the Hawks’ books through their newsletter. Once your order is in, Gavin Hawk tells us that the usual wait time is about 6 months, but as they continue to streamline their operations that window will shrink. “We’re trying to make it quicker every time.”

Knife featured in image: Hawk Deadlock OTF
*original photography by Jim Skelton

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