Screws for Knife Assembly

[scolby]

A question for those at Spyderco. Why do you use phillips head screws on most of you knives to fasten the scales together? On some of your knives, such as the Military, you have used torx (or star, I don't have it on me at the moment) screws.



From a purely aesthetic point of view, I find the phillips heads to be objectionable, since they add strong cross figures along the top of the blade. I think that on a knives such as the Lum Tanto Folder and the Chinese that these screws really detract from the appearance of the finished products. I know this is a very small point, but I notice that on my other folders (Klotzli, Benchmade, GT and Kershaw) they use either the torx, star or allen screw, all of which simply look better to me.



Any thoughts?

[sal]

Hi Scolby. We've been using torx on our US made products because they are readily available.

We've been using Phillips on our Seki made product because torx are more diffiuclt in Seki.

We've used allens, but they simply didn't hold up well.

BTW, we did have a complaint from a Lt in the French Military working in Yugoslavia. He said a part came loose on his "knife" (not a Spyderco) with torx screws. He couldn't find a torx driver anywhere he looked in Yugoslavia and had to retire the knife rather than lose the part. He suggested that we use phillips on all of our knives. Just a thought.

sal

[scolby]

Thanks for the reply. Are the screws english or metric? I think that I will do some replacement tests to see what I think. I appreciate the comment about the availablity of the philips tools. The only screws I have see drop out were phillips pan head screws on a CRKT clip mounting. Otherwise, have never had this problem.