I have utilized this design configuration in all my folding knife models, while only the materials and precision have evolved over the years. The thrust washers have remained phosphor bronze and have only varied in thickness. Similarly, the bushing was made from phosphor bronze on my earlier knives. The pivot and screw were made from 303 stainless in my very early models. As I understood more about the physical properties of the materials I was using, I began to iterate on the design choices I made. As of 2016 the bushing has evolved to a hardened stainless-steel construction with machined grease grooves. The pivot and screw have improved to a hardened stainless, and then to 6-4 Titanium, which I feel is slightly better; even though the material strengths are similar, additional corrosion resistance is gained.

There are several reasons why I feel this is the best pivot design. The core reason is the structural rigidity and integrity of the joint while under cutting loads. Another significant factor is that this design, when executed with high precision, ensures the open blade position and lock geometry is dead repeatable and does not change. This allows the integral frame lock to be precisely fit to the blade with no future relative movement that will most likely cause lock stick and wear. The pivot and screw are torqued providing a clamping force (preload) to the overall joint. A preloaded joint is significantly better at withstanding the loads generated by use than a joint without torque / preload. A non-torqued joint will gap under use and transfer greater loads to the individual components while allowing relative movement of the joint components. For a deeper and more technical explanation of this I recommend searching ‘bolted joint preload’ on the internet. A final advantage to the torqued pivot is that the preload is the screw’s primary locking feature, where the pivot remains tight without the need for Loctite and eliminating the risk of restricting blade opening action.

Utilizing this design with true parts and extremely tight tolerances, allows the blade and washers to completely fill the gaps in the joint (with lubrication clearance only). This leaves the pivot area much less susceptible to collecting debris than other pivot system designs and reduces the number of times the knife will need to be cleaned over its life.

It always felt wrong to me to build a knife that needed to be “tuned” or “adjusted” by the user. A takedown tool is provided with each knife strictly for the purpose of “servicing”, as required. The tolerances are designed into this joint, are repeatable and do not require any adjustment. When executed properly (this is key), this pivot system allows the owner to service their knife and have the same smooth blade pivot action, position, and lockup every time by simply torqueing the pivot screw (approximately 1/16 th of a turn past snug for non-clocked pivot/screw builds).

While I feel this is the optimum pivot configuration, this design is unforgiving and challenging for the maker. Very tight tolerances for size, squareness, roundness, parallelism, and concentricity for the pivot, screw, bushing, blade, washers, and handle are required to produce a centered blade with smooth action, and without play. The bushing, for example, dictates the blade position relative to the lock-bar. If all other parts are proper and the bushing is not concentric, the lockup geometry and operation will be affected each time the knife is serviced depending on the random rotational position of the bushing. If the bushing is not square, the blade will not be centered, it will bind as it rotates, and it will need to have play in it to compensate (Fig. 2 below is an exaggerated example of this). Similar deficiencies occur if any of the other pivot joint parts previously mentioned are not made to extremely tight tolerances.