Spyderco screws and hardware

M

mael333ca

Joined
Jul 5, 2012
Messages
447
Hello peeps,

can anyone tell me with certitude that spyderco does use heat treated screws and hardware for their knives?
 
I am gonna say that the screws are NOT heat treated. Most stainless steel hardware is made from a 300 series stainless steel. The 300 series is made up of steels that contain at most .15% carbon and thus they cannot be heat treated. They can however be work hardened through cold working. Either cold rolling or drawing them through dies. I have no idea if they are or not but I would assume they are.
 
Yeah I highly, highly doubt it as well. I'd be surprised to hear that any knife company does that to their hardware.

Maybe I'm wrong, though.
 
Do the research and try to source small diameter stainless heat treated fasteners.
Let us know if you can locate a manufacturer.
I stand corrected,, Leupold scope mounting screws are heat treated however, I highly suspect they are 410 or 416 Martensitic grade stainless steel.

Would you prefer a snapped off head for the entire screw or a distorted Torx pocket?
Which would be easier to remove?

Regards,
FK
 
Last edited:
well.....CRK do offer hardened hardwares, maybe like bearfacedkiller said tough, by some cold pressed working of sorts.

I feel Spyderco's price range, aside the Chinese lines, have to offer some kind of treated screws.....I've seen butter soft screws from Chinese crap....a bad farce is all it is....im okay with knives below 60ish$ to be like that too, but nothing upping the hundreds
 
FK said:
Do the research and try to source small diameter stainless heat treated fasteners.
Let us know if you can locate a manufacturer.
I stand corrected,, Leupold scope mounting screws are heat treated however, I highly suspect they are 410 or 416 Martensitic grade stainless steel.

Would you prefer a snapped off head for the entire screw or a distorted Torx pocket?
Which would be easier to remove?

Regards,
FK
Click to expand...
Or would you just prefer the whole knife to quietly rust together in your pocket?

This thread can be a positive experience though in how to educate ourselves about buzzwords vs. the actual reality of why a stainless steel screw doesn't need to be heat treated, why you won't want a case hardened screw in another application and so on.
 
Instead of internet stories,,, here are some references for screws and fasteners.

Google search:

American Standards Testing Materials
astm.org/Standards/fastener-standard

Fastenal has a 62 page PDF on standards for materials in commercial screws. fastenal.com/content/documents/FastenalTechnicalReferenceGuide.pdf

Google search: for hours of interesting reading.
screw fasteners specifications

IMHO heat treated stainless screws are not needed if the manuf. sources good quality suppliers.
All bets are off if the screws are imported from Asia, some are fine,,, many (most) are very poor quality in material and workmanship. The imported screws may spec. the material,, I have seen many cases where the Asian source does not actually send the correct alloy or the heads are poorly manuf.

In addition, 99% of the knife screw related problems are caused by low cost, poor quality imported Torx drivers,,, out of size spec. (undersized) or tapered which result in distorted Torx pockets. Why bugger up a screw when the Wiha brand Torx drivers are readily available and not as expensive vs mailing cost for sending the knife back to Spyderco.

Regards,
FK
 
I have not stripped out a screw on anything since I purchased a Wiha Torx set. Also on Spyderco Knives you need to heat up the screws.
 
I agree that you generally don't want heat treated screws, especially at the size that are in knives. As others stated, the driver is so important. And using hot water to loosen loc-tite......
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top