Here's what I think:

All hardware should be designed and made to support the function and design of the rest of the knife. Using off-the-shelf hardware is a big compromise in a number of ways. If we were making a knife and looking to reduce the manufacture cost - then off-the-shelf hardware would be a good option.

What we're doing here is making the world's best knife - so, of course, all hardware is going to be specifically designed and made in-house to SUPPORT the function of the rest of the knife.

No compromises here.

Let's discuss the pivot first, because that's the biggest and most prominent piece of hardware.

Here's a look at the pivot:

[[[ IMG, IMG, IMG ]]]

The left side of the knife will have what I'm going to call the the "show" side of the pivot ...and the right side will be the "slot" side.

The slot side is, as you can guess, the side with the slot for a screw-driver (or custom-made driver tool).

The show side is the side that is currently blank. There will likely be engraving on this side of the pivot - but, to be honest with you, I've not fully decided on this yet.

Now, you've probably figured out, the show side of the pivot will be captured in the scales so it cannot turn. Many knifemakers do this and it makes absolute sense - definitely not going to re-invent the wheel on this one.

[[[ IMG ]]]

I (briefly) considered making the slot side of the pivot with a custom pattern for tightening and loosening. I would then provide a custom driver tool to use with this.

But I very quickly realized this is not a good thing to do if you're aiming to make the world's best knife. The simple reason for this is that it requires a custom driver tool. If you don't have the tool, then you can't take the knife apart for cleaning, maintenance, etc..

There are various scenarios where you may not have the tool. You might have lost it (and waiting on a new one to arrive) or you might be on holiday without it.

A custom pivot screw -- and therefor custom tool -- would look great ...but it goes against the functionality and practicality of this knife. The functionality of being able to use a standard tool (flat-head screwdriver) on the knife. As we have mentioned previously... function always takes precedence over anything else on this knife.

[[[ IMG ]]]

The slot side of the pivot therefor has a slot so a standard screwdriver can be used. You can see I have done some aesthetic design work on it to make it look better than a standard slot.

I will talk about materials for the pivot in a later section.

At this stage I now know we'll be using a stand-off on the knife instead of a back-spacer - I will talk about why in a later section. For now I will discuss just the screws for these.

[[[ IMG ]]]

As you will have definitely already noticed...

The stand-off screws are scaled-down versions of the pivot screws. The reason for this is that it just makes sense. Having a screwdriver slot on the pivot and, say, Torx on the back-spacer screw would be a real clash.

Similarly to the pivot, we have a show side and a slot side for the stand-off screws - and this is done for the exact same reasons as we talked about with the pivot above.

The stop-pin probably doesn't need much of an explanation or justification. Its function is the same as other knives. 

Our version is specific to this knife in terms of the width and length though.

The screws for the Lock-bar Insert and Pocket-Clip need to be very small because of the space we have to work with in these areas.

Luckily we've had small screws custom-made for us for a while for our Fidget Sliders (we use these screws to attach the sliding plates on them ...and you can CLICK HERE to find out more).

The screws are not a custom thread or such. They are a standard thread screw (2-56 thread) - just very short. We will ultimately make these in-house ourselves ...but it requires a $250k machine and so we have to work towards that.

The lock-bar insert screws will be very short (due to limited depth) ...but the pocket-clip screw will be quite a bit longer as we have the space available for that.

The