Screwless / Toolless Folding Knives

Tsujigiri

Tsujigiri

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May 25, 2009
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I've been on a no-screw knife kick lately, and it looks like there are a bunch of options out there now. Torx screws work great, but I have to admire the manufacturing skill needed to mortise and tenon a knife together, and it's nice to be able to take a knife apart and clean out the pivot anywhere you are. Plus, never having to worry about things loosening and coming out of alignment or getting lost is a plus. I'm a sucker for gimmicks, I know, but necessity is incidental in this hobby anyway. Here are a few that I've found:

Not sure who was the first to come up with this idea, but the Koenig Zenaida seems to be one of the earlier ones. It also seems to come apart with very little effort:
maxresdefault.jpg


Snecx also has a few of these types of knives, probably one of the more accessible ones was the Terra that he made with CKF:
knife-pre-owned-custom-knife-factory-snecx-terra-24-of-100-limited-2_2000x.jpg


Twosun's TS88 also goes back a few years, and stands out as the least expensive screwless knife that I've seen by a wide margin. I can say from personal experience that it's not the easiest to take apart and reassemble, but it's impressive that they made a knife that's so dependent on tight tolerances but costs less than a quarter the price of the next cheapest:
2eb51642-691b-49c6-9207-35e3a0a02c4f__11499.1653495109.jpg

Forever Steel's new Rebelship, made by Rike, may be one of the most intricately fit knives on the list. It has a lot of complicated machining that comes together in a knife that uses parts of itself to complete the disassembly:
RIKE_REBELSHIP_05__44882.1687202295.jpg

I don't know too much about the Avian Atlas (the company or the model), but it's also apparently a knife that comes apart with no tools:
maxresdefault.jpg


The GTX Enigma recently won an award as a custom knife and has an interesting system that cranks the knife apart using the pocket clip:
images


Honorable mention is the CRKT Homefront, certainly not at the level of quality as the other knives here and it doesn't fully disassemble without tools and screws, but you can get it apart enough to clean out the pivot without tools:
CRK270GKP_01.jpg





Any others that I missed? What do you think about this type of knife? I'm hoping that Rike will at some point compile their greatest hits and produce a knife that looks completely sleek with no visible hardware (like their Lamella and Cybertrix), but can also be completely disassembled and reassembled without tools.
 
As long as I'm still able , I intend to keep on ...;)

Especially with standard torx . Hate those stupid proprietary fasteners / pivots that need a special tool .

Nothing against tool-less stuff , in theory, but often they either don't work very well or are just more trouble than decent larger torx screws .

Cool as a novelty , but not something I've wanted to buy for myself .
 
In my 1960-ish youth, every folding knife I had any experience with did not have screws that I was aware of.

Why did knife designers start to use screws and stand off pillars to put knives together?

When the Buck 110 came out, I really liked it . . .and there were few competitors in terms of design and performance back then. I became a working adult, often wearing a hard hat at work. A buck 110 or similar, was the go-to EDC cutter.

With daily use in harsh environments, I realized that the basic design and construction was not as robust as it could be. The great looking brass and rosewood handles did not keep their out of the box attractive appearance very long. But that is merely cosmetic. The real fault or weakness of these knives is the pinned construction. With normal daily use, working in the oil fields of West Texas and later on the Middle East, these k knives loosened up and required frequent squeezing (gently) in a vise, followed by delicatly peening the pins with a punch and hammer.

Buck still makes them this way.

A switch to a robust, positive mechanical assembly method (screws?) would be a leap forward for the Buck 110 and 112 design.
 
DocJD said:
As long as I'm still able , I intend to keep on ...;)

Especially with standard torx . Hate those stupid proprietary fasteners / pivots that need a special tool .

Nothing against tool-less stuff , in theory, but often they either don't work very well or are just more trouble than decent larger torx screws .

Cool as a novelty , but not something I've wanted to buy for myself .
Click to expand...

Agree. Now, the Fulltrack is the best of both worlds. Uses standard hex screw sizes, but comes with tool on board.

_DSC9127tn-X2.jpg
 
I can tell you that in over 20 years of using knives, I've had to take a knife apart once to really deep clean it. And then I was like I could have just sprayed it with cleaner and been ok. So while a knife that can come apart without tools is neat, it is just a novelty collectible to me.
 
I’ve had to take apart a knife to effectively scrub off the rust that developed on the stop pin which was impossible to get rid of without disassembling. Sure, it would have continued working just fine, but the rust was discoloring the scales despite oiling. Same with guns, sometimes you have to disassemble to get rid of rust completely.

I like the idea of a tool-less folder, just haven’t seen a design I like yet.
 
I like the aesthetics of knives like these, both ones with no traditional fasteners and ones that hide them. Sort of like well joined wooden furniture where the fasteners can't be seen.

Like others have commented I don't find any meaningful functional differences.
 
I have had to take apart knives for cleaning at least a dozen times. Most often, something gets stuck between a washer and a liner and there is no other way to get it unstuck. This happens the most with Spyderco (and especially Byrd) knives, probably because I carry them a lot, but I also had to do that to a CRKT right out of the box. Sand and mud usually just wash out, but if there is something, um, smellier in the innards, I do prefer to disassemble.

I like the idea of toolless and screwless disassembly because that would mean no thread locker.
 
I appreciate knife manufacturers who push the envelope in different ways. I think these are all pretty sweet in their own way. It's not necessary in my current lifestyle, and in fact probably isn't necessary in any lifestyle, however I've had times in my life where my pivot became loose and it was a sun of b to find a torx to tighten it up how I like it, and I couldn't find one for months, meanwhile my blade keeps opening in my pocket. However, that's not normally something people have to worry about. They may also work well for someone who's deployed out of country as long as they are reliable. I don't have any fantasies about being an operator in some far away country anymore, and god willing I (we) never will have to, but I'd imagine it'd be hard to find a Torx if you were deployed in the desert or something. That's one thing I've always thought was cool about some Striders, ZTs, etc, where they have a flathead or standard wrench size pivot.

Now days if I got it it'd just be out of the desire to have something unique.
 
The other day I took apart a friend's Hogue RSK that wasn't flipping easily; somehow he got something into the knife that had stuck the washers so firmly to the liners that they had to be pried of. I think with some of these new knives where we expect the action to effortlessly fly open and closed, it's much more important that everything around the pivot is kept clean than with older lockbacks or slipjoints. If someone can come out with a fairly affordable knife that doesn't need tools but also comes apart with less effort than a Sebenza, I think there would be a market for it. The cost of high precision and tricky machining has almost come down enough to make that happen.
 
VorpelSword said:
In my 1960-ish youth, every folding knife I had any experience with did not have screws that I was aware of.

Why did knife designers start to use screws and stand off pillars to put knives together?

When the Buck 110 came out, I really liked it . . .and there were few competitors in terms of design and performance back then. I became a working adult, often wearing a hard hat at work. A buck 110 or similar, was the go-to EDC cutter.

With daily use in harsh environments, I realized that the basic design and construction was not as robust as it could be. The great looking brass and rosewood handles did not keep their out of the box attractive appearance very long. But that is merely cosmetic. The real fault or weakness of these knives is the pinned construction. With normal daily use, working in the oil fields of West Texas and later on the Middle East, these k knives loosened up and required frequent squeezing (gently) in a vise, followed by delicatly peening the pins with a punch and hammer.

Buck still makes them this way.

A switch to a robust, positive mechanical assembly method (screws?) would be a leap forward for the Buck 110 and 112 design.
Click to expand...
I think there is a post somewhere on here from Spyderco saying that pinned is actually stronger in general, just no ability to adjust the pivot.
 
LimpCroissant said:
I appreciate knife manufacturers who push the envelope in different ways. I think these are all pretty sweet in their own way. It's not necessary in my current lifestyle, and in fact probably isn't necessary in any lifestyle, however I've had times in my life where my pivot became loose and it was a sun of b to find a torx to tighten it up how I like it, and I couldn't find one for months, meanwhile my blade keeps opening in my pocket. However, that's not normally something people have to worry about. They may also work well for someone who's deployed out of country as long as they are reliable. I don't have any fantasies about being an operator in some far away country anymore, and god willing I (we) never will have to, but I'd imagine it'd be hard to find a Torx if you were deployed in the desert or something. That's one thing I've always thought was cool about some Striders, ZTs, etc, where they have a flathead or standard wrench size pivot.

Now days if I got it it'd just be out of the desire to have something unique.
Click to expand...
Ya forgot about Emerson which is an important part of his overall design. 😉
 
DocJD said:
If I just had to use a folder for the really dirty work , I'd become much more interested in some quick and easy , tool-less system . 🤢
Click to expand...
This reminds me of a design that had only 3 or 4 parts . Creator reviewed in the Knife Reviews sub .

Just a blade that slide out of a one piece handle , with a simple lock that could be tightened to lock the blade at any length form full closed to full opened .

Real easy to take apart and completely clean . I'll see if can find it . Maybe .

Yea ! Found it : 🥳

Edit correction : Knife has 5 total parts , but 3 of those are the whole lock mechanism . No other fasteners .
 
Last edited:
Tsujigiri said:
I've been on a no-screw knife kick lately, and it looks like there are a bunch of options out there now. Torx screws work great, but I have to admire the manufacturing skill needed to mortise and tenon a knife together, and it's nice to be able to take a knife apart and clean out the pivot anywhere you are. Plus, never having to worry about things loosening and coming out of alignment or getting lost is a plus. I'm a sucker for gimmicks, I know, but necessity is incidental in this hobby anyway. Here are a few that I've found:

Not sure who was the first to come up with this idea, but the Koenig Zenaida seems to be one of the earlier ones. It also seems to come apart with very little effort:
maxresdefault.jpg


Snecx also has a few of these types of knives, probably one of the more accessible ones was the Terra that he made with CKF:
knife-pre-owned-custom-knife-factory-snecx-terra-24-of-100-limited-2_2000x.jpg


Twosun's TS88 also goes back a few years, and stands out as the least expensive screwless knife that I've seen by a wide margin. I can say from personal experience that it's not the easiest to take apart and reassemble, but it's impressive that they made a knife that's so dependent on tight tolerances but costs less than a quarter the price of the next cheapest:
2eb51642-691b-49c6-9207-35e3a0a02c4f__11499.1653495109.jpg

Forever Steel's new Rebelship, made by Rike, may be one of the most intricately fit knives on the list. It has a lot of complicated machining that comes together in a knife that uses parts of itself to complete the disassembly:
RIKE_REBELSHIP_05__44882.1687202295.jpg

I don't know too much about the Avian Atlas (the company or the model), but it's also apparently a knife that comes apart with no tools:
maxresdefault.jpg


The GTX Enigma recently won an award as a custom knife and has an interesting system that cranks the knife apart using the pocket clip:
images


Honorable mention is the CRKT Homefront, certainly not at the level of quality as the other knives here and it doesn't fully disassemble without tools and screws, but you can get it apart enough to clean out the pivot without tools:
CRK270GKP_01.jpg





Any others that I missed? What do you think about this type of knife? I'm hoping that Rike will at some point compile their greatest hits and produce a knife that looks completely sleek with no visible hardware (like their Lamella and Cybertrix), but can also be completely disassembled and reassembled without tools.
Click to expand...
CRKT made a 25th Anniversay HomeFront that was significantly higher quality than the regular production.View attachment 2351654
 
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