Hey guys, while on the trip we took to Tennessee a little over a month ago, we stopped at one of my favorite places to go to which was the Smokey Mountain Knifeworks there in Sevierville, Tennessee and while I was there, I bought this pocket knife just for the use of self-defense, not for every day cutting jobs and it’s a good knife, I really like it but it has a design flaw on how they attached this relatively small belt clip to the side of it.
Like a lot of my pocket knives that I’ve bought over the years that were relatively cheaper than this knife, they all have much larger belt clips that use at least two screws that either go all the way through from one side to the other with barrel-nuts on the other side or, the screws are threaded into an actual piece of steel thats sandwiched between the two halves of the handle making a pretty secure and strong mounting spot for the belt clip to attach too.
On this new knife I just bought, each side of the knife that makes up the handle, according to the manufacturer, is made out of aircraft aluminum alloy. Well, the way they attached this barely 2 1/2 inch long, quarter inch wide belt clip to the side of this 6 inch long pocket knife handle, they used one little bitty screw that threads into a drilled and tapped hole in this aluminum and in order to keep the belt clip from relying on just the tightness of the screw to keep it from pivoting around, they cut an indented area in the handle where the hole is so that the part of the belt clip that’s folded all the way around can fit down in the indentation so that the screw itself doesn’t have to try and keep the belt clip centered in the right spot.
Two weeks after buying this knife, I noticed the belt clip was getting really loose and moving side to side so one night I got my little precision tool kit out and tightened the screw like I’ve had to do a lot with a lot of my other knives because those little screws just come loose over time and when I went to tighten up the screw, it tightened up just a very slight amount before next thing you know, the screw didn’t have any resistance at all meaning the hole stripped out that quick so of course I got online and found the manufacturer’s website of the knife, sent them an email and started up a warranty claim.
After spending 13 bucks to send the pocket knife back via UPS and eight bucks to have them send it back to me, not even two weeks later after only caring the knife one or two times, I noticed that once again, the belt clip started doing the same exact thing so I sent the company another email asking what to do about it and they pretty much just told me to put Locktite on the screw and put it back in there. I pretty much told the guy that I didn’t think that was really the issue that it was the fact that they just used one screw threaded into soft aluminum to hold this belt clip on and that their idea of making this little indentation in the handle to help keep the belt clip centered wasn’t cutting it so, I figured I’d come on here and ask you guys for advice on a better way to fix this so it doesn’t keep coming loose.
I really like the knife and want to keep it but I can’t carry it if I’m too worried about the clip coming off all the time but because of how it’s made, you can’t properly tighten the screw without stripping the threads.
Thanks.
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