Making Cool Fasteners to Set Off Your Projects and Products

Last modified: February 21, 2024

I have an affinity for unique and unconventional fasteners. You might consider it an obsession, but my interest in peculiar fasteners was piqued while working on automobiles. These can be very ornamental and visually appealing. Consider this homemade exemplification for a pocket knife I recently came across in the incredible HSM Shopmade Tooling thread:

Black hexagon with silver circular plate and three small holes.

The "bolt" looks great on the knife, doesn't it? The tool would be a real nuisance to make manually, but very straightforward with CNC. I'll have to try something like this at some point. It needs to wait for my CNC lathe to be finished though.

A thought:  you'll notice that the bolt head has only indents and the tool has the protrusions that engage the indents?  That's a good idea.  That way, if you manage to break or bend protrusions, you can try to make another tool and still get your bolt out.  If they're on the bolt, you might wind up having to drill it out if you are trying to engage protrusions with a tool that has holes.

Here is another extremely cool fastener I came across recently:

Close-up of an engraved bolt on a firearm.

Engraved Grip Screws for Colt 1911...

They're made by Altamont Corp who recently became a customer of our G-Wizard software.  They're a really neat company with a great product line.

Be the first to know about updates at CNC Cookbook

Join our newsletter to get updates on what's next at CNC Cookbook.