How do you break in your knives?

I usually carry them for 2-3 weeks or until the action got smoother, also with the factory edge, to get a feeling for what the knife is about.

Then I disassemble and clean the knife, flatten the bottom of the screws to make them screw in easier, carefully file down/round up some ugly/sharp feeling spots on the handle. In the case of this Kansept Prickle, I also refinished the scales by sanding it a bit, in order to expose more of the fibers.

The part where it interests me the most what you think is, when I reassemble the knife for the first time, I usually tighten the pivot screw a bit more, so that it is harder to open the knife, but without making the opening mechanism useless. I leave it like that until the action gets smooth(er).
Then I dissasemble, clean and reassemble it properly.

I’ve got the feeling that the action is then even smoother than it could be without over-tightening the pivot. It has a greater effect on knives with bearings than on knives with washers. I think it is because the surface the bearing rides in gets compacted and hardened a tiny bit when over-tightened.

by Connect_Actuary7961