The big problem with the speed safe thing is that it is totally unreliable. The spring breaks and sometimes the blade is jammed. No speedsafe for me thank you!!
I agree. In my experience, if you actually use your speedsafe knives enough, they WILL eventually break. Off the top of my head, I've had two broken springs on a blur, one on a cyclone, and two on a leek. I can't remember if my Shallot had a broken spring or not...I didn't use that one very much.
I didn't bother replacing the spring on the Cyclone because I liked it better as a manual knife. The Leek NEEDS a speedsafe torsion bar to operate, as it has absolutely no blade retention without one and will just fall open in your pocket. When the torsion bar in the blur would go, it would tend to get all jammed up and wouldn't operate (ie: was extremely difficult to open/close) unless I took the broken torsion bar out, but other than that might have made a decent manual folder.
So, yeah, as someone who uses his Kershaws a lot, I definitely see where guitarhead is coming from. :thumbup:
The main reason I avoid assisted openers these days, though, is that I don't find myself intrigued by a knife that "opens faster than any switchblade" anymore. Assisted knives are a bit gimmicky, imho, and while I used to think they were kind of nifty, I don't find they offer any real benefit over non-assisted knives besides the mall ninja/'look cool' factor. I can open my non-assisted Cyclone just as fast as I could when it had a torsion bar installed...I can open and close my Manix-2 faster than I could any assisted opener. Besides, I don't even NEED to open my knives excessively fast.
I obviously like my Speedsafe knives anyway, or I wouldn't use them, but these days I'm finding the mechanism a bit of a hassle.
Just my 0.02$, no need for anyone to go and get offended or anything like that.
