A slightly broken A. G. Russell FeatherLite One Hand Knife

Recently, I switched to using an A. G. Russell FeatherLite One Hand Knife as my everyday carry knife.  After a long period with the CRKT M16, I wanted a change of pace.  I had had the A. G. Russell for a while, but never put it to much use.

In general, it was a good knife.  Lighter than the M16, it felt a bit 'flimsy', but it always worked.  In fact, the lighter weight (1.5 oz according to A. G. Russell) and rounded corners and edges made it more comfortable to carry.  However, the measures taken to reach that light weight may have compromised it.

After using it one day to open some envelopes, I found that I could not easily close it.  The locking mechanism includes a small plastic tab to allow one to pull the lock back to release the blade.  On my knife, that tab had broken off.  It can be closed without that tab with some extra effort, but that leaves a significant, sharp steel corner on the knife.

Note the missing plastic tab behind the blade.

The tab itself is a fairly small piece of plastic (Zytel, I'm guessing).  I found it broken in two pieces in my pocket.  It must have finally broken in my pocket sometime after the last time I had used it.  I don't know how prevalent this mode of failure is for this knife, but I would guess I'm not the first one to experience it.  The tab broke around the screw hole, where a lot of the stress would be place when using the tab. 

Closeup of lock release without tab.

Broken tab pieces

That being said, I have always had good experiences with A. G. Russel's customer service.  I'm going to ship this knife back and I expect that they will probably either replace, refund, or otherwise compensate for this defect.


Update:  After getting in touch with them, they offered to either repair it or mail me a replacement tab.  I chose the replacement tab.