Retractable Stanley Knife

Stanley knives are great little tools. Unfortunately, they are also dangerous to yourself if they are not built correctly. Poor quality knives that are left to bounce around in the back of a vehicle or in your tool bag have a tendency to move around and allow the blade to slide out a bit. What this means is that when you go to grab them out you can hurt yourself. The feeling of being cut by one of these knives is something that you want to avoid at all costs! The solution? A higher quality Stanley knife such as a Retractable Stanley Knife.

These slide into themselves, meaning that the blade is safely tucked away. Something to be very careful of when you get these though is the mechanism that locks the blade away. If its plastic, or looks pretty weak then I would suggest you stay away from it. There is nothing worse than a poor quality product which ultimately costs you more money in the long run. It’s not hard to separate the high quality knives from the poor quality ones. Look for aluminum or steel cases, something that feels solid and that looks good. The sliding parts of a Retractable Stanley Knife need to be strong too, as these are used frequently.

Have a good look at how you change the blades too. A poor quality knife will need you to get a screw driver, open the whole knife up and then switch the blades over. This can take a few minutes and even longer if you can’t find the screwdriver! As an alternative, a good quality Retractable Stanley Knife will have a quick release. This is something that you want to be secure and solid, but something that you can lift up easily to swap the blades. Even better, a good knife has a place to keep the Stanley blades so that you don’t have to keep another thing in your tool bag.

In the past I have found that buying a Stanley Cutter which has cost double or more of the cheap ones has paid off several times in the long run. You can go through hundreds of the cheap Stanley knives in a lifetime, or you can go through one quality Stanley knife. Too many people get sucked into the trap of buying the cheapest thing that they see on the shelf without really considering what’s economically intelligent for the long run!

The other alternative to a retractable Stanley knife is a Folding Utility Knife. These are similar, except they fold in half to create a protected area for the blade and a knife that is half the size. This can be handy, but you might have to fork out a bit more money to pay for something like this. Having the knife fold in half means that the blade is well out of reach and as a result you can’t get cut as well as making it smaller to fit in your tool bag. At the end of the day it comes down to what you want, and you can get some very small retractable Stanley knives without much effort.