I’m always on the look out for tools useful for model building. I was in Wally World’s craft section the other day and they were putting these on the shelf as a new (to local Walmart atleast) product.
It has a nice heft to it, comfortable rubber fingertip grip, and a very postive system for holding the blade in place. Makes me wonder why X-acto or Excel hadn’t thought about it. When reaching for a medium duty hobby knife, I think this one will become a favorite of mine.
I have an X-Acto X2000, with a rubber grip, safety cap and no roll handle design. I don’t know what Fiskars did differently with the blade attachment, but I’ve never had any trouble with the turn and pinch system X-Acto uses.
http://www.artstuff.net/xacto_x2000_knives.htm
Works for me!
The blade collet is solid on the top and botom edge of the blade, not split like the traditional “pinch” design. Instead of gripping the blade and relying on friction this system positivly supports the top and bottom edge of the blade. The knife or blade would break first. Also the blade collet is indexed by a tab so it can’t twist either. I do wish it had an anti-roll feature.
Leave it to Fiskars to come up with a better system!
I really like the feel of my X2000! It’s fat like a Mont Blanc pen is fat, and the rubber texture is grippy. The anti roll really works! I’ve worked in printing for decades and the “normal” X-Acto with #11 was de rigeur in the old pre-press days. I learned a long time ago that you don’t want one to roll off the edge of the table and skewer your foot! We would either wrap a bunch of elastics around the end, or a piece of ruby tape to stop the rolling. I’ve never understood why they just didn’t machine a flat edge like pencils have.
LOL , nothing like pulling an E-xacto out of the top of your foot! Ouch.
Knock on wood once was enough for me to learn my lesson.
Fiskars have a Softgrip Craft Knife which will never roll. It’s got a rubberised “V” profiled handle, but has a traditional 4-jaw collet. A little bulkier than the average knife, but fits right in your hand and doesn’t twist. I picked up a couple locally a while back, and with a combination of incorrect pricing and a 20% discount on craft items at the time, came to less than AUD$3.00 each. (I have seen these around the AUD$10.00 mark)
looks quite nice but i think it’d be a very bad idea for me to use it. Looks too much like a pen that i have a habit of twirling around my finger. i’d be holding this thing, twirl it without thinking and slice my hand into spaghetti.