The thread on assist opening knives raised some questions for me. How reliable are the actions and locks of auto knives? There are many clones from China and elsewhere that are highly thought of for their quality.
I was looking at some autos and find that there are two types of springs. Coil and leaf. The clones seem to be predominantly coil.
I can see the auto being quite nice in a survival situation. I don't see much value to an assist opening. I have many spydercos and other types with studs. I like the spydies with the hole instead of the stud. Personal preference I'm sure. I find that I can open my spydies very quick. I don't have an auto yet to see the speed.
Any thoughts? I'm at Bladeforums and may post this there as well.
I value the experience of folk here.
Regards
Tom

I have a Boeker Speedlock. It has a coil spring. It´s slightly slower than the knives with leave spring. It has two major advantages though. The coil spring is less prone to breakage and it has enough travel to open the blade if it was stopped on the way. Due to the mechanism it can be closed with one hand.
I´m satisfied with my Speedlock.

I have an EMERSON mini-CQC7, with the wave feature. Just a small notch on top of the blade , no spring, no nothing that could break .
And as soon as the knife is out of my pocket, it's open !
On EMERSON web site , you can see small videos demonstrating the wave system. Amazing !
As far as I know, this system has been inspired from Fred PERRIN , french knifemaker (both EMERSON and SPIDERCO have a version his famous "griffe" (claw) in their catalog).

Alain