Well, as much as I'd like to relate a gripping tale of adventure regarding the failure of my little Benchmade, this is going to be more of a cautionary tale preached to the choir.

To make a short story long:

I bought a regular (non-Ritter) Mini-Grip about ten months ago, give or take. It's been used mostly for small day to day cutting chores. It hasn't done anything that would stress even a cheap paring knife.

The day before yesterday, I was sitting at my desk, and tried to close the knife after using it to cut a loose thread on my shirt. When I pulled back on the release lever, I heard my spring go "sproing!" and watched the blade kind of flop down in defeat. Closer examination revealed . . . nothing. As far as I can see, the spring is enclosed between the handle scale and the liner on one side. (I could be wrong, but that's the best I could estimate based on diagrams online and eyeballing my knife.)So, I don't know whether the spring broke or (more likely) just jumped off of where it was supposed to be set in on the side away from the lever. (It's still contacting the lever.)

Anyway, Benchmade said send it on in for a new spring, no problemo. They answered the phone quickly and were very nice. I'm dropping it off in the mail Monday and expect the whole transaction to go smoothly with the repair.

Now, the reason I bring this up isn't an indictment of the knife. I LOVE this knife. I like the Axis lock system. However, after less than a year of very light use, the one weakness of the system that I'd been a little worried about when buying it cropped up: Namely, the spring. The fact is, the more parts something has, the more possible points of failure it has. In this case, it was the spring.

Of course, we all know a fixed blade is best for field use for this very reason. However, we don't all always carry a fixed blade with us. For example, a short day hike in an area where knife laws or social constraints (i.e., not freaking out non-knife aware people) indicate a more discrete option.

My take away from this:

1. Even high quality folding knives can fail for no apparent reason. (And having had some higher end folders worth more than four times the mini-grip's going price, I'm calling the mini-grip high quality.)

2. If you're going to stick with folders, carry two. Or more.

As I said, this is all preaching to the choir, but...I'd have NEVER thought that little Benchmade would fail like that. Sure, I carry several folders (SAK, multitool, the one locking blade) anyway, but that was a pretty good wake up call that feces does, indeed, occur.