Boker Mini Strike Automatic Knife Black Aluminum (2.6" Black D2)

So this is my first auto knife. I own some bucks, kershaws, gerbers, and a benchmade, so that's mostly what I'm used to. I like pocket knives, and usually buy one every year just to switch up my carry options. I have to say this knife is absolutely gorgeous, the blade is fantastic, and it arrives well sharpened. The knife deploys quickly with a satisfying snap, and locks in place firmly. I'm accustomed to liner locks for my edc, so the auto opening mechanism, and the push-button closing took some getting used to. However, to get this knife to the point where I'm happy with it, I had to make some modifications to it. It's probably not a good habit, but I found myself fidgeting with it quite often, just deploying and closing it. While this does definitely put undue wear and tear on the spring, it failed in a surprisingly short amount of time. In fact, the spring warped and ceased functioning after only 3 days. But even so, how much use could I put on in 3 days? Assuming I opened it 100 times in that short timespan: how long would that last in typical usage? Probably not as long as you would like. At this point, I had to take the knife apart and attempt to repair it. There are videos on YouTube that assisted in this process and I was able to open up the knife and reassemble it. However, the spring was basically shot. It didn't appear warped, but it simply would not hold tension, and would constantly pop out of the hole in the blade that the stem of the spring is supposed to go through to tension the blade. The reason for this is because the stem is extremely short. Even after fixing the spring and putting it back in place multiple times, it contined to pop loose when I attempted to close it. Assuming it didn't pop out during reassembly. I finally gave up and decided to buy a replacement spring. I ended up ordering from another website because they advertised "boker strike" on the list of supported knives, and I was willing to gamble that it supported the mini as well . I'm happy to report that the spring does in fact work for this knife. Furthermore, the replacement spring I ordered was way higher gauge. The metal coils were much thicker, and the stem was longer. Though strangely the leg that sits in the knife plate was shorter. However, closing the knife feels way better than it ever did, and it deploys wicked fast now. You can adjust that by tightening or loosening the bolt up towards the blade. I highly recommend ponying up the $8 and buying the springs if you get this knife, cause it will fail on you, and it's a worthwhile upgrade. Another side affect of taking it apart multiple times is that the safety switch developed some slop. It came quite stiff, so I'm not sure if that would have happened naturally, but it's worth noting. There is a screw on the saftey you can tighten, and that probably would stiffen it up a bit again. So while I may be a bit critical of this knife, I do like it enough to give it 4 stars. If you want to just buy an auto knife, and not need to touch it at all: you'll probably want to buy something at a higher price point. TL;DR: It's a nice knife, but buy replacement springs, and be prepared/able to swap.