Gerber F.A.S.T assisted opening Mechanism - Reliable Quality you would trust???

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Mar 3, 2009
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I bought a Gerber Vallotton Knife, GB-1527 this afternoon ($45) on a completely uniformed impulse decision. Ultimately, it was the looks/aesthetics and the F.A.S.T. assisted opening that sealed the deal for me.

My only grips are the inferior 440A blade steel, a cheap feeling and not 100% reliable locking mechanism, and fairly slow AO deployment speed.

Also does anyone have a diagram the shows/explains how Gerber's F.A.S.T AO works?

GB-1528.jpg
 
Rat Finkenstein said:
Gerber and "Reliable Quality you would trust"
are not something I would combine.
Click to expand...

not all gerbers are created equal, my freeman folder, my hinderer and my "been through the ringer" minifastdraw all beg to differ.
i have used and abused the fast draw and its never done anything but do what its supposed to do:thumbup: actually gave it to my son early last year.
Gerber makes some junk but they do have good products.
Never had any issues with the mini fastdraw
cheers
ivan
 
The mini version holds up better than it's bigger brother. They didn't beef up the internals for the larger version so the stress of the added blade mass causes the lock to wear prematurely. Neat design but I sold mine. Not something I would rely on.


IVANKERLEY said:
not all gerbers are created equal, my freeman folder, my hinderer and my "been through the ringer" minifastdraw all beg to differ.
i have used and abused the fast draw and its never done anything but do what its supposed to do:thumbup: actually gave it to my son early last year.
Gerber makes some junk but they do have good products.
Never had any issues with the mini fastdraw
cheers
ivan
Click to expand...
 
The internals suck. I've seen the retention mechanism jam or break before, and then the knife won't stay closed. It was this mechanism that made us drop Gerber from our limited case-space at work.
 
If you want my honest opinion, I will never buy another Gerber after seeing some of their knives fail under regular use at work. Not all of their knives are bad, I don't believe. However, I will not risk it.

If it works for you, though, that is all that matters.
 
I myself bought a gerber when I was in middle school and it had the beefiest joint I have ever seen on a folder until zero tolerance came along.

unfortunatley the blad steel was terrible and the lock was dangerous if you even touched it (which led me to dropping epoxy into it so it couldnt be closed), the best day of my life is when I lent it to my dad to do some roofing work and he tarred it up so damn bad he had to buy me a new knife D:

My problem with a/o is not reliablity, its the fact that the blade is being moved by something other than you and your fingers are touching it. I think if it felt like it wasnt going to be 100% consistent, I wouldnt even put the thing in my pocket.
 
It depends largely on the Gerber knife, some are better than others however a week ago I bought a 40$ Gerber F.A.S.T knife It felt good in my hand and the lock felt very study but It deployed so slow that I could open it faster with my hands. Upon taking it home I took a waterbottle and slashed it to see if the blade was sharper then it felt and upon attempting to close the knife I noticed the light impact jammed the lock and I was unable to close it after trying for a hour I decided to take the knife back and purchased a Kershaw skyline flipper instead, I much prefer it.
 
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