Stanley® FatMax® Retractable Knife: Maddening Set-Up But Decent Operation

Difficult to "set up" this utility knife. And the instructions are no help. But once you have the Stanley® FatMax® Retractable Utility Knife set up, it's a fairly good, ergonomically-correct utility knife.

"Set-up?" you say. "Set-up for a utility knife? What kind of 'set-up' can there be?"

I say: "Putting the blade in the knife. That kind of set-up."

It took me 20 minutes of fiddling and swearing to figure out how to get the blade of this FatMax knife to stay in place.

My first issue with this knife is that you must push the blade into the knife from the front. So, your fingers are dangerously close to the edge of the blade and are exerting force on the blade.

But once you get the blade into the front of this Stanley utility knife, nothing happens. The blade falls out. Or it falls into the handle of the blade. It does everything but lock into place.

This, of course, is after you have determined that the door on the handle that swings open is simply storage for extra blades. It has no bearing on mechanical aspects of the blade.

Drumroll... Here is how to insert a blade into a Stanley® FatMax® Retractable Utility Knife:

1. Move the brass slider button forward as far as possible.
2. Verify that the button is at the very end. Think you have it as far forward as possible? No, you don't. Push even a bit farther. A little nib of metal will appear through the blade slot at the end when it's all the way.
3. Gently slide blade into end of knife.
4. Miraculously, the blade is now locked in place.

Once you've got the blade in, it's not a bad knife. I like the angled handle. And it's a fairly heavy knife, which feels reassuring in my hand.