Utility knife with safety guard having reduced play

摘要

A utility knife has a protective guard that moves from a locked position to an unlocked position. Preferred mechanisms utilize a pawl that cooperates with a stop to reduce movement of the guard while the guard is in a locked position, and a simple latching mechanism that allows the pawl to bypass the stop. The pawl is disposed with respect to other elements of the mechanism such that the blade guard can only pulled back to a retracted position after operation of a trigger or other actuator, and then only for a single use. Both the stop and the catch can advantageously be carried in a fixed special relation to one another by operation of a trigger or other actuator.