Strange (and a bit sad) to see folks experiencing issues with their Ikuchis, I'm really enjoying mine and do hope it sells well enough for Spyderco to look into building the entire series. To me the wheel flipper worked like a charm from the get going, I've had no issues deploying the blade with either index or thumb (seems I'm developing a slight preference toward index finger deployment tho). Also, no matter how hard I've tried, I haven't been able to wedge the meat of any of my finger deep enough in the proximity of the tip for that to be a potential liability. My current issue is the closing, as muscle memory dictates I should press the comp lock with my thumb and let the kick of the blade hit my finger (as this is how I close my comp & back locks) which obviously would be a bad idea in this case... still working on changing the habit :)
Apart from that, I really like:
- The wheel flipper. Over the last decade or so, I've purchased and immediately sold a good number of flippers, due to my lack of interest in the flip tab. So far, the wheel works great (for me) so the Ikuchi seems to be here to stay.
- Grip-agnostic handle. I appreciate the 50/50 choil for what it is but I've never actively liked it as a design feature. I find myself gravitating towards more grip-neutral handles and the Ikuchi is absolutely stunning from this perspective. The looks could be a bit meh at first, as it's just a length of CF, G10 and metal with the slightest curvature to it - and yet somehow manages to sit incredible in hand.
- The pointy kwaiken style blade coupled with the 2.5 mm thickness might very well turn this into the ultimate slicer. YMMV of course and there's nothing inherently wrong with overbuild, my take is we simply need more of this in pocket knives.
- The slim package. At roughly the same dimensions and weight, the Ikuchi packs an additional cm of blade into a package half as wide as the Salt 2 wharnie.