A great variety of knives, cutters, safety cutters, and cutter apparatuses are known. Features variously found in prior knives, cutters, safety cutters, and cutter apparatuses include mechanisms and devices facilitating, for example, blade deployment, blade locking, blade depth adjustment, blade change, or blade storage. Various ergonomic devices and apparatuses are also known.
It is known to provide a safety cutter with a guard (or guide) located a short distance from and facing a side of the cutting blade. See e.g., U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,386,632, 6,314,646 B1, D544,774 S, and 7,987,602 B2, which are hereby incorporated by reference.
Unfortunately, manufacturers or providers of such safety cutters, to accommodate a greater number of customers and operational considerations, must make available two different product versions, namely, a right-handed device in which the guard faces one side of the cutting blade and a left-handed device in which the guard faces the opposite side of the cutting blade. This, in turn, creates potential consumer confusion as to which version of the product might be best suited for a particular user or cutting operation. Moreover, twice as much shelf frontage is required to display two versions (rather than one version) of a product.
It would be useful to be able to provide one or more of: a guarded cutter (i.e., a cutter including or provided with a guard) that eliminates or lessens the need to provide both left- and right-handed versions of the cutter; a cutter with a mechanism or device that facilitates an improved, advantageous, or otherwise desirable or useful blade change operation for the cutter; and a cutter with a mechanism or device that facilitates improved, advantageous, or otherwise desirable or useful blade storage within the cutter.