i would not buy a aw battery of that is how it is built , one small defect or sharp hit and you have a direct short.
should have been double wrapped. just my opinion. these cells are very dangerous in a closed tube.
Hmm...then the wrapper needs to be real strong. I agree with crunchtime2k, must be real careful even with the AWs, i mean at least be "mindful" of that. But for hobbyists it should be ok even for the occasional drops to the floor.
I might have gotten the dodgy ones then because they barely fit in my charger. I have to force them in.
BTW, i use my NiMH batteries professionally, and i do sometimes manage to rip the wrapper on the Sanyo and Sony cells that i am using. It start from the top or bottom, and then slowly rips further towards the middle. Somehow the wrapper becomes brittle/age or something. Maybe the flashlight crowd do not know this, not that i could goggle anything about that anyway ...
How does Sanyo, Xtar, Callies and others, BIO do this wrapping?
LOL capitalism.
If I remember correct, some 300´000 got sick from milk but "luckily" only 6 died from it.
Terrible.
Zhao Lianhai tried to raise charges upon them, got 2,5 years in prison from awoking public unrest or something like that.
I own 4 of the 18650's flame. One of them bought late last year is loosing around 10mAh capacity with each discharge/charge cycle.
Last week it measured 2075mAh with the Accucell6, yesterday only 2034mAh. They have never been abused.
I recently bought 6 of the longer version 14500 Trustfire flame off Dealextreme and during a 1 Amp discharge they became warmer than the ones I bought last year.
They came out at 783,781,760 and 745. Two I gave to a friend and didn't measure.
The two 14500 Trustfire flame I bought last year have been used in a Sipik Sk68 and the protection circuit has kicked in a quite a few times on both cells.
You would expect they have taken some "damage" from that but I got around 780mAh @ 1 Amp discharge.
Do any of you know how the Xtar batteries are wrapped ?
I resized the image for those of us on netbooks...:) 
I'm curious as to see what the fanboys have to say about AW's wrap. lol
Thanks fishmaniac . I have a 21" monitor and the original photo is still huge.
On ours we retain the factory wrap, an additional tape insulator is added with the protection circuit. They are then wrapped again with the black jacket.
This extra wrap makes for a thicker battery. We feel the additional safety makes it worth the trade off.
EDIT.... added one more pic, PCB mosfets are full
Callies > AW :)
Thank you ! This looks much safer than the Trustfire and AW batteries.
CK's cells look proper indeed. Good to see. Thank you.
I might have to buy some of the CK's but I just now ordered 20 from Reverend Jim. Maybe next month. 
Pretty sure they aren't singling out Americans ..This is an global community and china is sticking it to the entire world .
I understand your point ..
sorta ..
north America? or south America ?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj3iNxZ8Dww&feature=player_embedded#!
But in CPF they are still maintaining AW > CK.
But in another usage of mine (professional) where i do load/reload my cell crazily, i sometimes do rip the wrappers....but that's for NiMH.
On CPF it is AW > than everything. In the real world it is different.
This thread makes me want to send my little AW 18650 2900 to the battery recycler and get a CK 3100 to replace it :(