TRAVELING LIGHT

SOMETIMES, INEXPENSIVE UTILITY BLADES YOU PICK UP AT YOUR DESTINATION CAN GET THE JOB DONE

- ABE ELIAS

If you are used to carrying an everyday carry (EDC) blade, whenever you are without one you feel half-dressed. Oftentimes, I will choose my EDC according to what I think my day will be like. If I am doing a lot of maintenance work or construction, I pick a multitool-style carry. Going outdoors, I’ll choose something suited to those tasks perhaps. If all I am looking for is a blade, the world is my oyster. I am a firm believer that there is a tool out there for every job. Therefore, what do you carry, say, if you are going to a tradeshow and opening a lot of boxes? Now add the fact you are flying to these tradeshows and you need something that TSA won't confiscate.

My company started sending me on the tradeshow circuit. Not wanting to be without an EDC, I started looking at utility blade-based EDCs. Surprisingly, there is more than one supplier of these, yet the market is not flooded with them. I grabbed some utility knife EDCs from four companies. These knives traveled with me to the shows and got a workout just as my EDC knife when I wasn’t traveling.

The models I chose were the Outdoor Edge SlideWinder, the Gerber Exchange-A-Blade (EAB) (EAB Lite), Gerber Prybrid, the GilTek Ruk, and the Big I Design Titanium Pocket Tool (TPT) (TPT Slide). For me, these tools fall into the categories of convenient and functional. So, no destruction tests or cutting trials. It was simply, do they work and are they easy to use. Anything else would be pretty much a bonus.

OUTDOOR EDGE’S SLIDEWINDER

(MSRP $14.95)