Everyone who influenced me growing up carried a pocket knife. It was an indispensable tool to be carried on your person at all times long before EDC was a term or an internet sensation.
Influences and Childhood Pocket Knives
Gram. Pa. Dad. Big brother. They all carried their favorite version of the pocket knife. Living on a farm, our pocket knives were always useful and were used for a good earthy variety of tasks like carving a perfect hot dog roasting stick or cutting baler twine while making hay or digging out a splinter or gutting a fresh trout.
“We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us”
Marshall McLuhan
I carried a range of pocket knives when I was a kid, all small and cheap, no doubt, and all lost forever somewhere on the 50+ acres of the earth that was “mine”. My Gram would let me flip through catalogs and I would always pick out small knives with pictures of cowboys & their horses like these.
Finding a pocket knife for the office.
As someone who currently lives a modest and quiet life in the suburbs, has a bookish & nerdy personal life, and spends my “job” hours in an office, I’ve found that my needs for a pocket knife are much more modest and simple than a lot of other guys.
My criteria for a perfect pocket knife for the office are:
- Truly Compact. I like a knife that doesn’t monopolize the space in my pocket and doesn’t cause an unsightly bulge. Pocket bulge is not dapper, fellas. It has to be shorter than 3 inches closed and have a slim profile. No belt clip. No multitool. Just a very small knife.
- Handsome and professional. I don’t pull my knife out much at work, but when I do, I want it to look like a small sleek tool, not a miniature weapon. I want it to be perfect for opening a box or slicing my apple, not for blazing a trail through the jungle, or replacing the engine in my car with a single tool.
- Simple cutting blade. This might seem obvious by now, but I like a small, simple blade. I don’t need it to double as a small saw for tearing through logs. I don’t need it to help me find my longitude and latitude coordinates. I just want a small cutting blade for everyday office use like cutting open packages or letters.
- Scissors. Ok, I had no idea I would use scissors so much. I use the scissors as much or more than any other part of my knife. So much that now when I carry a knife that doesn’t have scissors it almost feels incomplete!
- Tweezers. These were also a surprise for me, but I’ve used the tweezers for everything from removing ticks from my pup to picking a splinter from my finger.
- Toothpick. No one looks handsome with bits of lettuce leftover from lunch stuck in their teeth.
- High quality & long-lasting. I’m not exactly frugal, but I don’t use a lot of my money on gear. So when I buy something, I need it to work well for a very long time. I’m not interested in replacing my pocket knife every other year. I want a tool that will be with me for a long time and I don’t want to squander my life away maintaining or fixing it.
My go-to pocket knife for the past 17 years.
When I was in college, a friend from Switzerland gifted me my first adult pocket knife, a Victorinox Swiss Army Classic SD Pocket Knife. That one was engraved and had a small pen included. I’ve tried a variety of other small knives in the 17 years since, but I’ve never found any other pocket knife that suits me quite as well as the Victorinox Swiss Army Classic SD Pocket Knife.
My current iteration is a sunny yellow, plain and simple, yet slim and handsome. The blades stay sharp. The scissors work effortlessly. It fits in my dress slacks without leaving a big bump on the front of my thigh. It not only fits the above criteria – it helped to form the list. This small pocket knife has been so perfect that when I try to carry something else, it no longer feels right.
Intentional gear matters.
A pocket knife is not just an accessory or a little collectible for your EDC Instagram pics. It’s a tool; small, perhaps, but never insignificant.
We choose our tools to fit our lifestyle.
There’s nothing humiliating to me about being an office guy with office guy needs. Just like I choose my clothes to reflect my professional self, I choose my gear to reflect a more polished image at work than I do when I go camping.
The Victorinox Swiss Army Classic SD Pocket Knife is a perfect EDC pocket knife. It’s slim and small. It has a great assortment of tools useful for everyday situations. It’s affordable and it’s handsome. Lastly, it’s high quality and built to last. It comes in as many colors as you could ask for – truly something for everyone.
Just because you work in an office doesn’t mean you shouldn’t carry a pocket knife.
You simply have to be intentional about what tool you choose for the job.
Every butch has a personal EDC – those items you always have in your pockets. I want every item in my EDC to be something I love and that I look forward to using. My EDC includes a pocket knife. My EDC pocket knife is a Victorinox Swiss Army Classic SD Pocket Knife and it’s the most reliable, handsome, and well-suited pocket knife I own. I’ve used a version of this knife nearly every day for the past 17 years. Try one out for about $15 and see if you become a pocket knife convert.
This is not a sponsored post. Just as I state in my editorial policy, I feature gear that I’ve used and I like for no reason other than I like to share what’s worked for me.
Do you already carry a pocket knife? What’s your go-to style? What do you use yours for?
