on the flip side, i tear open boxes manually because I’m too lazy to go get the scissors/knife
I would never ruin the buff on my benchmark by cutting a box!
…yeah I carry a balisong for boxes
I use my keys
I’m that guy
Don’t call me out, bro. I know Victorinox Kenjutsu.
When you carry a hammer, everything is a nail.
I laugh . For years I always had crap knives and i use them every day for work and on a farm. Reluctantly baught a TOPS fixed blade , didn’t break the bank but it is a solid utilitarian knife (100% us made) and I can’t believe how well it holds an edge. I have been using it daily and it replaced my razor knife for most jobs.
Cardboard doesn’t stand a chance
No I did not watch 100 hours of EDC videos to find the perfect multitool with a selected high quality components and dozens of functions to just let it sit in my drawer or pocket.
I did all this in fact to use the damn thing!!! Sometimes even more than once a week!
And, which ones would you recommend?
I’ve carried a Leatherman Skeletool for about a decade now and I love it. It doesn’t have as many tools as a lot of mulitools do but it has the main ones I need and is well designed.
I own multiple Victorinox pocket knifes, mostly Tinker.
My current EDC multitool is a Nextool BlackKnight. Its a budget option I bought to help with some more serious stuff in my current DIY projects, so I can abuse it without thinking about the cost. It has a great blade and very strong scissors, super happy with it.
On top of that I love retro knives, my latest one is a traditional Hungarian handmade shepards knife, similar to the ones here.
For always fitting in your pocket without being obtrusive, a Victorinox Minichamp Alox with a pocket clip.
Did anybody else ever watch Cutlery Corner with Tom O’Dell? It’d be on at like 2 AM. It’s the only QVC-style shopping channel I ever voluntarily watched. A fair bit.
I can’t. The left over tape is too much for me to take.
Behold: the Mini-Zatoichi
Are you callin’ me out, old man???
Anyway, it’s rarely the cardboard that’s a hassle. It’s the damn glued shut bubble mailers, the boxes that are completely shrink wrapped, or have those damn plastic straps around them, or plasic clamshell packaging.
All of those get the chop. The latter often with extreme prejudice.
I used to work in a returns department. We joked that our customers had stock in the tape companies. They would put stuff in a bubble mailer and then run tape around it 20 times, covering every square inch and tight as hell. It was fucking awful.
I almost amputated the tip of my thumb the other day trying to open one of those goddamn clamshells and I was just using scissors. Fuck whoever invented them.
Word of advice get a non folding knife with some girth so not a kitchen knife, Ka-bar or a M3 replica are the best in my experience. Then just stab and pull, the plastic will give and you can use inward leverage on the harder outer plastic.
Fuck whoever invented them indeed.
These are designed for the retailer’s convenience, not yours. Brick-and-mortar retailers love clamshell packaging because it is designed to be both theft and return resistant. It’s literally impossible to open without destroying, so retailers can always point to their “returned goods must be in original packaging condition” clause (rarely enforced, but always there) if they feel like denying a return for whatever spurious reason. And then, the packaging can be made unnecessarily bulky (albeit usually rather flat) which makes it tough to pocket, shoplifting sensor tags are often embedded in it, and opening it in the store to remove the product is pretty damn difficult.
If your blade tastes cardboard, you need to study more. You should be quickly and cleanly gliding through tape, between the edges of that pulpy/corrugated paper that grips like molasses.
I just use it to threaten other people into opening stuff for me. Way less work for me.
While you were busy partying, I studied the blade