Year: 2022

I have a love-hate relationship with Spyderco knives. I love how easy they are to open with the giant thumb hole, and how slicey the blades are with the thin and tall leaf shape to them. In hand almost any Spyderco feels pretty damned great. But I hate how bulky they are to carry, and how lefty-hostile they make their knives. There are, for sure, a few true lefty knives from Spyderco, but compared to other knife makers they have basically none.

Most useable Spyderco knives for a left are lockbacks — Spyderco, I will note, does not agree as they label their compression locks as lefty friendly. They are wrong, but whatever.

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Something a little different than what I normally post about: I want to bring your attention to an awesome light strip I found. These light strips come in an array of color temps, all are high CRI (90+) and they are pre-installed in an aluminum channel and made to be surface mounted and clicked together to form a long seamless string. Thus they come in 2’ and 1’ lengths. I have two setups right now in 3500k and 2700k.

These ClickBright LED Light Bars are great.

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When I picked up the excellent LBT Daypack 14L v2, I was excited to try my first bag with a fully loop back. I had good success with it on the laptop sleeve I had picked up for the ASAP, and generally felt like the hook backed pouches work far better than I would have imagined.

Turns out, I love hook back pouch systems. And there’s a popular one to modify GORUCK bags: the GR1 Shooter Conversion Sheet from Ruck Customs. I grabbed one to try out, and see how well this would work for one of the all time great bags.

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I have to confess, I’ve always been interested in the Adamas lineup of knives. They have a very simple premise: “tank-like construction you can trust your life with.” These fall under Benchmade’s tactical section of knives, but are well loved by a lot of people. They come in a few variants: autos, fixed blade, and two sizes of folders. Of all of these I got the ‘smallest’, which is the ‘Mini Adamas’.

That might paint a bad picture though. Becuase mini here is still a beast of a knife which dwarfs all my other folding knives in size. That said, ‘tank-like’ is perhaps the most apt description of this knife.

It’s wildly overbuilt and I love it for that.

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Mystery Ranch sells two small bags call the Bop and Big Bop. These are a hybrid bag which come with a shoulder strap to use the bag as a small shoulder bag, but also MOLLE attachment on the back of the pouch so that you can use them as a dedicated pouch.

I snagged the standard Bop in Coyote to give it a go as a pouch which can be pulled out and carried if needed. It’s pretty great.

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This watch is affectionately called the Casioak, or derisively called the Royal Broke — pick your pleasure — the real name is GA2100. There’s some watch enthusiast snark there, in that it feels like it was styled after the Audemars Piguet Royal Oak line of watches. But, the truth here is that this might be the best watch value out there, who gives a shit about why it looks like it does — it looks stellar.

For roughly $100, you get a watch which might be impossible to break under normal wear and use, and which still looks really sharp. There’s a wide selection of colors/models out there, I went with the non-USA market option which is all black with white indices (the USA variant has near black hands and the contrast is too low).

This is my second favorite watch right now, and neck and neck for my most worn — you can go get one and see for yourself or read on if you need more praise of it.

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This pack shouldn’t be this good. It should be yet another expensive backpack, which is a little too overcomplicated for its own good. That’s what it should be, that’s what a lot of people assume and think it is. When I look at the specs, the images, and other reviews of this bag — that’s what I see in this bag. It’s the entire reason I’ve never bothered to try it.

The reality is far from all that.

The reality is that this is possibly the best pure EDC backpack money can buy. The reality is that this perfectly meets the needs of backpack nerds, office goers, and urban explorers. It strikes the balance of understated looks, with very high performance materials, and a mix of organization and empty space.

The Axiom 24 is a damned good backpack.

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I’ve been a fan of Beyond Clothing’s stuff for a while now, and some time back they expanded their offerings to a lineup of less tactically focused clothing. I picked up a couple items recently, and on top of those — Beyond sent over a few more for me to check out and review (I’ll indicate which is which below).

Long story short: I’ve yet to get something from Beyond that I didn’t think was really good, bordering on amazing at times and these items are no exception to that. If you need some new outdoor clothing, or work from home gear, or whatever — be sure to check out what they have. I am a big fan of the brand.

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