Benchmade Griptillian

The Benchmade Griptillian is considered one of the best all around general purpose knife on the market at the moment and a great beginner knife. Its build quality and construction is considered top notch. The patented benchmade axis lock is also another reason for its popularity as it leaves little risk to your fingers compared to the frame and liner lock counterparts available on the market.

This specific knife is the Benchmade 551 Griptillian with a 154CM blade that is black coated and half serrated. To start off, the blade design is a wonderful drop point that has worked for me very well in any situation. The black coating has begun to rub off but that is unavoidable and it is just a product of wear on the blade. The 154CM, is also a wonderful steel and used to be considered the premier steel for knife blades before the introduction of powdered steels such as S30V. Heated to a hardness of 58-60 RC, it takes and holds an edge quite well. The handle also fits the hand and is on the larger size. This unfortunately also becomes a negative point for the knife. Due to its bulkiness, it becomes a bit difficult to keep it in pants pocket as it tends to eat up space for other items and makes it quite difficult to reach into said pocket. 

All in all, it makes a great knife but its larger size makes it a little harder for a domestic EDC as its ruggedness is usually a bit overkill for most problems and its size makes it difficult to share real estate with other items such as your phone. I would not recommend this knife for an EDC unless the bulk of your wardrobe can accommodate the space for this knife. 

Lamy Safari

The Lamy Safari is another wonderful pen for EDC and a direct competitor to the Pilot Metropolitan. Although they are very different at some points and very similar in others. Compared to the Metropolitan, the Safari has little to no metal components what so ever except for the pocket clip. As a whole, it's main construction is that of hard plastic which makes it much lighter than the Metropolitan at 1 ounce versus the hefty 3.2 ounces that the Metropolitan weighs. However, the feel in hand, might be enough to put people off as the plastic has a much different feel. The pocket clip is also nice and provides a solid clamp on whatever it is attached too, especially that of bag sleeves and pockets.

The Lamy Safari also glides across the paper quite nicely and is also consistent. It performs especially well on notebook paper but suffers the same problems as the metropolitan in that it can get a bit scratchy on less absorbent notepad paper. The ink used in conjunction with this pen was the Noodler's Black Bullet Proof which has shown to be a fairly quick drying ink and when used with this pen takes about 4 seconds to dry before being completely incapable of smudging. Another bonus is the that the ink is waterproof. Despite being a medium nib, the writing size is not especially large and is comparable to the .7mm of the Energel Pentel disposable pen.

Because of it's relatively cheap price, light weight, and light design, it makes it a wonderful pen in an every day carry environment.