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You can buy a utility knife at your local hardware store for less than $10. When its blade dulls, a five-pack of replacements will run you another $2; there might not exist a more practical everyday cutting tool. And yet, for whatever reason, we still find ourselves taking on everyday tasks—the most common of which is no more complicated than opening a package—with our favorite trusty EDC pocket knives. The truth is that they're just designed better. They're more satisfying to hold, to flick open and closed, and they sit nicely in our pockets. But if design and utility are supposedly mutually exclusive, The James Brand has something to say about it in a brand new knife called The Palmer.
The Palmer is a utility knife, sometimes otherwise known as a box cutter or an X-Acto. It's 3.5 inches long, and uses the same half-hexagonal steel blades that slide out with a switch when needed and back in when not. But that's about where the similarities end.
Never one to take shortcuts or trip quality for the sake of expediency, The James Brand gave The Palmer sleek anodized aluminum handles that come in an array of bright and subtle colors, a lanyard hole and lanyard to match, and a sleek, rectangular body that's in keeping with the company's well-established aesthetic and is an easy-on-the-eyes update to the often unwieldy shapes utility knives typically come in. Rather than a toolbox, The Palmer is sized to fit perfectly in the coin pocket of your jeans.
But the real innovation is a new patent-pending mechanism—the first patent designed by The James Brand—that lets you swap out the blade for a new one on the fly, without having to enlist another tool to get the job done. So even though The Palmer is a premium pocket knife, you can keep on slicing through cardboard, clamshell packaging, wiring, grip tape, and whatever else needs some DIY attention knowing that when the blade wears out you can swap it on the fly, and save your good knife for more important matters.
Price: $59
Published 10-25-2022
