Kickstarter

This EDC Utility Knife Balances Toughness, Speed and Minimalism

Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, Pichi’s G9 fits all standard-sized utility blades and even has a keychain attachment.

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This year, 2024, is shaping up to be huge for EDC utility knives, an oft-underappreciated category. And while we’ve already seen numerous worthwhile entries hit the market, there’s always room for more.

Enter Pichi Designs’ G8 utility knife. Live on Kickstarter, this project is already fully funded by a massive margin (we’re talking $75k over its goal). So what is it about this EDC utility knife that helps it stand out from the others we’ve already seen? Check it out below and see for yourself.

Almost everything about this knife is minimalist, even the deployment

The thing with a lot of EDC knives, utility or otherwise, is that the more bits and pieces are included in their construction, the more chances there are for the works to get gummed up and jammed or for things to break. Thankfully, the Pichi G9 has kept that to a minimum, offering an exterior that’s largely free of extraneous details. Better still, the simplicity extends to its operation. 

Utilizing a clever, simple sliding mechanism, the blade can be extended from the handle with a swift three-step motion — you just slip the scales apart, slide the utility blade forward, and slide the pieces back together. It makes deployment speedy while remaining secure. It also means the blades are easy to swap out on the fly (a necessary addition for something that uses disposable blades), and it removes the need for springs, torsion bars, pivots and any other bits that might jam or break.

With a quick three-stroke motion, the cutting edge of the utility blade is deployed and locked into place.Kickstarter

Interestingly, it does have a locking mechanism — that lever toward the back lanyard hole. With three settings, that lever can be set to “Activate” (the operational setting), “Swap” (which lets you change out the blade) and “Lock” (which, you guessed it, locks the whole thing).

The internal mechanism also means that the overall size and shape is kept to a minimum, measuring up at just over three inches when closed and 1.9 ounces in total. Those metrics are very good things for anyone whose pockets are already getting crowded.

Yes, the Pitchi G9 is useful, but it also offers rare brutalist beauty

As mentioned, this utility knife’s simplicity makes for a functional boone. However, that minimalism also clearly extends to the styling. The sleek titanium exterior is marred only by a slight flourish of machining on the bottom quarter (from which the blade extends) and the brass-colored keychain ring. 

Otherwise, the G9 is extremely sleek in its design, offering a kind of brutalism not always found in the EDC space, least of all when it comes to utility knives. The whole package, at a glance, is gorgeous and useful and somehow still stands out against the increasingly crowded gallery of EDC utility knives.

As mentioned, the project is already live and fully funded on Kickstarter, but you can still back the project starting at $89 USD. That being said, there are only a few days left to go, so you’ll want to hurry if you hope to back this project.