Admit it – the last time you really had any use for a knife was when you went “camping” with the Boy Scouts, whipping it out at the slightest provocation to impress your otherwise unarmed fellow campers. But since you’ve perhaps adjusted to a more urban lifestyle, the need for a sharp blade that fits in your pocket has significantly diminished, if not completely disappeared, no matter how many dark alleys you trudge down to get home from work faster. The centuries old pocket knife just hadn’t evolved to fit the needs of the modern man, still the realm of old men whittling on the porch and slightly overzealous Scout masters.
But if there’s one thing that you absolutely have in your pocket, it’s the credit card: the flimsy piece of plastic that makes any cash register your oyster, opening up to a limit just high enough for that slim fit double breasted blazer or 1984 vintage Cabernet from somewhere in the south of France you can’t pronounce. It’s sometimes a monetary crutch, but at least it’s one that fits inside your wallet, a weapon of the highest financial order.
You can see where we’re going with this now, and it’s not a knife-credit card combo that slices the fingertips of the barista ringing up your Americano on a Tuesday morning, at least not exactly. Thanks to the Brits at Iain Sinclair Design (the company party responsible for mass produced digital watches and the precursor to your smart phone – the pocket TV), we’ve now got the Cardsharp V2, a streamlined, credit-card sized, surgical quality foldable blade that can nestle gently between your driver’s license and library card inside any foldable wallet. It sounds like a mouthful, but it’s the perfect tool for the urban survivalist, with a blade sharper than necessary for opening your latest package from Amazon, but just sharp enough for slicing up tomatoes for a homemade bruschetta.
Originally designed with on-the-go field surgeons in mind, the Cardsharp has an edge unlike any blade you can pick up at a flea market, cutting through an aluminum can (yeah, we tried it) but not necessarily a shoe, which means it’s probably not going to accidentally take a finger off. But the knife can still hold its own in the kitchen, slicing vegetables into pieces precise enough they would feel at home in an engineer’s kitchen. And while the folding mechanism might take a little getting used to, you soon begin to think that all knives should fold up and fit into your pocket, not lay dormant in the wooden block on your kitchen counter. As we pardon the pun, the Sinclair team is really correct when they say that Cardsharp V2 is “a sharp idea that slips safely inside your wallet.” Just make sure you take it out before heading through airport security – they aren’t too fond of sharp concealable objects.
@nickkholder
Iain Sinclair website
