Year in carry: what we actually had in our pockets in 2025

The year in review for a knife blog is a carry journal. Here's what actually lived in the rotation — not what we reviewed, not what we recommended, what we reached for.

There's a gap in knife media between what gets recommended and what actually gets carried. Reviews are written in the honeymoon period. Recommendations reflect affiliate considerations and searchability. The year-in-carry column is the honest one: twelve months of actual decisions, all the way through the mid-year switches and the seasonal adjustments and the moment when the knife you bought in March quietly stopped appearing in the pocket by October.

January through April: the Vosteed Raccoon quarter

The Nitro-V Raccoon in the aluminum handle was the everyday driver through most of the first quarter. Its combination of Nitro-V steel's corrosion resistance and the aluminum handle's low thermal mass made it the right answer for cold mornings. The button lock stayed satisfying through hundreds of cycles without any loosening. The Raccoon remained in rotation through spring before the size calculus shifted toward the Cub.

May through August: summer rotations

The Raccoon Cub replaced the full Raccoon in May as primary carry — 2.0 oz disappears in shorts pockets in a way the Raccoon doesn't quite. The Kizer Parakeet showed up in June and immediately started getting more reach time than expected. Johan Jordaan's design carries like a knife that costs twice as much, and the Nitro-V blade stayed sharp through a full summer without requiring more than occasional stropping. The GiantMouse Riv came out in August for a two-week rotation and the flat grind on the MagnaCut blade is one of the best slicing experiences in this size category.

September through December: the serious knives

The Knafs Lander 3 clip point arrived in November and immediately started displacing everything else. The brown paper micarta is tactile in a way that keeps the hand reaching for it, and the S35VN clutch lock performs at the level the specs imply. The Artisan Cleo copper has been in the secondary pocket since October, developing carry patina that's specific and beautiful. The WESN Allman made a December appearance that's likely to extend into January — S35VN in a package that disappears in dress pants has a specific use case that nothing else fills.

What didn't make it

The PM2 rotated through in March and is genuinely excellent. It's also 3.75 oz and very few days in 2025 had situations where nothing else served equally well at significantly lighter weight. The PM2 earns its reputation. The question is whether the reputation matches the specific use case — and for most of 2025, the answer was "not over the Raccoon."

The honest summary: Vosteed owned the year. Kizer earned significant rotation time. Knafs closed strong. GiantMouse remained the benchmark for the category it invented. And the carry you actually use proved again to be more important than the carry that photographs best. See you in 2026.

Vosteed maker spotlight: the brand that's quietly winning

No press releases. No controversy. Just a consistent string of knives that outperform what the price tag implies, and a community that's starting to notice.

Vosteed doesn't have a dramatic founding story. There's no famous designer whose name anchors every product, no single knife that became a cultural moment. What they have is a design department — led by a designer known as Yue — that makes decisions as if the person carrying the knife actually matters, and manufacturing that executes those decisions at a quality level that should be more expensive than it is.

The Yue design language

You can recognize a Yue design without seeing the logo. Rounded, ergonomic handles that prioritize the feel in the hand over the look on a shelf. Blade geometries that serve the carry context. Locking mechanisms chosen based on how you'll close the knife rather than what sounds impressive. The Raccoon, Corgi, Marten — these share a coherent point of view: a daily carry knife should disappear into the hand so completely that you stop thinking about it and start thinking about what you're cutting.

The lock innovation

Vosteed's Trek Lock — their proprietary button liner lock implementation — is one of the more considered additions to the production folder space in recent years. Spine-side button placement means closing never puts your fingers near the edge. The symmetrical handle makes the lock position feel natural regardless of grip angle. The Vanchor Lock in premium Corgi and Raccoon variants refines the concept further with magnetic-assisted lockup that increases both tactile feedback and mechanical security.

These aren't gimmicks. They're genuine improvements to how a production folder operates daily, arriving at prices where competing implementations either don't exist or cost significantly more.

The steel story

Vosteed specs steel honestly. 14C28N at entry level is a genuine choice — one of the better entry-level stainless steels, well-suited to pocket carry corrosion resistance demands. Nitro-V at mid tier is a real upgrade in toughness and edge retention. 154CM in the Marten is an American premium steel rarely found under $100. S35VN in the Corgi V 295 and Raccoon V positions those premium variants as genuinely competitive with knives costing significantly more. The hierarchy is logical and every tier earns its price point.

Why more people don't know about them

Vosteed doesn't have the marketing infrastructure that drives search results. They're not sponsored by the YouTube channels with the biggest audiences. What they have is knives that earn repeat buyers and a community on r/EDC and knife forums that passes the word like people who found a restaurant that doesn't advertise. That's a slower growth model and a more durable one. The brands that grow on genuine product quality rather than marketing investment are the ones worth recommending five years later. We'll be recommending Vosteed five years from now.

How to sharpen a folder: the minimal setup that actually works

You don't need a Wicked Edge or a weekend course. You need two things and fifteen minutes twice a year.

The sharpening industry would like you to believe that maintaining a knife edge requires significant investment in equipment and skill. It doesn't. Maintaining a working edge on a daily carry folder requires approximately two tools and patience. Getting that edge genuinely sharp requires a bit more refinement, but it's not a specialist skill.

The minimal setup

A Spyderco Sharpmaker is the starting recommendation and has been for twenty years because it works. Two ceramic rods in a V-shaped base, a consistent angle built into the design, instructions that are correct. It handles most steels well including S35VN. It will struggle with super steels like M390 and MagnaCut — these require diamond rods — but even then the Sharpmaker's diamond rods are a simple add-on purchase.

The second tool is a leather strop. Stropping realigns microscopic teeth on a worn edge and can restore a knife from "dull but functional" to "sharp enough to push-cut paper" in under a minute. Learn to strop first. Sharpen last.

The technique

For the Sharpmaker: hold the knife vertical, edge facing down. Draw the blade edge-trailing down each rod, alternating sides, with light to medium pressure. Count strokes and alternate evenly. The rods set the angle — your job is consistent pressure. Five to ten passes per side on fine rods for maintenance; start on medium rods for real work.

For stropping: hold the strop flat. Draw the knife spine-first along the leather — opposite direction from sharpening — with light pressure. Ten passes per side. This step is what most people skip and it accounts for half the final sharpness.

How often

For mid-tier steel (14C28N, D2) in daily carry: strop every week or two, sharpen every two to three months. For premium steels (S35VN, MagnaCut): strop occasionally, sharpen twice a year. The "sharp enough to push-cut newspaper" standard is more achievable and maintainable than "shaving sharp" for most people's practice.

The diamond exception

If you carry M390, 20CV, or MagnaCut, add a diamond plate or diamond rods. Ceramic can maintain these steels between sharpenings but struggles to reset an edge from scratch. The DMT Diafold at around $30 is the portable, effective answer — takes any super steel back to biting sharp in minutes. Not optional if you carry super steels with any regularity.

5 knives that replaced my Benchmade — and why I haven't looked back

Benchmade makes good knives. They're also not the only answer, and for four of these five, not the best one at the price.

Let me be precise: Benchmade makes genuinely well-built American production knives. Their AXIS lock is an engineering achievement. Their warranty is real. Nothing in this post is a dismissal of the brand. This is specifically the observation that in 2025–2026, the knife market has evolved to a point where Benchmade's historical pricing advantage no longer holds in the same way.

Knafs maker spotlight: Ben Petersen and the community-first knife brand

Most knife companies treat customization as an upsell. Knafs built it into the foundation.

Ben Petersen spent years designing knives for production houses — including work for Benchmade — before starting Knafs. That background gave him a deep understanding of what makes production knife manufacturing work, and a clear sense of what he wanted to do differently. What he wanted was ownership: not just legal ownership of the object but the ability to modify, repair, customize, and improve it without voiding the warranty or requiring specialized tools.

The Lander's fast-swap scale system — field-strippable with two screws, no pivot disassembly required — was the first expression of that philosophy. The open-source handle files on GitHub, licensed under Creative Commons so anyone can download and 3D print custom scales, were the second. Knafs doesn't just allow modification. It provides the infrastructure for it.

The Apollo logic

Knafs names their Lander iterations after Apollo missions, and the analogy is specific. Apollo 11 proved it could be done. Apollo 12 proved it wasn't a fluke. Each Lander version incorporates real community feedback — not focus group data, but forum discussions and owner reports that Petersen reads and responds to directly. The Lander 3's return to the original's compact dimensions while retaining the Lander 2's clutch lock was specifically responsive to owners who found the Lander 2 slightly too large. That responsiveness is structural, not brand narrative.

The manufacturing reality

Knafs uses Kizer for manufacturing, which is publicly acknowledged. Kizer is one of the premium Chinese production facilities — wire EDM and CNC capabilities produce the precise tolerances the clutch lock requires. Design is Ben Petersen's; execution is Kizer's; quality is consistent. This is the model that works in the current production knife world: independent designer DNA with world-class manufacturing precision.

The community infrastructure

The Knafs FastSwap scale ecosystem has developed genuinely — hundreds of custom scale files from simple colorways to elaborate machined designs to carved interpretations of the neutral Lander profile. Petersen participates in those communities directly. He replies to posts. He acknowledges when an owner identifies a design issue. The brand warmth isn't manufactured — it's an operational decision to treat the people who carry Knafs as collaborators rather than consumers. That's rare enough in any consumer goods category to be worth pointing out.

Best CJRB knives ranked: AR-RPM9 deserves its own conversation

CJRB is Artisan Cutlery's value brand, and the value is real. AR-RPM9 steel on knives under $60 is a story the knife community has figured out and the mainstream hasn't.

AR-RPM9 is CJRB's proprietary steel — a spray-formed alloy that compares favorably to D2 with the addition of genuine corrosion resistance. It sharpens easily, holds an edge well, and doesn't require the maintenance anxiety D2 creates in wet conditions. Finding it on knives starting under $40 makes other brands' budget offerings look like genuine compromises.

Carry culture vs. collector culture: the knife you open is the only one that matters

Both cultures are real. One of them is the reason this site exists.

There are two distinct populations in the knife hobby, coexisting in the same forums without always acknowledging how different their actual relationship with knives is. Collector culture prizes the acquisition, the display, the documentation of what's been owned. Carry culture prizes the use, the carry wear, the working relationship with a tool over time. Neither is wrong. They're different hobbies that happen to involve the same objects.

What collector culture gets right

Knife collecting preserves knowledge. Collectors understand historical significance of designs, track provenance on custom pieces, maintain institutional memory of the industry. They fund premium production by paying for limited editions. And they genuinely appreciate craft in a way carry culture sometimes undervalues — the execution of a 70-degree edge bevel is worth noticing even if you're going to scratch the blade face in the first week of carry.

What carry culture gets right

A knife in a display case cuts nothing. A knife in a pocket cuts everything it's asked to cut, develops a relationship with the person carrying it, and demonstrates through real use which specifications actually matter. Carry culture is empirical in a way collector culture can't be — you learn more about what a knife does from six months of pocket time than from six years of handling at shows.

The carry culture position — that the knife you actually carry is infinitely more useful than the knife you don't — is not an argument against collecting. It's a reminder that the point of the tool is the use. If you're buying knives to appreciate them aesthetically and intellectually, that's a complete and valid reason. If you're buying knives to make cutting tasks easier and more enjoyable, carry them hard, sharpen them when they need it, and stop worrying about the scratches.

The Daily Steel position

This site exists in carry culture. We write about knives we carry, recommend knives we'd carry, and evaluate performance through actual use. The reader who wants to know which $60 folder they'll actually reach for at 7pm when they need to cut a rope: that's our reader. Both cultures are welcome here. The one who carries their knives feels slightly more at home.

How to buy your first EDC knife: the Daily Steel version

Every knife site has a beginner's guide. This one starts where you actually are, not where the industry wants you to be.

Most first EDC knife guides are really first Benchmade or first Spyderco guides in disguise — they mention budget options as concessions, then spend the rest explaining why expensive knives are worth it. This guide doesn't do that.

Start with a realistic budget

The honest budget for a first EDC knife is whatever you can spend without feeling anxious about losing or scratching it. If that's $30, your knife is the CJRB Feldspar Small. If it's $60, your knife is the Vosteed Raccoon Cub or CIVIVI Elementum. If it's $100, your knife is the Vosteed Raccoon or Corgi. None of these are compromises. Don't spend $175 on a first knife — not because first knives don't deserve good money, but because you don't know what you want yet. Six months of carry with a $60 knife will teach you whether you prefer 2.5" or 3.25" blade, whether you care about steel, whether you want something that disappears in the pocket or has presence in the hand.

Blade length: smaller than you think

First-time buyers consistently overestimate how much blade length they need. A 2.5–3" blade handles 95% of daily cutting tasks as well as a 3.5" blade and carries more comfortably in more contexts. Sub-3" also clears most local blade length restrictions without research.

Blade steel: don't worry about it yet

14C28N, D2, AR-RPM9, Nitro-V — any of these are completely appropriate for a first knife. The steel conversation becomes interesting after you understand how you use a knife and in what conditions you carry it. Before that, it's a specification that will eat your research time without improving your carry experience. Buy any of the above and use it for six months. Then decide if you want to upgrade the steel in your next knife — at that point you'll know exactly why.

Lock type: the one decision that matters

Traditional liner locks require moving your thumb into the blade's path to close. Compression locks and button liner locks close without that risk. For most people, a button lock or compression lock is safer and easier to operate one-handed in any conditions. The Vosteed Raccoon Cub (liner lock with good ergonomics), Vosteed Corgi (Trek Lock button liner), and CJRB Pyrite (button lock) represent different excellent approaches under $75.

The one recommendation

If you want a single answer: buy a Vosteed Raccoon Cub ($42–49) or CJRB Pyrite (~$57) and carry it for six months before buying anything else. Both have steel good enough to tell you what you think of steel. Both have design quality to show you what you want more of. And both are inexpensive enough that the cost of the education is reasonable. Everything else follows from the carry data.

What's in our pocket right now: spring 2026 carry report

Launch day. The site is live. The rotation has been consistent all spring and here's the actual honest answer.

We built this site while carrying knives, which is the only way to write about them credibly. The carry report puts the cards on the table — not the knives we reviewed most recently or the ones with the most affiliate potential, but the ones that showed up in the pocket every morning for the past eight weeks.

Primary carry: Vosteed Marten

The Marten has been the spring answer. 154CM steel in a button lock folder with micro-milled aluminum handles that look architectural and carry like they weigh nothing. 54 grooves per side at a 48-degree angle — the kind of manufacturing detail that distinguishes a thoughtful design from a product. At $99 from KnifeCenter it's the best knife in the rotation right now for the office contexts of early spring. The button lock releases cleanly and the low-profile clip disappears in any pants.

Secondary carry: Knafs Lander 3 (clip point)

The brown paper micarta Lander 3 is still getting reach time two months after the November fixation piece. The warm tone of the micarta against the satin blade holds up — it doesn't get less interesting with familiarity. The S35VN edge is holding through consistent use with only stropping. The clutch lock remains one of the most satisfying locking mechanisms in production folders, which is a statement you can stand behind after two months of daily operation.

Fifth pocket: WESN Microblade

The Microblade has been on the keychain since February and there's no reason to remove it. One ounce. D2 steel. Titanium frame lock. Used more than expected for a 1.5" blade — cutting tape, trimming threads, opening small packages where a full folder would be excessive. The WESN philosophy — that availability is the primary feature — is validated again.

What we keep almost reaching for

The Artisan Cleo copper is developing patina in a direction that makes leaving it in the car feel like a waste. The GiantMouse Riv is exactly the knife for when the occasion arises and it doesn't quite arise often enough to displace the Marten. The Kizer Drop Bear Zero, which appeared in December, is sitting on the desk in a way that suggests it's about to earn pocket time again.

The site is live. The carry continues.

Daily Steel launched today with over thirty posts across a year of editorial content. The carry rotation that informed all of it continues unchanged. We'll keep writing about the knives we carry, recommending the ones we believe in, and maintaining the position that a $60 knife you carry every day is worth more than a $300 knife you don't. Thanks for reading. Keep your knife sharp.