Mechanical
Yes, EAB. Model no. 8970418A.
Very low price. I found mine in Tractor Supply’s odds and ends bin. Don’t see them in there anymore. Really works good for boxes. I actually like it better than other dedicated box cutters, or knives, and I often carry it somewhere like in my Tilley hat crown, or in a change pocket in my jeans 👖, or velcroed Sideways to some of my belts, or clipped to the top of one of my Roper boots and covered by my cuff. It even fits under your boot laces if you wear boots with a padded tongue.
I saw where Gerber came out with a “lighter” version with silly gill slits. Like this thing needed to be lighter. From what I read a year or so ago, they still make the base model and that is the better, smoother, more pocketable of the two.
If ever there were a cutting tool perfect for hanging from a dog tag chain with a quick release clip, THIS was it!! But Gerber never even gave it a thought. OMG would this be good to carry in side your shirt without a pocke clip!!!
But remember you are talking Gerber here. The liner lock is sticky to disengage. Maybe safe, but annoying. It also needs jimping with a triangular metal file (three jimps on spine, three on finger choil), to really lock in your hand the way I like. Gerber had a chance with this and the Dime to basically obsolete most larger edges and tools. These were superb design concepts that they apparently just decided to make kind of half assed, so they did not threaten their other lines.
This EAB was a seriously elegant, even brilliant design that they just let die on the vine developmentally speaking. The guy that designed it really knew what a Pocket Cutting tool was supposed to feel like, and ride like, and work like. I strongly recommend this early model even with the flaws.
If you do the jimping yourself and don’t worship at the altar of perfection, it becomes as much a part of your EDC as your SAK. In fact, Vic should have developed one of these along with branching out into folding machetes for camping. The Potential demand for one of these things manufactured to tighter tolerances is fricking huge!! None of the “designers” have deep enough pockets to do it right either. It would take a deep pocket outfit coming in without a ton of sunk costs in traditional folding knives, or maybe one with moderate sunk costs in low end razor blade box cutters to really “cut” through the legacy cutters to the market. I figured one of the replaceable blade manufacturers would do it, but apparently they have too many sunk costs in the low end box cutters. Frustrating. This was a future that might have been.
If Gerber had been willing to obsolete their own huge array of mostly mediocre but profitable conventional knives, they had a home run innovation on their hands.
But sunk costs are the impediment to most innovation in mature producer markets. Hate to say it, but it usually takes a war to unstick innovation in mature producer markets.
Donations
Community Links
