Over the years there are a few pieces of kit that really have withstood the rigors of regular use and always find their way into my hands and pockets and packs. These are time-tested pieces of gear that were great when I got them and continue to be great for one reason or another. They push against the trend in gear of always getting better—harder steel, more lumens, lighter fabric. And so they are worthy of being highlighted. April is always the month I release by Ten Best lists and so, I have decided that along with those two articles, I am also going to drop an annual Hall of Fame entry. In honor of the first slate in the baseball Hall of Fame, I am going to induct five pieces of kit. By way of coincidence, a lot of this stuff made its way into this article on my EDC in 2018.

A few rules first. Because of the nature of looking back at gear of the past 11 years, some of this stuff is going to be out of production. This is not about making recommendations on what to buy, but instead highlighting truly great stuff that has continued to be great, even well after the makers stop producing it. When possible, I will highlight something similar that is readily available. Second, this is all my opinion. That should be obvious, as this entire site has been my opinion for the past 11 years, but just in case its not I am stating this up front. Finally, I am not paying attention to their scores, necessarily. Something bad isn’t going to make it on to the list, but something that scored an 18/20 could. The reality is that scores are snapshot in time and some gear gets better as you better understand it. This is especially true with more complex items like packs and multitools. Their greatness is revealed in use over time. You can learn how to use a knife more effectively, of course, but you can perceive how good it is relatively quickly compared to a pack. The number of times I have used and modified the use of my PFII over the years is staggering and that is why it scored relatively low, but still makes it into the Hall of Fame. Finally, if a piece of kit made it on this list, in all likelihood I still own it and have owned it since the review—a testament to just how good these items are.

Here is the first set of gear inductees:

MaxMadCo Bolt Action Pen (review link)

Availability: out of production, no real secondary market

Alt Review: Unsharpen’s MMC Bolt Review

When people ask me what is the best pen, I always ask if they mean generally or for EDC. The problem is that there are huge number of really great pens out there that are good for genteel use and carry that are miserable when pressed into an EDC roll. Many of these pens are fountain pens and while you can EDC a fountain pen, it is much, much more dangerous, especially if you intend to carry it on your person instead of in a pack or briefcase. They are simply too fragile to hold up, most of the time.

EDC pens should be light, accept Parker refills, be durable, have a durable clip, and a consistent deployment method that cannot be accidentally activated in the pocket. The MMC Bolt fits the bill perfectly. There is no better EDC pen, even now more than a decade after its release. It is exceptionally good and insanely light. It also doesn’t have that “please steal me” level of decoration . No bling, just purpose. But the place where it stands heads and shoulders above the rest is in the bolt. For whatever reason, this bolt is just better than every other rendition on the market. It is snappy, easy to use, and difficult to accidentally activate.

The MMC Bolt is not easy to find as they were produced in relatively small numbers. If you want a good quest to complete the perfect EDC, try to find one of these. I like the smooth barrel but some folks prefer the grippier model with machined grooves in the grip section. I liked the aluminum version, but there were also brass, titanium, steel, and a very, very rare bronze version. There is no real secondary market for the MMC Bolt and the ones that are out there tend to migrate, unfortunately, to eBay. As of the writing of this post, there is a Stainless Steel version on sale with a Buy It Now of $245, roughly 150% of the original retail price. Good luck and good hunting if you decide to add one to your roster of EDC pens.

Simple, spare, durable, and reliable.

Readily available similar item: Tactile Turn Slim Bolt Action (purchase link)

HDS Rotary (review link and purchase link)

Availability: in production with emitter upgrades (my Rotary has a max of 250 lumens (incorrectly noted in the review as 200), the current has a max of 325)

Alt Review: Precogvision’s HDS Rotary Review

Dear Flashlight Hipsters, keep your Anduril, your kilolumen output with literally minutes of runtime, and body tubes with wall thicknesses measured in nanometers. When I need a light for the end of the world or crawling into muck or checking the fuel levels in the middle of a blizzard I am reaching for the HDS Rotary. It works, works well, and is plenty bright.

The big deal with this light is that even now, a decade on, no one has made a UI that can do what the Rotary can. No light on the market has a selector ring that allows you to go from dark to your chosen output directly. It seems like a simple thing, but apparently it is anything but. The Rotary’s ease of use is matched only by its durability. With thick walls, a beefy bezel, and potted brains, nothing short of a nuke will take this thing out. The clip is wonky and you do have to bleed the button of air once in a great while, but those are small issues. This is, was, and probably always will be a great light.

Quality and ease of use forever.

Maxpedition Pygmy Falcon II (review link and purchase link)

Alt Review: Reddit Review in r/whatsinthebag subreddit

Availability: in stock but possibly going out of production (there is a BOGO sale on the Maxped site and there is no longer an Amazon listing, so I am worried this might be on its way out)

This scored a 17/20, the lowest score of any item on this list. The three points were: 1 off for Accessibility, 1 off for Organization, and 1 off for Modularity/Expansion. These assessments were wrong.

First, the MOLLE and the compression strap, coupled with the bungies on the bottom make this pack a veritable tour de force of modularity and expansion. But it takes a while to learn how to use it. Its not like a TAD pack where they sell you the pack and then obvious add ons. Here, you have to figure things out and when you do, you make the pack more your own and better suited to you. Here is an example of what I mean-I made pretty nice walking sticks for me and my wife when we go hiking. My boys wanted their own, but invariably they do not carry them once we get a few minutes. I have tried a bunch of solutions on the pack, but it is surprisingly hard to carry a smooth narrow item using MOLLE. But here is what I discovered, you can lace the stick through the side MOLLE and have it land in the bottle holder. The MOLLE holds it tight and the bottle holder prevents it from falling out. There are dozens of little tricks I have discovered ove the years and that means that the assessment about modularity is wrong. It also proves the point—evaluating packs is very difficult in a short timespan. Additionally, the other two points are similarly incorrect—the more you use the PFII the better it gets.

But all that is true for nearly every pack. What makes the PFII so great and worthy of Hall of Fame status are three things—size, durability, and the bottle holders. At 18L the PFII is the perfect sized pack for day hikes and day trips. But there are a lot of 18L packs. This is also an ultradurable pack that seems to soak up abuse, but again, there are a lot of those packs as well. The real feature I love and the reason this is, in my mind, one of the best packs out there are the cinch (as opposed to elastic) bottle holders. Pack after pack has gone through my family and pack after pack has failed to stand the test of time because the elastic bottle holders NEVER last. No hydropack will work for a family of four and so if I want to go on a trip with my kids and wife, bottle holders are essential and these are the best out there.

I am a bit worried that the PFII is in stock but out of production. If that is the case, it is a sad end to a still-unsurpassed design.

The perfect daypack.

Spyderco Dragonfly II in ZDP-189 (review link)

Alt Review: Reliable Knife’s Dragonfly II in ZDP-189 Review

Availability: out of production, available on the secondary market

I have waxed poetic about this knife many times and as the first knife in the Everyday Commentary Hall of Fame it has a lot of competition—the Sebenza, the Mini Grip, the Paramilitary 2, just to name a few. The problem is that none of those knives offer the same amount of performance and convenience as the DFII for the price. The price proposition is getting worse, of course, now that the DFII in ZDP-189 is out of production. Pretty much every retailer with stock is out. They aren’t showing up on eBay just yet. And the forum boards are too obsessed with the latest MokuTi Latte knife to care about functional cutlery (tip of the hat to Dan at BladeReviews for the MokuTi Latte tag). So these are pretty scarce. I imagine there were will a few more showing up at greatly increased prices in the coming months or years. Good Spydercos tend to hold or increase in value after production ends (go look at the price for Caly3s on ebay—YIKES!).

This knife has everything—a fantastic design, a thin, slicey edge, a great handle, a superior clip and deployment method, decent blade length and it weighs under 2 ounces. It does everything and it does it very, very well. While ZDP-189 is no longer the bleeding edge of steel it is still very good and relatively rare, especially outside of Spyderco.

No better EDC knife exists.

Readily available similar item: Spyderco Dragonfly II in VG10 (purchase link)

Leatherman Skeletool CX (review link and purchase link)

Availability: in production with modifications (the original had a partially serrated blade, the current model has a plain edge)

Alt Review: Knife Informer’s Skeletool CX Review

Don’t tell me about how good the Wave is. I know, I know, its the best multitool ever. But seriously, how often to do you use that micro driver? Twice less than never? The Skeletool CX is EXACTLY what you need and nothing more. Its actually a pretty good knife, which is very rare for multitools. Its a pretty decent pair of pliers, which, again, is rare for a multitool (have you tried to use the pliers on a keychain multitools?). As a step saver around the house or as tool to take on trips, the Skeletool is great, as all good multitools are.

But what separates the Skeletool from the pack is the fact that it is actually a fully capable multitool that you can comfortably EDC. At around 4 ounces it is about half the weight of most of Cold Steel’s line up and only a smidge more than some of the knives from more size-conscious brands. It is also not super unbalanced. Thanks to the plier-based design of most multitools there is a ton of mass in one end of the tool making them carry like a plumb bob (which, if you haven’t tried it, is terrible in the pocket). Because of the paired down implements and the way in which Leatherman incorporated the screwdriver, the Skeletool is about as balanced an MT as you can get.

Note three things: 1) the CF has no weight benefits; 2) the CX’s real upgrade is to a good blade steel (154CM v. 420HC, a difference worth paying for); and 3) my CX is the original which has a partially serrated blade, the new one has a plain edge with the partially serrated blade now on the base model.

The MT to EDC.