Back when I was a child, I had been obsessed with stuffing my pockets with all sorts of small and seemingly useful knickknacks:

• a tiny Victorinox pocket knife with red scales,

• a toy telescope courtesy of some fast-food restaurant chain (I couldn’t remember if it was a McDonald’s Happy Meal toy or some children’s toy from KFC),

• an actual navigational compass that I never did learn to use correctly,

• a whistle,

• a nail clipper,

• one and a half pack of Kleenex,

• two safety pins,

• three band-aids,

• some bits of twine,

• a tiny roll of transparent duct tape,

• a plastic blue-and-black flashlight that takes two AA batteries in parallel,

• two backup AA batteries,

• a palm-sized tearable notepad,

• a Pilot gel pen,

• a BIC ballpoint pen (in case the Pilot runs out of ink),

• two birthday candles (of the pink-and-white spiral kind),

• a small waterproof tube containing a few matchsticks doused in wax and a piece of striker cut from a large matchbox,

• a cheap and generic lighter (also just in case),

• and much, much more.

Yes, I was the type of kid who would bring a backup for my backup. I was also a kid who was obsessed with cargo pants that came with multiple oversized pockets, because in the minds of my younger self, the thought of placing anything pocketable in a bag is heresy to the very purpose of my collection.

As I got older I was forced to curtail my fascinations, mainly due to the sheer impracticality of lugging around an ever-growing collection of potentially-but-seldom-useful stuff. I stopped wearing oversized pants, which can be ridiculously heavy on its own, opting to go about my day instead in a pair of old, comfy jeans. Most of the stuff I gathered can no longer be found on my person. Things either got lost, thrown away, or left behind somewhere within the various drawers at home alongside my (still) ever-growing collection.

I have also discovered the official term for my obsession-turned-hobby: Everyday Carry or "EDC" for short.

Nowadays I pocket only 3 things that are truly useful to me: a minimalist trifecta of phone+wallet+keychain, giving me an EDC load-out that is very simple and extremely easy to keep track of. I have never had much use for a pocket knife, which is replaced with a Swiss+Tech Utili-Key. The candles, lighters, and torches are replaced with a Nitecore TIP rechargeable keychain light. The notepad is replaced by a smartphone and whatever faded receipt I can find in my wallet.

The one item I could never find a satisfactory replacement for, however, was the pen.

The abandoned quest

Deep in the back of my mind though, my fascination with EDC continued to smoulder, flaring up every once in a while like embers catching a breeze. My eyes would involuntarily seek out the smallest pen on offer in an office supply store. I found myself lingering around the display case whenever I pass by a store selling Zippo lighters and pocket knives. And, much to my surprise, I noticed myself spending far more time than was necessary comparing and browsing for a new backpack when my old bag began to rip apart.

The times are changing, and I along with it.

My real change began when I travelled to further my studies in Australia. It was a new life, new beginnings, and new surroundings. More importantly, my access to the internet was no longer under strict parental regulation. By then, I had finally gotten over my aversion of carrying pocketable items inside a bag, and my pocket load-out had already formed into the trifecta I carry to this day.

Here I ran into another interesting issue - I used to switch between two different bags depending on my classes: a larger backpack for when I need to haul a 15" laptop and a brick of a charger to work on my assignments or a smaller messenger bag for when I can go without. The problem was that I had only one pencil case, and it often happened that I would forget the pencil case in one bag and walk away with the other.

The simple solution was to keep a spare ballpoint pen in each bag so I would always have something to write with, and that was exactly what I did. The system worked perfectly, but every time I reached for the spare pen, I was reminded of my abandoned childhood quest for the perfect EDC pen.

The time was ripe, and my search began anew.

Since I would always have access to a spare ballpoint pen whenever my bag is with me, I didn't really have much use for another pen. In the spirit of being "always prepared", however, I decided that my next EDC pen will act as an emergency pocket pen, needed only when something goes wrong with my spare pen.

This meant that there was no need to care about writing comfort because the pocket pen would not be used much at all, giving me the leeway to search for the smallest and most compact pen I could find. I was also reluctant to break my phone+wallet+keychain combination, and hence I focused only on the types of pen that can be carried inside my trifecta, not separately as the fourth outlier. This limits my choice to one of two things: something that can be carried within my wallet, or something that can be attached to my keychain.

I found the perfect answer in the Victorinox SwissCard Lite, which came with an absolutely tiny ballpoint pen. The SwissCard pen was practically the same size as the ink reservoir of any regular old plastic ballpoint pen, albeit being a little shorter. This tiny pen was a royal pain to write with in my rather large hands because it is downright impossible to get a proper grip. Not that it mattered to my past self - the SwissCard came with a whole suite of useful tools and it fits perfectly into my old wallet. The tiny pen was nothing more than an inconsequential peripheral that just happened to be the perfect item for the completion of a childhood quest.

Some time after, I also picked up the aforementioned Swiss+Tech Utili-Key and Nitecore TIP rechargeable keychain light, the two newest additions to the keychain in my trifecta. And for the longest time since then, there was nothing else I needed to add to my load-out. It appears that my journey had reached its natural (and somewhat anticlimactic) conclusion.

Or so it would seem.

Fast forward a few years after I had graduated from my studies. I found myself travelling on vacation around the island of Tasmania, walking along the streets of Hobart inside the Salamanca Marketplace. My old wallet was starting to tear near the seams and I had been keeping an eye out for a new replacement. I came across a stall selling leather made goods and caught my eyes on a Barco Wallet from Henk Berg. It was slimmer than my old wallet, but I had been bemoaning about the bulk of my old wallet lately and thought I could make it work.

I made a purchase right there and then and went merrily on my way.

30 minutes later and after much struggling, I realised that I couldn't make it work. I had been carrying too many cards, band-aids, and folded receipts in my old wallet, and no matter how things were adjusted, there was always something that simply would not fit into my new wallet.

Something has to go.

Naturally, I turned my attention to the largest object I carried in my wallet: the Victorinox SwissCard Lite. The SwissCard had the equivalent thickness of 5 credit cards stacked together, making it incredibly thick and bulky in my new wallet. I had been meaning to get rid of the SwissCard for a while now if not for its one saving grace, a once-inconsequential paraphernalia: the tiny pen.

You see - ever since I'd graduated, I no longer have a need to carry a bag wherever I go. This meant that I no longer have access to the spare pen in either of my bags, and the tiny SwissCard pen was the only EDC-friendly pen I had available that would not break my pocket trifecta. The rest of the SwissCard's functionalities have more or less been superseded by the two newest additions to my keychain, relegating the SwissCard to become an expensive and bulky plastic sleeve for a tiny and barely usable pen that I barely ever use. This was no longer the ideal setup for my EDC.

Luckily I had foreseen the coming of this day and already have something else cooking in the background: a pen of my very own concoction.

The perfect pen for my EDC

What do you look for in your ideal EDC pen? My long history of pen carrying and pen mutilation has left me with very strong opinions on the type of features I do and don't want to have on the perfect pen for my EDC:

NO plastic parts. Plastic pens give off a cheap and disposable feel, and they simply do not come with the same level of fortitude and inherent value as parts made out of metal. I want to have a pen that I can carry for life, and something made out of plastic simply does not make the cut.

NO glue or adhesives. While I concur that powerful adhesives such as threadlockers may be the only sensible solution in certain scenarios, I often get the impression that people are just abusing them as a crutch for lazy or bad design. Besides, the use of strong adhesives would deny me the pleasure of being able to take my pen apart completely, whereas weaker adhesives are suspect to arbitrary failure. Hence I decided to set myself a challenge and forgo the use of adhesives altogether.

NO tiny springs. Would you create a pen with a single point of failure placed on a hair-trigger? That is exactly what would entail if you incorporate a tiny spring into a pen that is designed to be taken apart with ease. Tiny springs can become lost forever very easily because they are near-impossible to spot in a cluttered environment, yet they have a habit of sliding/rolling away when you are unaware and bouncing off into oblivion. "Just be careful" is simply not valid advice here because accidents can and do happen when you least expect it.

NO pocket clips. Not everybody likes pocket clips, and I happen to be one of those people. Besides, there are already more than enough pens with pocket clips on the market and I felt it was pointless to add to that count. Most importantly, I wanted a pen that can be attached to my keychain, and as paradoxical as it may sound, a pocket clip would only get in the way inside my pocket.

NO protruding "hooks". This is just an extension to the "NO pocket clips" rule. My ideal EDC pen should be pocket-safe with a sleek and streamlined design, meaning that it should not contain any protruding structures that can hook on to the seams or any stray holes inside my pocket.

NO seamless edges. There is no denying that seamless pens are pretty darn cool. However, seamless edges between metal components can also happen to be a powerful vice with a vicious cutting edge, perfectly suited to clamp down on and slice off a part of your finger. Just thinking about it is enough to send shivers down my spine.

NO magnets. Magnets can do unexpected things, and there is simply no suitable sweet spot for the strength of its pull. Too weak and the magnet can fail arbitrarily, causing the pen to fall apart when jostled. Too strong and the pen will stick to anything and everything you come across that is remotely magnetic. Magnetic interference can also pose as a serious hazard to the delicate electronics found within pacemakers and other implantable cardiac devices, and some people do have a habit of carrying their EDC inside a breast pocket right next to their chest.

Tight, secure, and well-fitted components. This requirement is a given because nobody wants a pen that can work itself loose and come apart in the pocket. Nor would anyone be interested in writing using a pen with an extra wobbly/loose ink refill.

Compactness. This is also a given. If I didn't care about the compactness of my EDC pen, I could've simply stuck a regular old BIC ballpoint into my pocket and that would've been the end of that. Compactness alone, however, is not enough. Had I cared only about maximising compactness, I could've simply carried the tiny SwissCard pen in a folded and sealed Ziploc bag inside my wallet. Which brings us to my next requirement-

Extendability and writing comfort. To get the most out of a compact EDC pen, it should also be extendable to a comfortable length for writing, or at the very least as close in length to a regular, full-sized pen as it can possibly get. And length is not the only measure of comfort for writing - the diameter of the pen grip is also a rather important consideration. My ideal EDC pen does not have to provide "OMG THIS IS THE MOST ERGONOMIC GRIP I HAVE EVER HELD IN MY HANDS"-levels of comfort, but it does have to provide some measure of thickness in the grip that is, at the bare minimum, not uncomfortable to write with. In practice, I simply measured the thickest portion of the barrel of the most common plastic ballpoint pen I could find and used that as a baseline for my design. That plastic ballpoint pen was the classic BIC Cristal, which some still hails as one of the greatest pens ever made to this day.

Decently weighted. I prefer my pens to fall somewhere between the lightweight and heavy category - comparatively heavy against plastic pens, yet relatively lightweight when compared with machined pens made out of brass or stainless steel. My ideal EDC pen should therefore come with a bit of heft, making it feel more reliable and substantial and differentiating it from its plastic counterparts. Overly heavy pens usually leave me with a bad impression because most of the ones I encounter are not balanced enough to allow for a good writing experience. In fact, people who claim to have a dislike for heavy pens are not always affected by its weight - what some of those people may have a problem with is its balance.

Well-balanced. The balance of a pen is something you'd never notice unless it gets bad enough to throw everything out of whack. Say for example you are holding an imaginary pen in a writing grip, in which case the nib of the pen is at the bottom and the other end where you post the cap becomes the top. In such a context, long pens with a light bottom and a heavy top can be very uncomfortable to write with, because you have to write and fight at the same time to keep the pen from toppling itself out of your grip, with the imbalance causing a lot of unwanted strain in your fingers. Most pens suffer from this to a certain extent due to their tapered grips, but it is imperceptible with lighter pens because they simply do not have much weight to throw around in the first place. With machined pens, however, especially lengthier ones made out of heavier metals, any slight unbalance can be exacerbated and amplified manyfold by its weight. Of course, how the balance of a pen is perceived can vary from person to person because we all have different-sized hands and we can hold our pens in very different manners. A build that feels balanced in many hands is the mark of a well-designed pen.

Durability & longevity. Compared to the safe and cushy compartments inside my wallet, the neighbourhood on my keychain is a literal wild jungle with all kinds of danger lurking within. There is the danger of crushing when I push my sides against a wall in a crowded elevator, nicking and scraping from sudden drops when I lose my grip and fling my set of keys 6 feet across a rough concrete pavement, not to mention all the biting, scratching, and lacerations my keys can inflict when they fight tooth and nail for the most comfortable spot to settle down in my pocket. My ideal pen needs to be created out of a lasting metal that can withstand such adversity on a daily basis and still remain fully functional throughout the years to come. Aluminium is extremely lightweight but is rather lacking when it comes to strength and durability. Stainless steel, on the other hand, is extremely strong but is far too heavy for my liking. And then there is Titanium, a resilient, rustproof, hypoallergenic, and aircraft-grade metal that has comparable strength to steel at nearly half the weight. And thus it is decided that the main body of my ideal EDC pen can only be machined out of solid titanium blanks, giving it the best in class in terms of both durability and weight.

Comes with a keychain attachment point. A pocket pen should always come with a feature for retention - a designated spot where it should always be returned to after use, lest it becomes easily misplaced or lost. My ideal EDC pen should come with a keychain attachment point that is beautifully integrated into the overall design of the pen itself, and not as some random hole drilled into the pen sideways with a tiny split ring added in as an afterthought. Furthermore, the attachment point should provide a large enough opening such that it is possible to attach the pen directly to some larger accessory (e.g. a snap hook carabiner, a lanyard, or even a thick paracord loop) without the need to first attach a split ring to the pen.

Utilises the standard D1 multipen ink refill cartridge. I harbour a secret dislike for pricey pens that are designed to use only proprietary refills with similarly extortionate prices, because to me, "proprietary" is just another way of saying "Yeah, you are stuck with us for good, so suck it up and pay up". With proprietary refills, you are forced to either buy a new refill or buy an entirely new pen, all from the same retailer. It makes sense from a business perspective, but it gives the customer zero choices on the matter. And thus the day I discovered the existence of the D1 ink refill standard was one of the best days of my life. Commonly manufactured with ballpoint writing tips, D1 refills pretty much come in the same exact size as the tiny SwissCard pen, and my discovery of its existence gave me the much-needed nudge to set out in an attempt to create my very own version of the ideal EDC pen. The D1 refill also comes with an added plus - its cartridge is so tiny that I can easily wrap up a few backup refills inside a Ziploc bag and pop them in my wallet, allowing me to swap out damaged or faulty refills at a moment's notice.

Self-containing. The need to use some external tool (such as a screwdriver, a pair of pliers, a tiny wrench, or some kind of special tool that came with the pen) to disassemble the pen or to replace the ink refill defeats the entire purpose of carrying a compact pen. If something goes wrong with my EDC pen, I want to be able to take the pen apart on the spot and attempt a fix immediately (e.g. switching out a faulty ink cartridge), not fish around like a frantic monkey for some extraneous tool or a makeshift replacement that I may or may not have been carrying with me. My ideal EDC pen should, therefore, be wholly self-contained, e.g. if the pen comes with a hex screw, then there should also be a corresponding hex key integrated somewhere into the design of the pen itself.

Waterproofing. My ideal EDC pen must be waterproof by design. Not to protect the ink refill, mind you - this requirement is solely for my own protection. Should I ever end up with another leaking ink cartridge, as had happened to me multiple times throughout my childhood, I want the pen to be capable of confining any ink that is flowing out, lest it messes up yet another pair of my pants and everything else in my pocket.

Minimised part count. The fewer the number of pen parts, the lower the chances something can go wrong with the pen. This requirement is my ultimate challenge to myself because it impels me to push the limits of my creativity to find a way and cram all of the features and requirements I have listed thus far into as few components as I can possibly conceive, greatly increasing the design complexity and the machining difficulty of each component. The trade-off, however, is very much worth the price, because it creates a lasting pen that is surprisingly straightforward to assemble and disassemble.

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