Carbon Tactics is a small machine shop based in southern Arizona that produces a number of niche products that are well-suited for use by every-day carry gear fans and prepared citizens. Most of the company's products have been crowdfunded through highly-successful Kickstarter campaigns. Their clever designs and generous campaign rewards have left them with an excellent track record for success in this arena.

The latest campaign is for a product that we first found out about nearly a year ago, and have been anxiously waiting to share with you ever since. The TiSlice is a small titanium device designed to work as an EDC knife. Using inexpensive and widely-available box cutter blades, the TiSlice is a simple design consisting of a titanium housing, a brass slider, and the blade itself. There is a small loop in one end of the housing for a lanyard cord, chain, or key ring.

Once the blade dulls, push the slider all the way out of the housing and flip it or replace the blade if you’ve already used both sides. While this will never replace the need for a sturdy carry knife (fixed or folding) it is more than suitable for daily suburban tasks and some basic survival ones – think shaving tinder, cutting paracord or other thin ropes, even piercing some small animal hides for game dressing. If you choose to carry your TiSlice on a lanyard, Carbon Tactics has four different lanyard beads available: brass, titanium, copper, and the Fire Bead.

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The Fire Bead, our personal favorite of the floor, may be slightly less pleasing to the eye, but doubles as fire steel that, when scraped with the blade of your TiSlice, creates enough sparks to light dry kindling. We tried it and, while it does work, scraping the small Fire Bead with the small TiSlice isn’t the easiest thing we’ve ever done. But it sure beats being cold or going hungry.

In addition to its survival uses, the TiSlice is far more easily concealed than your favorite tactical folder. While it certainly wouldn’t be our first choice if we were expecting a fight, it may be better than bare knuckles in places where larger knives are frowned upon. But we’ll leave those decisions up to you.

You can currently get your own TiSlice for a Kickstarter contribution of $60. There are a number of texture options available, as well as colored anodizing. While gun companies anodize aluminum all the time, doing it to titanium — particularly in colors — is far more difficult. This a good indicator of the level of craftsmanship that goes into Carbon Tactics products, all of which are made completely in-house in their own shop on their own CNC machines.

For more info, check out the TiSlice campaign on Kickstarter or go to CarbonTactics.com.

Written by Tom Marshall