What Makes This Tiny Keychain Knife an EDC Icon?

On its second redesign, WESN’s best-selling keychain cutter keeps its svelte size but crowdsources new changes.

Published June 17, 2024

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Way back in October of 2017, WESN launched its first Kickstarter campaign — an effort to crowdfund the creation of a new everyday carry brand via its very first product, a keychain-sized pocket knife called the Microblade. In just 60 minutes, the project was fully funded.

Years later, WESN has a fully fleshed-out catalog of bladed tools and ranks among one of the top knife and EDC brands, with the Microblade being a chief reason for its success.

Not ready to rest on its laurels, however, WESN continues to iterate on its EDC tools, and it recently overhauled the Microblade from the ground up. The result? A knife so good you could rightly call it an “EDC icon.”

WESN Microblade 3.0

$89 at WESN

It takes a village

This isn’t the first time WESN has revisited the Microblade. The company updated the popular keychain knife in 2020. This time is a bit different, however, as WESN actually took a more feedback-driven approach for the Microblade 3.0 — a nod to its roots as a successful Kickstarter brand.

According to WESN, it compiled years’ worth of customer feedback and spoke with the top craftspeople around the world to inform the changes to the Microblade.

Key adjustments

The biggest alteration might be in the knife’s signature thumb stud, which is now removable. That means people who love it can keep using it as their primary means of deployment, while those who don’t can simply do away with it for an even more streamlined, minimalist EDC option.

The blade also saw a choil redesign (that little notch between the base of the blade and the handle) that makes it easier to sharpen.

Other improvements include making the pocket clip out of softer steel, thus making it a bit looser and easier to use, and tweaking the mechanics and detent to make deployment even smoother (which is especially noticeable when utilizing the thumb stud to pop the blade into position).

Don’t change a good thing

While a lot about the Microblade has been altered in some way, many of what one might call its most defining features remain — and that’s a good thing.

Despite its deployment, blade, thumb stud and pocket clip changes, it still retains its same signature silhouette and size (measuring up at just 3.75 inches when open, 2.25 of which are accounted for by the handle and 1.5 go to the stout blade).

It also still maintains its same materials, including options for a full grade 5 titanium handle or one with a single-sided G10 scale, as well as D2 steel for the blade.

The Microblade 3.0 is available right now on WESN’s site for $89 in three versions: Titanium, OD Green G10 and Blacked Out.