Amalgam PDX

Quark Tool

A utility knife that takes minimalism to a new vanishing point.

$15,943 raised

of $1,000 goal

1,594% Funded! Order Below

In stock. Order now, ships within three business days.

$25

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A super compact, locking carrier for a standard utility knife blade. This is the slimmest, simplest, most minimal keychain knife made. You can safely carry a utility blade on your keychain and forget it’s even there until you need it.

The Quark Tool was created for effectively dealing with those occasional, small tasks for which you need a sharp object. It’s for anybody who has ever wasted time searching for a sharp object to open a box, blister pack, or maybe just cut a loose thread. With the Quark, you have the tool always on hand, without feeling like you are weighed down carrying extra gadgets around.

Keys, scissors and kitchen knives, oh my!

We’ve all felt the excitement of seeing a package at your door, quickly bring it inside and look around for something to open it with. For some, the kitchen knife is the solution. For others, scissors. Yet another group fashions their key as a make-shift blade. Lastly, the cavemen, rip at the box and tape with their hands.

The Quark Tool sits silently on your keychain, ready when called upon, for those times in your life when you need a utility blade. Smart, effective, easy.

Quark Tool can easily be added to your everyday carry without inconvenience or hassle. Quark Tool allows you to be prepared without feeling like you are carrying around something extra.

For most of the reasons that people carry a pocket knife, a utility blade will do just fine. Anybody who values a cutting tool, but doesn’t want to raise eyebrows by pulling out a knife. Pulling out a knife blade can make people are uncomfortable, while utility blades are decidedly less threatening.

The Quark Tool is perfect for any person who considers themselves slightly handy and likes to be prepared. You might be a hobbyist who needs to strip a wire, or cut a string, or a photographer who is constructing backdrops, duct taping things and cutting zip-ties. The Quark Tool is for anybody who works with their hands and has to manipulate their environment on a daily basis.

Perfect for Travel

Many of us have had the pain of throwing away a nice pocket knife, utility blade or sharp edge at airport security. Those lucky enough to have enough time mail out wares to ourself. With the Quark Tool, you simply slip out the blade and insert a new blade at your destination. No more losing items to security.

This product is as minimal as it gets. It is the bare minimum package necessary to effectively carry and use the versatile utility blade.

Uses

Features and Specifications

The Quark Tool gives you an incredibly diverse range of capabilities in a tiny, unobtrusive package.

Quark Tool prototypes

After months of careful design and prototyping, the Quark Tool is now ready for manufacture. The Quark Tool was designed to last and is built to blend inconspicuously with your current key setup. It’s a knife that assists in your everyday life without getting in the way.

Manufacturing Plan

We were fortunate enough to find an excellent supplier in China who makes knife and utility blade products. The supplier has provided multiple rounds of prototypes, and we’ve worked closely with them to ensure that the product functions correctly and quality will be met in production. Tooling is finished and first article samples have been made from the actual tooling. This means that the product has been proven viable, and the only thing left to do is to place an order for the Minimum Order Quantity. We expect to be shipping product within two months from the end of the campaign.

The Quark Tool disappears on your keychain, and reappears only when you need it.

Risks and challenges

With this campaign, we have done everything possible to reduce risks to backers. By self funding the tooling, we have been able to make sure that the manufacturing is viable, thereby reduce potential hiccups after funding and reducing time to delivery.

Locks in the closed and open positions. Won’t open in your pocket, stays open during use.
Comes with a standard, easily replaced utility blade.
As thick as two credit cards.
Accommodates nearly all key rings.

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Produced by Amalgam PDX in Portland, OR.

Sold and shipped by Crowd Supply.

Quark Tool

$25 $8 US Shipping / $18 Worldwide

About the Team

Amalgam PDX

Portland, OR  ·   quarktool.com

Not long back in human history, the possessions that people kept were treated as prized possessions, artifacts that held history, value, and pride. We want to design products that reconnect with that ideology. Things that you carry and use on a daily basis should bring aesthetic value, improve your life in some way, and hold an intrisic value which goes beyond mere functionality. Our aim is to produce thoughtful, high quality, beautiful products for discerning, handy individuals. These days it seems all to common for companies to follow the architecture of the mass market, either creating products that are manufactured around cookie cutter processes which are just "good enough", or adding features that will never get used in an artificial claim of utility. We're looking to push the boundaries of manufacturing and design to create honest, ideal and holistic solutions.

Alex Thomsen
Blake Pender

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