With the end of the year coming closer, I wanted to talk about a few changes that I have made to my everyday carry (EDC) gear and give you some reasons why I made those changes. It is easy to get lazy about what you wear or take with you on a daily basis and do not re-evaluate your needs. Sometimes it is necessary to make changes for the good of the cause, change is not always bad!
Good belts Can Make A World Of Difference
The last time I purchased a new gun belt was about 15-years-ago and that says a lot about the quality of a good thick leather gun belt. While it will last for a good many more years, I felt it was showing enough wear that I needed to buy a new EDC belt for daily use and make that old belt my secondary belt. 
My first choice was again a good thick leather belt, it is what I have always wore and I still like them. The hard part was choosing which company to buy from. After much reading and thinking, I decided to go with Relentless Tactical The Ultimate Concealed Carry Gun Belt in brown leather. I have heard great things about their gun belts and wanted to see if all those things were true. Well I am proud to say that there belts are really nice and high quality. The finish is excellent and it really looks good. At the present time I am using their buckle and it works great, I may go back to me own buckle but time will tell. I have used this belt with my Glock 30, a magazine holder, flashlight holder on it and there is no evidence that it sags under the extra weight. The only drawback to this belt is it does not work very well with my appendix carry holster from Alpha One. This rig is a holster and magazine holder in one and it won’t fit with the buckle in front. I tried moving the buckle to the side but that just is not workable for me. So I realized that I needed to buy a different type of gun belt for this style of carry.
All my research lead me toward a 
non-leather style belt that was a bit thinner then leather but just as strong, with a buckle that did not have the overlap like my leather belt. I decided on the Blue Alpha Gear Cobra EDC Belt because I heard many good things about this belt. These belts are really nice, easy to adjust and fast to put on. One nice thing about this belt is the Cobra buckle, one of the ends is small enough
to fit through a normal blue jean belt loop and that is handier than having to take your belt apart in order to thread it through your belt loops and then put it back together. When I am wearing my appendix holster/magazine combination, it is easy to slide the buckle to the side enough to fit this holster. Just what I needed! So far I really like this belt and it has changed my idea of the nylon web belts. I used to only wear leather belts and I would never even consider wearing anything else. This belt is a game changer!
A Knife That Is Extremely Smooth And Less Bulk In My Pocket
I really enjoyed my Schrade SCH109 folding pocket knife for many years, it worked nice and kept a great edge on the blade. But unfortunately because of the large thumb-stud it also dug into my leg at times and really was uncomfortable. That forced me to look at other folding knives to see if I could change that problem. I have always liked the knives from CRKT, ever since I purchased the CRKT 6773Z Crawford-Kasper Knife. It was extremely smooth and also very sharp. While I really liked this knife, it is a very large knife and thicker then I wanted to carry in my pocket. So I looked at other CRKT 
knives and found the CRKT Hi Jinx Z Knife, a very nice knife. This knife is a flipper-style knife without a thumb stud to dig into my leg, the deployment of the blade is extremely smooth, and the handle is thinner then my Schrade SCH109, this is exactly what I wanted. As with my other CRKT, the blade was very sharp right out of the box and did not require any touch-ups with my ceramic stone. There is enough texture on the handle that made gripping the knife an easy thing to do. The handle was contoured enough that I had no hot spots when I used the knife. So it is an excellent knife for my needs.
Before I move on to a new subject I wanted to add a little about my Husky Foldable Utility Knife
. I do a fair amount of opening packages, cutting cardboard and doing things that is not the best on a knife blade. Rather then ruin my good folder I have added this folding utility knife to my gear. It has a clip to place it in my pocket or fasten it to my EDC Pack, which is really handy. But most of all I like the way it is so easy to replace the knife blade itself. Therefore you always have a sharp blade in your knife. These a very handy and very reasonable to purchase.
A Pack That Works For A Lefty!
For many years I have used the Maxpedition Kodiak Gearslinger Sling Pack for my EDC pack, it is a sling pack that can easily be switched from left-handed to right-handed. It is an extremely awesome pack that has a lot of pockets for storage but I only had one complaint, it was too big for me and I tended to put too much gear inside it. That is a problem of mine, if it holds more I will fill it! So I was in the market for a new EDC pack, something smaller, that will conceal a handgun and hold all my essentials. The Vertx line of packs is something I really wanted to try, they seem to be excellent backpacks for the money spent. The problem was that most of their backpacks were designed for right-handed-people which would not work for me. But finally they came up with a backpack the would work for lefties, it is the Vertx Dead Letter Sling Pack.
It is a briefcase style pack that holds 12 liters (L) of gear. That’s not a lot of space but it is perfect for my EDC needs. The thing that is nice about this pack is that it can be setup for left or right-handed people, just by moving the strap around using different buckle attachments. The stitching on the buckles is a different color so it is easy to figure out the right way to use the buckles. This pack is very versatile, you can carry it using the handle on use the shoulder strap. If you use the shoulder strap it can be configured like a normal shoulder strap for a briefcase or setup as a sling pack for either a right or left-handed person. I got mine from LA Police Gear, they had a sale going on this pack and they sent me a Vertx medium sized velcro pouch free with the pack. There is a lot of Hook and Loop panels within this pack that would fit many different Hook and Loop attachments. I added two small pouches and now I have more space for small items. With 12 L of space in this pack it is necessary to know what you are going to put in this EDC pack and then what type of pouches, straps, holders, etc. you need to utilize. This pack has a huge pocket designed for concealed carry, It will hold one or two handgun holsters, magazine holder and much more room as you see fit. This pack will even have enough room for some of the larger foldable automatic weapons. But if you choose not to utilize that pocket for a concealed carry option, it will easily fit a full-sized laptop computer. This is one of the nicest packs I have owned and it really serves my needs.
Change Is Not Always Bad
It is easy to get in a mindset that what you have carried with you for years is all you need to carry regardless of your situation. But we must remember that people’s needs can change depending on what they are doing each day, week, month or year. Or there is new gear that becomes available and that might suits your needs better. As I found out the folding knife I had carried for many years was just not comfortable anymore. For one reason or another our tastes may change and that’s OK. The whole reason I wrote this post was to say be flexible, be open to new things, be ready to make a change if you need to. Swapping out your knife for something different or updating your EDC backpack for something that works better may be what is the right thing to do. These changes I made were for the better and I like that.
If you have any questions about this post or anything else related to Everyday Carry (EDC), feel free to leave a comment below and I will be happy to get back to you.
All the best,
Larry
Founder of EDC Essentials
