Herring Blade Knives

A neodymium magnet is the entire mechanism of the Herring Blade, a compact utility knife with no spring, no hinge, and no moving parts to fail. One press of the thumb releases the lock; the blade slides forward and clicks into place.

It carries flat in a bag or a desk drawer, with nothing to snag and nothing to lose: no cap, no sheath, no spare parts. Small enough to live in a pencil cup until a shipping box, a roll of tape, or a stack of proofs needs cutting open. About as thick as four stacked credit cards, it sticks to any ferrous surface, a steel door or a filing cabinet, the same way it holds its own blade shut. It runs standard 18mm snap blades, so restocking is never a hunt. Titanium with a matte glass bead finish, or 7075 aluminum with a black Type-III hardcoat. One magnet, one motion, endlessly repeatable.

CW&T is a Brooklyn design studio founded in 2009 by Che-Wei Wang and Taylor Levy. In 2022, the studio won the Cooper Hewitt's National Design Award for Product Design.

Part of our CW&T and Making Tools collections.