Utilitarian Gifts That Are Anything but Impersonal

This article was published in partnership with Gerber

When it comes to giving and receiving gifts, we like to strike a balance between a present that’s thoughtful and practical. And anyone obsessed with utilitarian gear knows that a well-made, well-thought-out tool makes for a great gift. However, they can lack a certain charm—the personal touch that says, “I got this for you because I know you.”

Gerber knows that tools may be the perfect utility-minded gift for the pragmatist in your life, but they don’t have to be impersonal. Gerber makes that message easy to get across by letting you turn practical gifts into custom companions with its intuitive online knife and tool creation engine.

You’ll never feel sheepish about giving a tool for a gift again. Here’s your guide to matching the top customizable picks from Gerber to friends and family, no matter their passion.

Custom laser etching lets you add a personal touch to the blade—like the total mileage of a bucket-list hike along the Pacific Crest Trail.

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1. Assert

Best For: Weight-Conscious Backpackers

At under 2 ounces, Assert is light yet sturdy—more than pulling its negligible weight. The 3-inch blade strikes a slim profile and boasts exceptional edge geometry. Its blade is forged from S30V steel that maintains its sharpness task after task. Moreover, the glass-filled nylon handle is all but impervious to the elements and internally honeycombed for further weight savings without compromising strength. The Assert’s pivot lock and adjustable (or removable) thumb stud offer a variety of ways to deploy the blade. This is especially handy during frigid high-alpine mornings when working with near-frozen digits.

How to Customize Assert

With Gerber’s customization engine, you can opt for hardware coatings in a variety of colors to lend some personal flair while providing further corrosion protection. Gerber also offers laser-etching on the blade. Go for something personal—either a personal achievement or moonshot goal, like the total mileage hiked along the Pacific Crest Trail, or a quote. Here are some of our favorite lines to add:

1. Miles to go before I sleep.
2. The best view comes after the hardest climb.
3. Not all those who wander are lost.

For the outdoorsman who feels more at home in the mountains, add a featured pattern like the elevation contour lines you’d see on a topographic map to the blade.

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2. Terracraft

Best For: The All-Around Outdoorsman

There’s a reason 3.5-inch drop-point blades with relatively thick spines, full-tang construction, and weather-resistant materials are a common template. A blade that offers an ergonomic grip, the grit to roll with the punches, and tip dexterity for detail work is a steadfast friend in the woods—even more so when it can throw sparks off a flint to light a fire.

Terracraft’s nearly 4-inch blade has the geometry to do whatever you ask it to: a little bit of bushcraft here, some weekend fishing and camping there. Forged from S30V steel, it’ll hold an edge through wood, fur, leather, rope, and mostly anything else within reason. The blade’s thickness bolsters its toughness to handle heavy-duty chores like batoning firewood. Squared off with a 90-degree angle, the blade’s spine catches ferro rods easily—perfect for those who prefer the reliability of flint over the ease of matches. The handle blends aesthetics with a generalist grip to support the blade no matter the hand size or grip.

Of all the tools in existence, few are as timeless as a personalized fixed-blade knife. It shows care for one’s safety and makes outdoorsmen feel even more capable than they ought to.

How to Customize Terracraft

Choose between a classic leather sheath or bombproof Boltaron, as well as creative contrast options for the handle, liners, and rivets. There’s ample space on the blade for a message or an eye catching design or image. Some quotes to get your brain ticking:

1. The proper function of man is to live, not to exist.
2. Of all the paths you take in life, make sure a few of them are dirt.
3. Wilderness is not a luxury but a necessity of the human spirit.

Celebrate your favorite craftsman with a thoughtful quote on a multi-tool.

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3. Center-Drive

Best For: Uncompromising Tradesmen

Center-Drive is not a tool to let its multi-usefulness be an excuse for middling performance. At its core is a pair of spring-loaded pliers with a dexterous needle nose, capable rear jaws, and rotatable carbide wire cutters with three edges for cutting and stripping. The eponymous Center-Axis bit driver was built for practicality. It doubles as a quarter-inch driver and accepts standard bits—no proprietary bits or janky adapter needed. Offset from its pivot, the driver aligns with the center axis of the tool, allowing it to screw with the same ease as an actual driver.

The 3.25-inch blade is one of the largest and most capable of any multitool on the market. It’s forged for 420 HC steel for added toughness by people who understand a blade that chips on-site gets skipped for the job. Add to that over a dozen other locking tools, and Center-Drive is a practical pick for the professional fixer. Bonus: Its one-handed opening system ensures total accessibility.

How to Customize Center-Drive

With Gerber’s customization engine, that loadout need not be stagnant either. You can swap tools such as the serrated blade for scissors and alter the coating and finish for all the tools. You can mix and match the color scheme of the frame and tools to favor that special someone’s aesthetic—or just make it impossible to lose on a site. However you customize it—from etching the blade with a hunting, fishing, or graphic of your choosing to swapping the tools—it’s a jack-of-all-trades. If you want to add text, err on the short-and-sweet side so it’s legible, like:

1. By the work, one knows the workman.
2. A bad workman blames his tools.

No ordinary pocketknife, Savvy gets a bespoke blade with a bevy of laser-etched offerings.

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4. Savvy

Best For: The Well-Prepared Man

What does the average person use a pocketknife for in a day? Opening packages, severing a loose thread, breaking down boxes to recycle them—the list is endless, but rarely does it involve lengthy hard use. A pocketknife is a pocketknife precisely because it spends most of its time in a pocket. It should sit there, slight and forgettable, until it’s time to go to work.

Savvy offers reliability, edge retention, and slimmed-down refinement that deploys quickly. Forged from CPM-20CV steel—a bleeding-edge steel that leverages small and hard pieces of vanadium to boost the hardness of steel—Savvy is a blade that can cut, and cut, and cut. Coated or not, it provides fantastic corrosion resistance. Whomever you’re gifting this to won’t have to worry about disassembling, cleaning, and lubing just because it gets a little wet.

In the cut, the Savvy’s gently countered handle fits deftly in most hands. Out of the cut, it’s slender enough to disappear into a pocket. And on the catch-all, next to a watch, wallet, and keys, Savvy has handsome styling and can match any color scheme.

How to Customize Savvy

We recommend starting with a carbon-fiber handle since everything goes well with carbon fiber. From there, the possibilities are virtually endless. Customize the color of the fasteners, lock and liner, thumbstud, axle, barrel spacers, and even the clip. The blade is large enough for an image—Gerber has some great options for fisherman—and even a quote, like:

1. How you do anything, is how you do everything.
2. Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.
3. The secret to getting ahead is getting started.

Order the Sedulo pocketknife with a 20CV blade for superior edge retention and rust resistance. 

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5. Sedulo

Best for: The Pocketknife Nut

There’s a reason that 3- to 4-inch drop-point blades dominate the pocketknife market. They do it all well enough. But Sedulo doesn’t settle for well enough. It offers all those same features in a slicker, customizable, more easily deployable package than its competition.

Sedulo is Assert’s older brother. Where the latter prioritizes weight reduction and ease of carry, Sedulo is the middle path. It brings the same slim, biting edge, pocketability, and smooth-deploying, fidget-friendly pivot—with a larger, more capable blade. And that’s all standard.

How to Customize Sedulo

Gerber’s customization engine offers a particularly broad array for Sedulo. For those who want to prioritize ease of sharpening and general utility, you can order one in S30V steel. Want to prioritize edge retention and best-in-class rust resistance? Order the blade in 20CV. Between a blade with plenty of space for custom quotes, patterns, or messages, as well as a customizable axle, pivot, lock, spacer, thumb studs, liners, fasteners, clips, and more—Sedulo is a superb all-rounder that you can dial in exactly to the pocket you’re getting it for.

1. A knife is only as good as the one who wields it.
2. There never was a good knife made of bad steel.
3. The blade often used rusts the slowest.