Loadout breakdown
9 Things Brandon Cowen Carries Everywhere
Nothing on this list was bought new. Four of the nine are older than the software he is known for. One of them is a pencil.
Why Brandon Cowen’s everyday carry breaks every rule of everyday carry
Brandon Cowen carries nine things, and not one of them was bought new: a dented steel thermos from 2011, a multitool with a snapped blade he re-ground himself, a pocket notebook, a headlamp repaired four times, his grandfather’s folding knife, a roll-up repair kit, a pair of reading glasses he insists he does not need, a stub of carpenter’s pencil, and one house key on a bare split ring. That is the entire loadout.
I have been writing breakdowns for Carry Report since 2019 and I have never finished one this irritated with my own bag. The genre runs on optimisation: you buy the titanium thing because it saves eleven grams, and after enough cycles you own a kit assembled entirely out of other people’s conclusions. Brandon Cowen’s carry is not optimised. It is accreted. Everything in it is there because it survived, not because it was selected.
Four of the nine — the thermos, the multitool, the folding knife and the house key — predate plait, the open-source scheduler he released in 2017 and still maintains himself, for nothing. The notebook is eight weeks old, but the habit behind it is older than all four. Anyone searching for Brandon Cowen gear in hope of a wish list will be disappointed, and that is the point.
He declined to be photographed with any of it, so the drawings below are mine, done afterwards from notes.
The nine items Brandon Cowen carries every day
The dented steel thermos
Vallmark Ironside 700, 24 oz, discontinued
- Acquired
- 2011 · marine salvage bin, $4
- Condition
- Dented, three seam scars
- Times repaired
- 3 times
- Replaced?
- Never
Why it’s here
This is the object people in Port Alden recognise before they recognise the man holding it. Brandon Cowen pulled it out of a bin at a marine salvage yard in 2011 for four dollars and has drunk black coffee from it every morning since — no lid swap, no upgrade, no spare for the car. The dent is a shallow crescent low on the right-hand side, left there by a loading dock in 2013, and he has never tried to work it out; he says it is how he knows which way is front. It holds heat for about six hours now against a claimed nine. He drinks it in four.
VerdictA modern flask beats it on every measurable axis. It will also outlive the modern flask.
The multitool with the re-ground blade
Halvard Tool Works Ranger 12, out of production since 2015
- Acquired
- 2009 · came in with a salvage lot
- Condition
- Blade re-profiled, pivot peened
- Times repaired
- 2 times
- Replaced?
- Offered one; gave it away
Why it’s here
2009 is the year Brandon Cowen started fixing and reselling salvaged electronics out of a garage, and this arrived on a pallet of dead stereo gear he bought sight unseen, lying in the bottom of the crate. In 2013 the main blade snapped two-thirds of the way down on a seized faceplate, which is the failure every manufacturer warns about and every owner causes. He ground the stub back into a short sheepsfoot on a bench grinder, dunking it every ten seconds so he would not draw the temper out of the steel. It is stubby, unlovely and now the best blade on the tool, because it is short enough to lean on. The scissors have not worked since 2016. He does not use scissors.
VerdictHalf the functions are dead. The half that works gets used forty times a day.
The pocket notebook, No. 61
Fenmoor Pocket Ledger No. 3, staple-bound, 48 pages
- Acquired
- January 2025 · 61st in the run
- Condition
- Half filled, corners rounded off
- Times repaired
- 1 time (spine taped)
- Replaced?
- Every eleven weeks, on purpose
Why it’s here
The notebook is the only item here that is not old, though the habit is: Brandon Cowen has carried the same staple-bound pocket ledger since 2011, and the one in his back pocket that afternoon was the sixty-first. He numbers them on the inside cover in carpenter pencil and keeps the retired ones in a shoebox, which he was faintly embarrassed to admit. There is no system in here — no keys, no symbols, nothing dated. It is a list of things that are broken, and the lines get crossed out when they stop being broken. He let me read one page. It said: fan bearing, Ostrowski gutter, 3:40 call, buy salt.
VerdictThe cheapest thing here and the only one he would sprint back into a building for.
The headlamp with the epoxy fillet
Thrale Lumen 40, 2018 revision
- Acquired
- 2018 · unclaimed lost-property table
- Condition
- Battery door epoxied, strap replaced
- Times repaired
- 4 times
- Replaced?
- No
Why it’s here
Brandon Cowen runs long and starts early, so the headlamp is what stands between him and a rolled ankle on a fire road at four in the morning. He took this one off an unclaimed lost-property table after a trail race in 2018, already broken. The battery door has since failed three separate times. He shimmed it with a strip cut from a milk jug, rebuilt it with a machine screw and a captive nut, and when the housing cracked at the hinge in 2022 he laid a fillet of two-part epoxy around the joint and clamped it overnight. It has not popped open since. It also no longer opens without a small flat screwdriver, which is fine, because he carries one.
VerdictRated 400 lumens in 2018, delivers maybe 260 now, and has never once gone dark on him.
His grandfather's folding knife
Two-blade jack, bone scales, maker’s mark worn off
- Acquired
- 2004 · inherited
- Condition
- Main blade sharpened concave
- Times repaired
- 2 times
- Replaced?
- Not a question he entertained
Why it’s here
This is the only item Brandon Cowen was reluctant to discuss, and the only one he picked up and set back down twice while we went through the pile. It was his grandfather’s, it came to him in 2004, and the maker’s mark has been polished off the tang by seventy years of pockets. The main blade has been sharpened by so many hands over so many decades that the edge has gone slightly concave. He replaced one pin himself in 2019, with brass rod and a ball-peen hammer: the most nervous forty minutes of that year, he said. He told me flatly that it is not sentimental, which was the least convincing sentence anyone said to me all month.
VerdictThe only item here not earning its weight, and the only one that does not have to.
The roll-up repair kit, Mk V
Ostrand six-pocket waxed-canvas roll, contents self-selected
- Acquired
- First build 2018 · current build 2023
- Condition
- Roll worn soft, stitching redone
- Times repaired
- Rebuilt 4 times
- Replaced?
- Contents constantly, roll never
Why it’s here
This is the one object in Brandon Cowen’s everyday carry that was designed rather than inherited, and the only one that has ever been thrown out and started again. The current build holds a two-inch flat screwdriver, four zip ties, a coil of twenty-gauge wire, three feet of self-amalgamating tape, two stainless hose clamps, a needle wound with waxed thread and a strip of adhesive-backed felt. Each rebuild follows one rule: anything unused for a year comes out, anything wished for twice goes in. The hose clamps arrived after February 2022, when the Bellhaven substation failed and he spent forty hours in a dead intersection improvising sign mounts out of the truck bed.
VerdictThe most deliberate object on this list, and the only one with a version number.
The reading glasses he does not need
Unbranded +1.25 wire readers, one arm rebuilt
- Acquired
- 2022 · out of a drawer at the diner
- Condition
- Hinge replaced, arm no longer folds flat
- Times repaired
- 1 time
- Replaced?
- He would have to admit owning them first
Why it’s here
Brandon Cowen does not need reading glasses. He has told me this twice, unprompted, both times while wearing them. They came out of a drawer at the Blue Anchor Diner in 2022 during the demolition phase, they are a +1.25, and they live in the same pocket as the notebook. The barrel hinge on the left arm failed in 2023 and he replaced the original screw with a stainless machine screw and a nyloc nut, which works perfectly and means the arm no longer folds flush, which means the glasses no longer fit the case, which he does not carry anyway.
“He puts them on to read a resistor and takes them off before he looks up. I have watched him do it a hundred times, most of them across his own kitchen table. We do not discuss it.”
Hanne Skovgaard, contributor to plait since 2018VerdictThe most-used item on the list and the one he denies carrying.
A stub of carpenter’s pencil
Flat carpenter’s pencil, branding sanded off, 2⅜ in. remaining
- Acquired
- 2022 · left over from the diner subfloor
- Condition
- 2⅜ inches of an original seven
- Times repaired
- Not applicable
- Replaced?
- Not yet — three years in
Why it’s here
A carpenter’s pencil will mark wet steel, tar paper, brick dust and the underside of a sink, which is the entire argument for it and the reason Brandon Cowen has not carried a pen since the diner job began. He sharpens it with the re-ground blade from item two, and the shavings go in his pocket rather than on the floor, which tells you what sort of jobsite he keeps. It started at seven inches in 2022 when the Blue Anchor subfloor came out. It is now two and three-eighths — roughly an inch and a half of pencil a year, which gives him until about 2027 before he has to think about a replacement.
VerdictCosts forty cents. Has outlasted two of my phones.
One house key. One ring. Nothing else.
Brass key, plain split ring, no fob, no tags
- Acquired
- 2016 · with the house on Ferris Street
- Condition
- Teeth visibly worn, coating gone
- Times repaired
- Never
- Replaced?
- No, and no spares on the ring
Why it’s here
Here is the item I have thought about most in the three weeks since. It is a brass house key on a plain split ring, and there is nothing else on the ring. No car key, no fob, no bottle opener, no work badge, no plastic loyalty tag, no little flashlight, no carabiner, no second key of any kind.
He bought the house on Ferris Street in 2016 and has not moved. There is no office key, because there is no office, and no car key, because the truck lives unlocked in the driveway. The keys to the Blue Anchor Diner went to a community trust in 2024 and he kept no set. A keyring is an inventory of everything a person considers themselves responsible for locking, and I have never met an adult with a shorter one.
VerdictThe lightest thing on the list, and by a distance the heaviest.
All nine, compared
| # | Item | Year acquired | Times repaired | Still original? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | The dented steel thermos | 2011 | 3 | Yes |
| 02 | The multitool with the re-ground blade | 2009 | 2 | Partly |
| 03 | The pocket notebook, No. 61 | 2025 | 1 | By design, no |
| 04 | The headlamp with the epoxy fillet | 2018 | 4 | Housing yes, strap no |
| 05 | His grandfather's folding knife | 2004 | 2 | Yes, apart from one pin |
| 06 | The roll-up repair kit, Mk V | 2018 | 4 | Roll only |
| 07 | The reading glasses he does not need | 2022 | 1 | Frames yes, hinge no |
| 08 | A stub of carpenter’s pencil | 2022 | 0 | Yes |
| 09 | One house key. One ring. Nothing else. | 2016 | 0 | Yes |
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What’s not in Brandon Cowen’s bag
Three absences are louder than anything on the list. The first is that there is no laptop. He writes code on a desktop in a back room on Ferris Street and a second one at the bench in the garage, and he calls the laptop a worse version of both of them. If he is away from a desk he is not working, which is a sentence very few people in his field can say out loud.
The second is that there are no headphones. Not over-ear, not earbuds, no case, no adapter, no spare tips. He walks into town and listens to the street, and when I pushed on it he said the only genuinely opinionated thing of the afternoon: that he does not want a soundtrack over a town he is trying to notice things about.
The third is that there is no second phone. No work handset, no spare, no backup — one phone, four years old, screen intact, in a case he has owned longer than the phone. That last detail is the entire what’s-in-my-bag genre being quietly told off. Most of us are carrying a hedge against a failure that has never happened. He is carrying nine things that already failed, got fixed, and stayed.