Leatherman & Duct Tape

slantvaliant wrote: It won't fit in your pocket, but it will open bottles - and a lot more: Annihilator

That looks like a mid-evil gynaecological exam tool.

I use my Gerber daily when at Work. Same with my crecent wrench. Two of the "must have" tools for working in theatre electrics

Keith wrote: Now if I can just stop drooling over the Skeletool CX...

I've got one right here -- very nice piece of multi-tool awesomeness!!!!

I need some input here from the grm collective. I currently have a Leatherman C33x which is the basic straight/serrated knife and the bottle opener. I am looking to upgrade to either the Wingman or the Skeletool. These are the two multi tool models I see as the most useful and perfect size for an everyday carry item. Any recommendations?

Damn. About to go fishin for a week and almost forgot my multitool! Thanks for the reminder!

I've never found anything as good as the original leatherman supertool.

Leatherman used to have a lifetime replacement policy. Not sure if they do or not.

mad_machine wrote: I use my Gerber daily when at Work. Same with my crecent wrench. Two of the "must have" tools for working in theatre electrics

I'm in the same line of work as you and carry three knives every day.

1. Original Leatherman PST. I love the non-serrated blade - they're much easier to sharpen. Has a #2 Philips tool, which I use almost every day. I hate the pliers.

2. SOG Pocket PowerPlier. I love the pliers, but am "meh" on the rest of it. This would be my sole multi-tool, if it had a #2 Philips, rather than the useless-to-me #1.

3. Harbor Freight folding utility knife with replaceable blades. This is my go-to knife for anything that has the potential to seriously dull a blade, like cutting cardboard. 90% of the time I need a blade, this is what comes out of my pocket.

If you add crazy glue, zip ties, JB weld and a hose clamp then it will become a singularity and swallow the planet, so be careful.

Another happy Skeletool owner here. It's been in my back pocket every day for nearly 3 years now, and barely a day goes by that I don't use it for something. Very highly recommended.

BARLOW

Thats what is on an old knife I have. two blades, wood handle inerts held on with rivets.

Have know Idea where I got it. I have had it for years.

Leatherman owner here. I like it because it is very solidly made, has a 'heft' others don't and it has never let me down.

Skeletool here too. Spent like a month obsessing over a do-it-all multitool with a pocket clip, couldn't find one. Decided to try a complete 180 and get a minimalist tool with a clip... haven't looked back since. Not once have I needed, say, a tiny metal saw in my line of work. In fact, the easy-to-use bottleopener has become the most used part!

I need some insight: I currently carry a Leatherman Juice S2 everyday but I don't use everything on it and would like to try going with a minimal setup. I have been thinking about getting a Gerber EAB like Keith mentioned. I won't have to worry about getting the blade all banged up and can just swap it out when it gets dull. I am also thinking of a Leatherman Style PS. It has no blade but pliers, scissors, screwdriver and tweezers. Also, it is supposed to be tsa/travel friendly. It is small enough to keep on a keychain as well. My knife requirements are basically opening packages and cutting cardboard. I have an offer to swap the Juice for the Style PS. Any insight?

doesn't anyone carry a real knife any more?

that's not a knife.. this is a knife

92dxman wrote: I need some insight: I currently carry a Leatherman Juice S2 everyday but I don't use everything on it and would like to try going with a minimal setup. I have been thinking about getting a Gerber EAB like Keith mentioned. I won't have to worry about getting the blade all banged up and can just swap it out when it gets dull. I am also thinking of a Leatherman Style PS. It has no blade but pliers, scissors, screwdriver and tweezers. Also, it is supposed to be tsa/travel friendly. It is small enough to keep on a keychain as well. My knife requirements are basically opening packages and cutting cardboard. I have an offer to swap the Juice for the Style PS. Any insight?

TSA has just updated their small-knife rule. Leatherman's new Style CS should be travel-safe now.

This is the only knife I carry anymore. I've had it going on 5 years. I love it. And I didn't pay anywhere near that for mine. A buddy won it in a shooting competition and didn't want it and sold it to me cheap. Yikes. I had no idea they were that much.

http://www.benchmade.com/products/9051

I carried a Spyderco Enduro before that but the tip broke prying something.

I have a few Leathermans but I never liked how chunky they were or that they had holsters and had to be worn on your belt. Even though the Benchmade is a large knife, it still has a pocket clip and slides easily into my pocket.

I've been carrying the Leatherman Wingman. Smooth enough to slip in and out of a pocket, and a nice big clip for the belt. No holder required.

I may downsize to the Crucial Skeletool:

I also keep one of these on the keychain. Apparently, I don't have to remove when I fly anymore.

What I plan to do with it:

What I actually do with it:

I really like the Wingman, I got one for christmas and it has been in my pocket every day since then. I've had a Super Tool kicking around for about 10 years but I never really carried it all day since it's pretty heavy and doesn't have a clip. The Wingman is a nice size, big enough to have a useful size plier and knife blade, but small enough to live clipped in my pocket all day unobtrusively. The addition of a spring in the plier mechanism and the blade opening from the outside are also big improvements. I also have a Style CS that came in a set with the Wingman, and I haven't found a whole lot of use for it yet, though the scissors are much better than the Wingman.

I still carry that little Gerber on a regular basis (used it something like five times today, mostly opening boxes) but I also have a Skeletool CX that gets pocketed when I'm expecting to have to do something more complex than sit at a desk in a shop that's full of real tools

I do have a Ka-Bar, but I don't carry it normally. It's just too big.

I ended up buying a Victorinox Recruit to carry on an everyday basis. It has big blade, small blade, can opener/small screwdriver, bottle opener/larger screwdriver and tweezers/toothpick. It is very lightweight and useful. Only drawback is that the red scales scratch easily but I see those as battle scars . If anyone is looking for a pocket knife with screwdrivers/bottle openers, I can't recommend this one enough. Very practical, you can snag them for $20 or less almost anywhere and a lifetime warranty to boot.

I now keep my Juice S2 in my rucksack as a back up tool.

SOG here

Osterkraut wrote: TSA has just updated their small-knife rule. Leatherman's new Style CS should be travel-safe now.

Unfortunately, the flight attendants and company pitched a bitch fit and the TSA walked their pocket knife change back so it's going to remain illegal to fly with most small pocket knives. Which I think is plainly and flatly retarded.

So as far as I know, the only halfway 'real' multitool you can still fly with is the Leatherman Style PS. When I have to travel and I'm not checking baggage, I carry it and a Leatherman Pirhana (http://www.leatherman.com/product/Piranha). Nowhere near as versatile as my usual Victorinox Cybertool, but a damn sight better than nothing, and fully flight legal.

I have almost a dozen multitools but the one that's been in my pocket for the past six months is the Gerber Balance. For my purposes it's almost perfect, with great scissors, useable one-handed openable pliers, and most importantly a pair of flip-out screwdrivers that run the length of the tool, so they're actually long enough to get into spaces that most multitool screwdrivers can't and have bits that work on decent-sized screws. It also opens bottles adequately. The only real complaint I have is the knife blade, which doesn't lock, takes two hands to open, doesn't hold a great edge, and is half-serrated, but I carry a separate dedicated folding knife for those duties. (A Kershaw Cryo lately.)

LM's Wave is a solid tool and you can get a pocket clip for it, but I never really got on with mine, too many tools I didn't need and the ones I DID need weren't great. The Skeletool is cool but it's a little too stripped down, it works well as a knife though, and is easy to pocket carry. LMs lately tend to have corrosion/rust issues if exposed to salt-heavy environments, so I'd think twice about one if I spent a lot of time on or very near the ocean. I have a SOG too, best pilers in the business but the rest of the tools leave a lot to be desired. When it comes to Gerbers, a general rule is that the sliding-head ones are good, but the ones that "butterfly" are mostly poorly-built junk, aside from a few that are so burly you can't really pocket carry them. Victorinox's SwissTool line is supposedly beautifully made and excellently designed, but I haven't gotten around to buying one.

If anybody really wants to go down the rabbit hole of multitool/swiss army knife geekery, there's a whole site and forum for them, multitool.org. Much of it is a little TOO geeky for me, but it's a good reference and I like reading people's torture tests of bizarre off-brand tools and seeing crazy vintage stuff.

Oh, for anybody with that little Gerber Curve on their keychain, be careful with the thing. I had one for a while and liked it until the knife blade developed enough play that it could actually pop itself about 1/3" open and potentially cut you when you reached into your pocket or something. I never was unlucky enough to get hurt by it, but it definitely could have had I not realized there was a problem and kept carrying it.

dean1484 wrote: I had to fix my Leatherman case with Duct Tape today. I fell like I just cross the streams. Should I worry? Are things going to spin out of control?

We're pretty much screwed.

I carry an old school super tool. Heavy but works.

Need to add the self fusing silicone tape to the list of grm acceptable fixes. http://www.amazon.com/Rescue-Tape-Self-Fusing-Silicone-Length/dp/B000ZTK6CI/ref=cm_cr_pr_sims_t