Aug. 20th, 2008 [entries|reading|network|archive]
simont

[ userinfo | dreamwidth userinfo ]
[ archive | journal archive ]

Wed 2008-08-20 17:12
Dear Lazyweb

My Leatherman is beginning to get long in the tooth. (Specifically, and somewhat unimpressively, its pliers now don't open and close properly, due to protruding nicks on the wire cutters which I apparently caused recently by using them to cut wire.) What multi-tool should I replace it with?

My current one is the long-defunct Leatherman Flair, which I bought because it was a Leatherman-type tool but also had a corkscrew and bottle opener; I thought, and still think, that this seemed like a generally useful combination. The Flair also has two other ‘picnic accessories’ which are completely pointless (a spreader and a cocktail fork, for goodness' sake), but it includes a blade, pliers, scissors, a useful range of screwdrivers and assorted booze-opening technology in one convenient package, and that's all been consistently useful to me for years.

If I could design a new multitool myself from scratch I'd leave out the silly picnic accessories, add a few more screwdrivers, have the tools fold out from the outside rather than the inside, and probably make the knife blade much smaller. (My own best judgment says the Flair isn't in violation of UK knife-carrying legislation, but on the other hand I don't actually need a blade longer than a couple of centimetres since I only really use it for opening packaging; so if I were designing from scratch I'd play it a lot safer.) Oh yes, and I'd make the wire cutters out of pure adamantium, bah.

But it isn't feasible to design one's own multitool from the ground up, so I probably want to buy some reasonably good approximation to the above. I've done a bit of googling, but nothing has really stood out for me as being obviously what I want. Any satisfied users out here with personal recommendations?

Link14 comments | Reply
navigation
[ viewing | August 20th, 2008 ]
[ go | Previous Day|Next Day ]