Displaying items by tag: Leatherman

Once in a while a design comes along that seems innovative, and many of those that do come along just miss the mark due to one problem or another. The Leatherman SideClip is an innovative design but was discontinued some time ago. In my mind, this simply screamed “bad design” to me. I decided to pick one up after some members on the forum raved about how good it was. I figured, at the very least it was worth adding one to my collection. Once again, I was happy to be proven wrong.

Leatherman has made so many tools by now they are becoming too numerous to count, but each generation they create seems to get better than the previous, after all isn’t that what product manufacturers strive to do? They take something that the public already loves and has widely accepted and remake that item so it’s even better than its predecessors. When Leatherman came out with the Wave it hit the mulitool market by storm and soon became the “flagship” item that was the crowning achievement for Leatherman, heck even wal-mart had it listed on their shelves as “best sold mulitool”. I owned an original Wave and thought it was defiantly a forward thinking in multitool design, it was the first tool to have one handed opening blades. Having those on the outside as well as a saw and file makes the tools even with the bottom of the tool; giving the user more surface area to work with. Well in 2004 Leatherman introduced a new version of their Wave based off the design of their new flagship tool the Charge, the Wave may not be sporting a 154CM blade or Titanium handles but it’s still a contender in its own right.

The Surge caught my eye while perusing EDCDepot and I decided to give it a shot. I like the Wave type styling that seems to be very prevalent in the current offerings from Leatherman, so I decided to see what it was like in person. I also wanted to see how it differed from the Wave, one of my favorite models

An unforgettable classic, the PST II was the follow up to the immensely popular original Leatherman Pocket Survival Tool (PST).

The PST II is a handy, compact tool.

The two smallest models in the Juice series are the C2 and S2. Both models seem to perform better than many full sized multitools, and seem quite sturdy, despite their small size. They are truly a large tool in a small package.

The Leatherman Juice models C2 and S2

The Leatherman Kick is an interesting tool- a little smaller than the original PST, but at a fraction of the weight. The Kick is the smallest of a series of three tools from Leatherman, the other two being the Fuse and the Blast.

Leatherman's Lightweight Offering, the Kick

The Supertool for the longest time has been the largest and strongest of their multitool line; people swore by it and would use nothing else for professional use on the job.

Perhaps the largest Leatherman made, the SuperTool was a giant among multitools

With the success of Leatherman’s PST and PST II models it was only a matter of time before the latter became an item to be thrown back to the multitool leaders drawing board with ways of how they could make their most popular tool even better.

Tim Leatherman constantly gets feedback from his customers about his products; and he listens, he is always looking to make his tools better and more user friendly for the public. This tool is 100% customer feedback driven, and a perfect example of how someone in the business should listen to their customers and further drive the creativity that flows into making ideas reality. Customers were most interested in tools that open via the tool being closed and blades that could open one handed, and to once and for all kill the painful hand hurting handles of Leathermans past.

The Wave is one of the nicer looking tools available