Choosing a Pocket Multi-tool
Personally I think pocket multi-tools (as a superset of more well-known Swiss Army knives) are very useful.
You never know when during the course of day you’ll need to cut a package or envelope open, snip a loose thread, open a bottle or unscrew/screw down something. It’s bad when you don’t have proper tools nearby (but even when you do, it’s often a hassle to fetch/put them back).
That’s why it’s extremely good to always have multi-tool in your pocket, especially when it’s small and light enough to be unnoticeable. Obviously compactness comes at the price of less features, it’s always a compromise.
First, I have tried two “multi-tool credit cards”. Basically, it’s a Swiss Amy knife, but with tools packed in the form of the credit card, so you can just carry it in your wallet (at least theoretically, see further).
A Swiss Card Classic by Victorinox
| Very good quality, what you will expect from leading manufacturer of Swiss Army knives. | |
| Quite robust blade/mini knife. It’s actually bigger than a “small blade” on full-size Swiss Army knives, though thinner. It has quite big and ergonomic handle, but, of course, it still a lot smaller than a handle on proper knife even of same “micro” size. | |
| Quite big array of tools:
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This seemed quite a good card, however shortly after getting it, I’ve found alternative solution which seemed to offer even more powerful features inn the same package. That’s being
T1 Business Card by Toollogic
| Almost 100% same credit card size. Same idea, but build quality seem to be slightly inferior to Victorinox. | |
| The blade is slightly shorter and slimmer. Still enough to be useful. Though handle is very short and slim, may be not adequate to exert good leverage. | |
| Huge array of tools, even more than of Swiss Card
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Tool Logic card seemingly more feature rich, but this is at expense of main tools like scissors and blade being smaller.
Also, yes, these both are credit-card size from the front but they are absolutely not credit-card sized in thickness – about 4 mm thick!
Also the weight about 30 grams, so they put considerable strain on your wallet when you put them in.
And another problem – to use a tool, you have to:
- take a wallet out
- take a card out of the wallet
- place wallet somewhere
- take tool out of the card
- place card somewhere
- use the tool
- … do all steps in reverse to put everything back ;)
Not what I call “efficient”, its easier to fetch screwdriver from nearby toolbox :)
So, after a little more digging, I was back to time-proven idea of Swiss Army knife, just of miniature enough size to be unnoticeable in your pocket:
Victorinox Manager
| The build quality is same as expected from Victorinox – solid. Actually, a lot more solid than Swiss Card. I doubt Swiss Card will take much of abuse due to primarily plastic-y construction. | Its a tiny Swiss Army knife. Here you can see that its actually smaller than a Swiss Card (the weight is about the same). Its obviously thicker (about 2.5 times), but you don’t have to put in in your wallet :) – just put it on your keychain or simply drop it in your pocket like I do. |
| The blade is about the same as on Tool Logic card, slightly smaller than on Victorinox card. But, due to unfolded knife serving as big handle, its arguably a lot more useful. | |
| The array of tools is not designed to impress by numbers, but it’s more usable to me on everyday course:
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On the trial run, as I expected, this tiny SAK proved to be a lot more useful and ergonomic – when you need to use a tool, just take it out, unfold a tool and voila.
Some people who prefer different array of tools can find similarly sized knives with slightly different tools (ie “Rambler” has second toothpick/tweezers slot instead of pen, “Midnite Manager” has micro-led light instead tweezers/toothpick slot, etc).
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