I’ve had a Leatherman Supertool for the past eight or ten years, and it’s served me well. I used it daily and abused it daily. I did so til United Airlines lost my checked bag with the Leatherman and a lock blade Swiss Army Knife. I’ll never forgive United for this. The Leatherman was broken in and everything was smooth from handling it, and I could open the pliers up with a flick of my wrist. I recall it taking months to get to the point where it wasn’t stiff and painful to use. I constantly oiled the joints on the Supertool and worked it over and over again until it was useable.
I needed to replace the Leatherman with something pronto since I felt naked without it. I poked around online and checked out various reviews of Multitools. But since I’d had such good luck with the Supertool I decided to buy another Leatherman. I like a lot gizmos and features and I like a larger MultiTool. After trying out a couple of very stiff ones at Walmart I decided on getting a Surge. Found a great deal on Ebay and ordered it. The company I ordered from claimed they’d ship it right out, but a week and a half later no dice. I emailed them and they claimed it had shipped. Said they put another one in the mail. Well another week goes by and no Leatherman. I asked them what was up, and they said the Post Office said I’d get it three days later. It did in fact show up three days later, almost a month after I’d placed the order. Funny thing is the post mark was one day before it reached me. I doubt the integrity of the company who sold me the Leatherman.
The Tool showed up with zero packaging, though it appeared to be as advertised, New. Came with the Noisy (velcro) Nylon case with instructions, and the additional smooth diamond and coarse jigsaw file blade. I opened the tool and it was as expected stiff as can be, and I also immediately noticed that it had rather unfriendly sharp edges all over. Holding the closed tool was not comfortable. Holding with pliers open was pretty comfortable though. Opened up all the blades and found them to be not too stiff.
While fiddling around with the Tool, I noticed that it’s possible to get one side of the pliers stuck between two blades. You can force it back open, but seems to be a design flaw.
It’s a handsome tool, but has various tooling marks on the two knife blades which makes for a rough finish to hold in one’s hands. I suspect that with heavy use, you could end up with very sore mitts. Because of this I’ve started to soften the sharp edges using the smooth diamond jig saw blade that comes with the knife.
Flaws:
Sharp edges where they should be softened and kind to human hands
Can/bottle opener does not work on beer bottles with the handles closed and blade open. The opening of the blade is too tight. You have to open one side of the handles to use this tool.
One side of the pliers gets stuck between two blades when closing the tool. Doesn’t always happen, but when it does it gets good and stuck.
Scissors got stuck closed until I lubed and worked them.