So here I find myself sitting here on a Sunday afternoon feeling quite relaxed because its a bank holiday tomorrow and I dont have the dread of having to go to work in the morning.What a great oportunity to have a really good look at the Gerber Freehand Spoonrobot has lent me , and what a tool .Its bigger than I thought it would be , alot bigger and you can see this in the pictures where its sat next to a Spirit and Swisstool.Weight is 342.13g compared to the Swisstools 279.9g.Its longer and wider too .Is this Gerbers offering to compete against the Leatherman Surge ? The pliers deploy with the flick of the wrist in Gerbers aggressive but usefull style . The pliers are very needle nose and are very thin but this is a little deceiving as they are really quite big and very wide near the pivot . Wonder if they will do a blunt nose version . there is no play in the pliers although there is the usual slop from side to side which goes hand in hand with the ‘Gerber rattle’ . I don’t have a problem with this and its not a fault more of a feature and doesn’t effect its performance in any way but thought it best to mention as some folks don’t like it . When you first open the pliers after deploying them there is a rather clever mechanism that stops the handles from pinching your hands , it works very well and certainly keeps you busy for a few minutes trying to puzzle out how it works .
The best feature of this tool is the one handed opening blades , at first I found them awkward to use and the plain edge one was very hard to open with your thumb but a tiny drop of oil had it working like a dream . ‘I bet you cant open them with gloves on ‘ I thought , wrong you can and with a bit of practice its very easy , this is a big plus . Some people wear gloves a lot due to their jobs or the conditions they find themselves in , say a Firefighter or and artic explorer ( one extreme to another there ) . This has always been a problem with the swisstool when you have to take your gloves off to open the tools .The stubby caplifter worked very well but the can opener was a wast of space .The scissors were fine and no problems there . I found the shape of the plain edge blade a little different and liked it very much and it’s the same story with the serrated blade which also has a nicely rounded tip for safety . I’m a big fan of multitools with two blades ( one plain one serrated ) and scissors and this one ticks all the right boxes .The tape measure/ long screwdriver is also a little strange and looking at it I think its going to make a great pry bar , but was it designed for that ? Its quite thick but also long so would this put the pivot under damaging pressure ? For such a large tool I was a little disappointed while the size of the tools on the ends of the handles . Gerber seem to have sacrificed these tools for the pliers mechanism, a shame when the blades and scissors are so large .Another problem with the tools is that there isn’t very many of them , just two in each handle and a lanyard ring which needs something to help it out as its quite impossible to reach with your fingers . I understand you can get a bit driver to attach to the Phillips screwdriver and although Im not able to try one I would think it’s a must have with this tool . The sheath is nylon and good quality but like the tool its huge , and if your going to belt carry ( your hardly going to be able to pocket carry ) its going to stick out like a sore thumb , here in the UK this is not a good idea when we spend most of our time trying not to draw attention to our EDC .
Do I like this tool ? Yes I did , its not perfect by any means but if your looking for a very large multitool with large blades with one handed opening and not too worried about a lack of choice on the smaller tools then this could be a winner . Bit surprised there is no saw or file , I can understand having one or the other but to miss out both .Build quality was very good but it does look a bit like gerber have been doing origami with sheet metal which is no bad thing and they have been doing it for years .Im not sure of the price in the U.S but here in the UK its £85.95 at
http://www.heinnie.com/cgi-bin/heinnie_store/web_store.cgi?page=FRATOTAB/tools.htm&cart_id= A very big thankyou to spoonrobot and I will get the tool back off to you in the next week .
Now for ther pics
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