G'Day,
There has been a lot of hype around the Mini Tool lately so I decided to get in on the action.
The Mini Tool has been missing from my collection mainly due to its very small knife blade a limited tool selection. I use my knife daily for lunch duties, so a decent blade is a must. But I digress...
I managed to get two Mini Tools in the last two weeks. The first one was a bargain at $10 and it was in a VERY good condition. The blade needed some sharpening and a good clean and now I have a tool that is in near new condition. I got a second tool yesterday, again at a bargain price. This one has had a fairly hard life. There was some rust on the plier head and the one set of handle screws were badly damaged - so much so that I had to file bits away just to get the tool over it to take it apart. The blade is still very blunt but the file/screw driver is basically new.
Leathermon did a recent mod (
http://forum.multitool.org/index.php/topic,65444.0.html) where he added a Micra bit to the Mini Tool where the file used to be. This inspired me to try some mods on the Mini Tool. Due to space limitations both in length and width there is not a lot we can add into the tool. I have some extra bits from PST / PST II mods I have done in the past and wanted to see what will fit in. I decided to remove the knife blade and put the large flat screw driver in its place. I also had a look if any of the other flat tools will fit. So here goes: all the flat screw drivers will fit in length and width - but they need some modification, but I'll get to that. The phillips will not fit at all in standard form. If one file the sides down to the same width as the tool stem and make it a flat 2D phillips it will fit - similar to the Micra phillips.
The PST / PST II tools sits slightly "higher" in the Mini Tool case. The bottom is also a little different and I had to sand about 1mm away and round the front part to cope with the Mini Tool's different handle shape. Once the bottom was done, the top was sticking out about 1mm. It was more at the back (where that screw sits) than the front (plier side). The screwdriver fitted in perfectly in the closed position. The open position was a different story. The screwdriver only opened about 175 degrees and not 100% straight. I had to sand some metal away where the tool stops against the handle. This was probably the most difficult bit to do. I used an oval shaped micro file with some 400 grid sand paper wrapped around it. The trick is to keep the same shape in the little tab, but without removing any metal at the back. If you do that the screw driver will not "lock" fully in the open position. I did about 10 files and then check it. It is difficult to explain, have a look at the pictures.
All the sanding was done on 400 grid metal sand paper and finished off on 1200 grid to add some shine. I put the sandpaper on an old breadboard that is perfectly flat and worked slowly and checked regularly.
It is a pity that there is not enough space for a proper philips driver. I think that the most minimalistic tool as the Mini should have at least one flat and one phillips driver. I may try and work on the phillips if I have some time later during the month, but for now this is the configuration I will go with. The mini will need some boots, and I have some fine aged leather I want to use for that. I'll add some pics of that once it is done.
Here are the pics.
Cheers,
Pete
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