You ever buy a lot of crap on eBay to get the one tool you want, and then are left with a bunch of extra supposedly useless crap? Well, ever find something in that lot that surprised you a bit? I just did. The Dr. Meter MT-13 is a pleasant surprise. It's a big, bulky tool. The handle splay when the tool is open is rather large - the small-handed need not apply. It has riveted-on cutters. They look to be steel, not carbide. Maybe just a gimmick, but they work really well. They've cut all the wire I've thrown at them, from 24ga up to 12 ga, and I even used the hard wire notch on a coat hanger. All flawless cutting.
The tools are a mixed bag. The main blade is sharp enough to cut receipt paper. The flat drivers are all rounded. The phillips driver is small and also rounded, but it made a valiant attempt at door hinge screws. The file is surprisingly good. Very aggressive and makes short work of steel. Or fingernails. The can opener was polished AFTER sharpening, so the blade is dull. Still, it cuts into a can adequately. It makes very short strokes, but it does the job. The wire stripper notch in that tool is unsharpened. The short blade is completely unsharpened, and the serrated blade is also quite dull, and cannot manage to cut paracord even after several attempts. It too appears to have been polished after sharpening.
That said, except for the serrated blade and small awl-type blade's lack of any appreciable sharpness, the tool is actually decent. All of the tools are locking, with a nice metal push button release. The scales are stamped stainless sheet metal, painted on the indented edges and brushed across the flat face. There's not an ounce of plastic on the entire thing. The tools are easy to extract for the most part (I hate the nail lift near the pivot point, those always hurt like hell), with smooth opening and good resistance - which is adjustable via torx screws. The jaws snap open and closed on backsprings, and the jaws themselves are also internally spring-loaded.
They're probably pretty weak jaws, all things considered. They're fairly thin and the internal spring doesn't help matters. But I essentially got this for free, and I think it's good enough that I'm going to sharpen the two blades that need it, and then leave it at my mom's place. It's seriously not bad.
Charles.
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