Improving a Gerber Recoil

King_Gorilla · **on:** November 20, 2024, 04:23:30 AM

I just bought a Gerber Recoil on ebay. It showed up in my mailbox. I honestly don't remember buying it.
I DO remember looking for one late at night.

Obviously I need to be more careful about spending money online. YOLO, no regrets.

I'm not a big fan of OTF plier based MTs. The design makes the inside tools practically useless. The Recoil appealed to me because of it's automatic deploy design and because all the tools are on the outside like the Leatherman OHT or the Gerber Vise. So now I have one. I hope I didn't spend too much on it.

After messing with it, I had a few thoughts of obvious ways to improve on it.

#1, The Recoil has a blade and scissors, and 2 multi function tools. These tools, IMHO, are the weakest part of the Recoil. As someone who likes camping, I love to see Multi tools with can openers. But the slotted (flat) driver tip of the tool makes the can opener very difficult to use. Conversely, the perpendicular tip of the can opener prevents you from using the slotted driver in any long shank situations. This is bad design. A very simple solution would be to take the tool to a grinder and remove the driver tip to vastly improve the can opener. Or grind off the can opener blade to improve the effectiveness of the driver.

#2, A second option, that I think would be better, would be to move the scissors over to the other handle next to the knife. I have never been a fan of putting little tiny scissors on an 8 oz standard sized medium duty MT. But having said that, I wouldn't want to get rid of the scissors because I kind of like the old fiskers style scissors that they used to put on Gerber tools. So once the scissors are over with the knife, you can just chuck both of those stupid multi function tools and add a locking bit driver! That would be WAY better.

The only problem I have with this is the loss of the bottle opener. So you would need to be sure you have a Dime or a Style PS on your keys when it's time for a beer.

Thoughts???

ComboTool · **Reply #1 on:** November 20, 2024, 10:53:15 AM

Sorry, probably not the kind of thought you were asking for but I'll be watching this thread with interest.

Farmer X · **Reply #2 on:** November 21, 2024, 01:53:59 AM

Depending on how rare the Recoil is, I might just leave it as-is. But it's not mine to do with as I see fit. Of the two options you presented, I'd say the bit driver is better. That would allow you to keep the original opener tools of you ever want to revert, and put you at less risk of goofing anything up. A Victorinox Bantam would make a good companion for a Recoil with the bit driver mod, methinks.