Tesco cheap made in China multitool

[Whoey]

Back about 12 years ago when I worked as an IT manager in London UK I picked up a cheap (not sure about the cheerful part) made in China knockoff in Tesco's for a song. It's far from being a great tool, but is so basic in design that reminds me a lot of the MTO logo tool. I recently rediscovered it in a box while doing some spring cleaning. Here's some photos along side my Victorinox Spirit (a tool that really is spectacular) for comparison.

[Whoey]

photos part deux

[Whoey]

photos part tree...

You can see where they inserted spacers/washers on one side of the plier head to make space in the case for the blade/file in the handles. This makes for a lot of wobble in the head when trying to grip something, not to mention the edges of the handles in plier mode cut into your hand (not like a blade, just uncomfortable)

[enki_ck]

Kind of a standard LM PST clone. Nice to see they added a file surface to the ever so popular fish scaler. Now for the important part, is it still usable without a danger of injuring yourself?

[Whoey]

Well you don't get injured, but it's not entirely useful. As you may have noticed you have to open it to get at the tools as well. Rolling the edge a tiny bit would have improved it dramatically, as would have larger spacers in the Plier head make it less wobbly. All that being said, unless it was the only thing around, I'd rather not use it. :p

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

[Grant Lamontagne]

These were typical problems with early tools spawned by the success of the PST.  In order to combat the sheet metal edge issues Bear turned the handles 180 degrees, Schrade turned them 90 degrees, Gerber developed the sliding head, Buck turned the hinges 90 degrees, as did SOG only differently, and SOG also put flappy covers over them.   Gerber I think was the first one to fold the edges over with the MPT.

What you have there is a neat copy of an early stage of multitool evolution. 

Def

Sent from a digital multitool

[greenbear]

I had one of those - it was given to me one Christmas - it was pretty naff but it led to me getting my first decent multitool (a wingman). Those clever Chinese folks have a lot to answer for