At its heart, hiking is about getting away from technology. Stuffing everything you need to survive for a few days into a bag and disappearing into the woods is as much about breaking free of the daily Twitter grind as it is about pushing yourself ph...
If your question is ‘how many tools in a multitool is too many tools?’, let me tell you, that answer changes practically every month. Each time I see a new multitool EDC, I’m convinced that there’s no such thing as too many tools as long as the device remains portable. However, I’m now convinced that we’ve reached what I call “peak multitool”, and there’s no getting better or moving forward from here. The Union by Toler Tools is a pocket-sized product that puts tools into your pocket that you didn’t previously think were possible. It has an adjustable wrench, a screwdriver with multiple heads, a pair of pliers with a built-in wirecutter, a miniature handsaw that cuts through metal, and a pocket knife… in a size that fits basically most of your toolshed right into your pocket.
Designed with unprecedented range and ability, the Union is a traveling toolshed. The patent-pending Omnilock wrench allows you to get into tough places and lets you handle a range of sizes easily and quickly. Using self-adjusting and ratcheting mechanisms, the wrench securely tightens around nuts and bolts, giving you all the grip you need to tighten loose bolts anywhere. The Union sports a two-part design that allows you to detach the pliers unit from the wrench for further precision, holding onto parts with one hand while tightening them with the other. Also built into it is a screwdriver with four interchangeable heads. The driver itself is detachable and can be attached to either piece (the wrench or the plier) depending on your needs, and even docks sideways too, giving you a T-grip for screws that are exceptionally tough to loosen or tighten. Docked inside the Union’s body are also interchangeable heads, with one flathead, two Phillips heads, and an Allen head, giving you control over a wide variety of fairly popular screws.
When all’s said and done, the Union packs two blades too, as is fairly common with multitools. A handsaw blade, made from heat-treated D2 steel, comes with a serrated edge that can cleanly slice through wood or even metal, and a 3.125″ pocket-knife blade lets you cut and slice through regular items, opening boxes, cutting cords, etc.
This unusual combination of tools (especially with the remarkable self-adjusting wrench) compressed into a product smaller than your smartphone is pretty much what gives the Union its incredible competitive edge. on the more functional, get-hands-dirty side of the EDC spectrum, the Union isn’t just a regular multitool. It’s an all-out, portable, hardware solution!
At first glance, you’d ask yourself why the Prylobite looks the way it does. It features a full-tang blade that swivels into the handle in such a way that the opposite end of the blade sticks out when shut. You’re bound to question its appearance, but that feeling lasts only a minute. When you begin using the Prylobite, you appreciate and acknowledge its appearance and the functionality it brings to the table, or in this case, your fingertips. You see, the Prylobite is a knife, but it isn’t just a knife. It’s also a flathead screwdriver, a bottle opener, a wrench, and a prybar.
With a highly tactile and sturdy, G10 fiberglass handle on the outside, and a stone-washed S35VN Steel blade on the inside, the Prylobite has a certain simplicity and elegance to it. It doesn’t feature any locking or unlocking mechanisms, relying on good-old friction tension to open and close the blade. The full-tang design prevents an open blade from closing, because your thumb applies pressure along the handle spine.
The Prylobite’s most noteworthy visual element is its blade. Designed with a pivot at the center, the blade’s always sticking out of the handle, when open or closed. Open it up, and you’ve got a nice, sharp, curved sheepsfoot blade that’s ideal for slicing, dicing, and cutting. Fold the blade inward and extension on the opposite end sticks out. This extension holds three other tools that make the Prylobite indispensable. A flat-head screwdriver/prybar at the tip allows you to tighten screws and open tightly-shut paint jars. Just behind the prybar is also a 1/4″ wrench, allowing you to tighten or loosen quarter-inch nuts and bolts. On one end of the wrench lies the Prylobite’s bottle opener, allowing you to crack open a beverage when you’re done prying off lids and tightening nuts and bolts. The other end of the wrench features a running slit that allows you to clip the knife to your pocket like a fountain pen.
The Prylobite’s just compact enough to fit on your keychain (each Prylobite comes with a S-biner carabiner), or even be independently clipped to your jeans pocket. Fitting all the right tools you’d need in your day-to-day life, the Prylobite encapsulates exactly what urban EDC should be. Useful, portable, and most importantly, eye-catchingly unique!
Imagine having an entire toolkit in your stationery box, or better still, in your front pocket. That’s pretty much what the Wowstick is gunning for. The pen-shaped, pen-sized rotary-tool works as an electric screwdriver, allowing you to tighten or loosen screws at the press of a button. With literally two buttons to choose from, you can rotate the head of the Wowstick either clockwise or anti-clockwise. A set of 58 bits and tool-heads gives you immense power and flexibility, letting you work multiple scenarios with the choice selection of bits ranging from flat-heads to phillips-heads, torx, spanners, and even star-bits, while a Type-C port at the other end of the Wowstick lets you charge the internal motor that gives the Wowstick 200RPM of speed. Working in low-light conditions? The Wowstick comes with three powerful LEDs at its tip, arranged in a manner that doesn’t cast a shadow, giving you optimal lighting to loosen or tighten even the most stubborn screws, lodged in the tightest spaces that most power-tools would never fit into. But that shouldn’t be a problem for the world’s smallest and lightest electric multi-tool screwdriver, should it?
The first time you lay eyes on the Claw, it’s bafflingly small. What’s more baffling, however, is its incredibly vast feature list. It opens bottles and jars, unscrews screws, cuts open taped boxes, undoes staples, works as a flint-scraper, and acts as a tiny, nifty, jimmying tool. By design, it fits all those features into a frame that’s basically the size of your thumbnail, and by construction, it does so tirelessly, because the Claw is made entirely from titanium.
At less than an inch long, the Claw (an apt name, given its claw-shape and concealed nature) is smaller than a 1¢ coin, making it officially the world’s smallest multitool. It sits on your keyring, weighing a forgettable 2 grams, so you can have your EDC with you without even feeling its presence, until you need it. Use it to crack open bottles at parties, to unbox gifts you got during the holidays, jimmy open lids on jars of paint that are stuck shut, or even use it as a flathead screwdriver to tighten rogue screws around the house or outside. When not in use, it sits among your keys, perpetually accessible to you (it’s even TSA approved, so you can carry it on flights too). The grade 5 titanium build ensures it’ll last long enough to be passed down to your great-grandchildren… which would be infinitely cool if we had bottled drinks or flathead screws in the year 2100. Go ahead and grab a Claw for yourself now (with free international shipping!)
If you’re struggling to pick a great gift for a DIY enthusiast, or perhaps for secret Santa, the HexFlex MultiTool is just about the best way to go. It fits 14 incredibly useful tools into its small frame, and comes with a keyring attachment so you’ve always got it on you. Made from stainless steel, this incredibly season-appropriate multitool comes with two Phillips screwdrivers, a flathead screwdriver, three hex drivers, a box-cutter, a bottle opener, and six different wrenches cleverly integrated into its snowflake-shaped design. Originally designed to be a snowboard tool (hence the snowflake theme), the HexFlex actually lends itself to a lot of regular daily use too. It fastens right to your keychain, allowing you to carry it around wherever you go, and gives you the power to open stuff from bottles to boxes, and tighten or loosen screws, and bolts. Now that’s quite chill isn’t it?!
If you’re struggling to pick a great gift for a DIY enthusiast, or perhaps for secret Santa, the HexFlex MultiTool is just about the best way to go. It fits 14 incredibly useful tools into its small frame, and comes with a keyring attachment so you’ve always got it on you. Made from stainless steel, this incredibly season-appropriate multitool comes with two Phillips screwdrivers, a flathead screwdriver, three hex drivers, a box-cutter, a bottle opener, and six different wrenches cleverly integrated into its snowflake-shaped design. Originally designed to be a snowboard tool (hence the snowflake theme), the HexFlex actually lends itself to a lot of regular daily use too. It fastens right to your keychain, allowing you to carry it around wherever you go, and gives you the power to open stuff from bottles to boxes, and tighten or loosen screws, and bolts. Now that’s quite chill isn’t it?!
The James Brand was established for the pure reason that there are some problems that involve getting your hands dirty. Some solutions involve having the right tool on you and the Halifax was designed to be a solution to some pretty basic problems. Its simplistic design comes machined from a single titanium billet, and has a design that’s easy to hold, store, and even operate.
The Halifax comes with three rather rudimentary functions that you’re bound to require a tool for. A flathead screwdriver on the front lets you loosen or tighten screws on your gadgets and outdoor equipment, while its solid titanium construction even lets you use it as a scraper, taking tough coatings off surfaces like a knife moving through butter… all without getting a single scratch. Right underneath the tool also lies a bottle-opener with a rather interesting cap-holding design detail that stands out in its chrome finish.
Striking a perfect balance between work and play, want and need, the Multitool Fidget Spinner is weird in a way that makes us like it. With a ceramic ball-bearing center, the spinner spins with the smoothness you’d expect from high-end fidget toys… but more importantly, around its edge are six spokes with six different multi-tools attached.
With two straight screwdrivers, two Phillips heads, and two Torx tips, the fidget spinner has all you’d need to tinker and fix things… and when you’re not, just keep spinning away!
The fidget spinner comes with a zinc alloy body, while each individual tool-bit is made out of Chromium-vanadium steel and snaps magnetically to the fidget spinner’s body, allowing you to store the heads separately and take them out when you need them, but if you ask me, keeping them magnetically attached to the fidget spinner gives the toy much more character!
The Kershaw Pub is a knife first and foremost, but it’s a multitool too. Its unique design makes you notice the knife aspect of it first, before you grasp that it’s more than just a knife, and that’s worth appreciating. Designed with a blade and a swiveling sheath, the Kershaw Pub (yes, it’s built to be the perfect pub EDC) reveals a bottle-opener comes with a rather rustic yet beautiful looking sheepsfoot blade with a stone-washed finish at one end, and a bottle opener and screw-driver at the other. The blade comes with a loop at its opposite end that hides within the sheath when open, and when closed, exposes itself and can be used as a carabiner clip.
The handle for the blade comes in an anodized aluminum finish in black as well as blue, but if you’re an enthusiast, there’s a carbon-fiber variant too! Small yet incredibly versatile, like most multitools, the Kershaw Pub may have been designed for your local watering hole, but you’re probably going to carry it everywhere with you!
At its heart, hiking is about getting away from technology. Stuffing everything you need to survive for a few days into a bag and disappearing into the woods is as much about breaking free of the daily Twitter grind as it is about pushing yourself ph...
