https://imgur.com/a/Li8ICAN
This is my Leatherman MUT. It’s been my primary multitool for something like 2 years now, maybe 3. It’s honestly performed most tasks adequately. I screw things with it, cut open boxes with it, hold things with the pliers and cut wires. However, the role I mostly want it to fill is that of a field expedient general service tool for my rifle and pistol and small camp related tasks. Not to replace an armorer’s wrench, but to do most of the little tasks I have regarding my firearms, whether it’s punching pins to try a new trigger, or just moving accessories around on my rifle.
However, its adequacy reveals its mediocrity and how bonkers the design behind this thing can be. For me the true test of any tool’s quality is the amount of friction you experience while using it. Examples I’m more familiar with are firearms- there are guns that are pretty good, but they might have a stupid mag release, or a hard to use safety lever. These things are problematic and can really make an otherwise great gun ultimately frustrating. I would say that’s the issue with the MUT- it’s an otherwise great tool, with drawbacks that make me think “surely things could be somewhat better” at every turn. Let me begin.
There’s a lot to like about this tool. The flathead and 2d Philips head work well. The miniature ones work well too. I also like the pin punch on it. In fact that I will say that is one of my favorite parts of the tool. It’s so goddamn CONVENIENT.
I used to be pretty lukewarm on the carbon scraper, but it’s grown on me. I still don’t think I need that feature, but now that I have it, I will say it’s satisfying to scrape the carbon off the tail of my bolt. I don’t think it’s that important of a task as you can run an AR many thousands upon thousand of rounds without doing that, but it is something that is satisfying to do and get all those carbon chunks.
I like how easy it is to access both the knife and the saw. Both are good one handed operations, they click when open, and they’re easy to unlock and close with one hand as well.
I think the pliers are adequate. Tbh I don’t really use the pliers or the wire cutters that often. The pliers have been fine for what I use them for, which in the past few weeks has mostly been to rebend the pocket clip on my flashlight into position after it’s gotten caught on something and bent out of shape. I’ve only used the wire cutters a couple times for some very small tasks, but I’d like to run them harder. I don’t see myself being able to cut through say, storm fencing with these, but I haven’t actually tried it yet so who knows. Some claim to have success.
And that’s everything that’s good about this tool. I think the t15 torx was a smart decision, except that other torx sizes are so commonly needed that by the time I need a t15 I already have a torx set out.
The hammer is straight up stupid. I have no need for a tiny hammer that’s thinner than literally any of my fingers. Tbh I’m not even sure if I’m using it right- grasping the tool (while closed) with the hammer side facing down (icepick grip I guess), I just kinda banging whatever I’m hammering. Can I make it work? Yes. Every time? Pretty sure the answer is still yes. Have I ever managed to hammer something down without slamming my fingers into the stake/nail/whatever? Not even once. I thought maybe you were supposed to set the hammer head on whatever I was you were supposed to hammer then hit the tools with something else to provide the kinetic energy, but I just never felt great about hitting the hinge the whole tool revolves around. If that was my only complaint about the hammer, it’d be fine, but as you can see from my photos, there are other problems with the hammer. The fact that the hammer interferes with closing the tool when using the screwdriver aspects of the tool makes me so mad. Unreasonably mad. One might describe it as “bloodlust”. I see red every time I go to use the screwdriver and I can’t close the tool all the way. I see they used the hammer as a way to integrate the seatbelt cutter, but man, I’d rather have them integrate the seatbelt cutter into the bottle opener or lose it instead.
Speaking of the bottle opener, I’m tired of seeing these on multitools in general. I can live with their presence, but I’ve been using lighters, counter tops, teeth, and nipple rings and whatever other shit was around to open bottles my entire adult life. I don’t really need or want a bottle opener on my multi tools, and it does come at a cost to the overall tool. It rubs me the wrong way cause I feel like any teenager has discovered they do not need a bottle opener, and I’m pretty sure I’m way smarter than a teenager these days. Idk what else they could do with that space, but I have some thoughts.
I also really would like to stop having a saw on my multitools. I’ve never really sought out a multitool without a saw, and I am sure more than a number of them are out there, but it doesn’t seem like many tools have put a ton of thought into whether or not a saw is the best thing to add to the tool- instead, it seems that every time they have 30 seconds where they don’t know what to do with a spot on the tool, they add a saw. I guess I’m fine with it being there, but I think there are better ways to use space on this multitool, especially cause these tiny saws honestly make me think that in a life or death situation, I might just choose to die instead of using these shitty little multitool saws.
All of that sounds like a lot of complaining about small shit, and, well, it is. The tool does work. I sometimes run into tasks it can’t complete, but it is still, you know, a multitool. It will never replace dedicated tools and so I don’t hold it against the tool when it can’t complete some tasks.
However, this tool is called the MUT- for “military utility tool”. Now, to be clear, I am not, have never been, and never will be a soldier. I do however go camping with my LARP gear, I do use this tool to set up camp, I do use this tool to work on my firearms, and I do use this tool to work on my gear. I’d also like to use this tool for some light destructive entry work, but I’ll forgive if it won’t cut through storm fencing. That being said, I find the following fact to be of the most baffling parts of this tool: without a bit extender, there is no way you can use this tool to tighten or loosen any Magpul AR-15 grip I’ve come across. Maybe you can with other brands if the internal cavity is larger, but I’d bet this holds true pretty much across the board.
The problem is that this tool makes compromises that I find to be almost unacceptable. WHY is the hammer designed to impede the screwdriver functions? Why is there a bottle opener, when we could have put some useful items there instead? Do these make the tool unusable? No, but I also don’t think a tool that costs $160 retail should have these problems.
Speaking of things I think this tool is missing: a longish, beefy but still not super wide pry bar. I’m not talking about prying open crates and stuff, just something I can use to exert more force that I’d want to do with my knife- or in my instance, both the carbon scraper and the pin punch. I’ve bent both while working on my gun. In particular, removing Magpul stocks of a certain variety (the ones that use the same mechanism as the ACS will all share this “feature”) can be a bitch without a small prying tool. A pry bar is also useful for all sorts of other tasks, and would have allowed for a nail puller.
OR they could have integrated a nail puller into the hammer- make it like twice as wide and put the nail puller slot right down the middle. This would have also solved the issue of the hammer blocking the screwdriver. I’m not an engineer, but if Leatherman is interested, they should hook me up with a job, cause clearly their engineers didn’t spend much time on the hammer. My minimum wage dumbass figured this out, should have been easy for an engineer.
In the same vein as the pry bar thing, I wanna see a stuck casing tool. A pry bar with a u-notch designed to support more of the rim of the casing when there’s a failed extraction/torn rim, so you can pull the casing out. The details would have to be worked out, but it’s something I’d like to see on a “military utility tool”. This would also prevent my dumbass from trying to pry things with a brass carbon scraper and a thin little punch. Yeah, that’s how I bent both of them. I know, I shouldn’t have done that. But when we have multiple tools (saw, bottle opener, hammer) that are borderline useless for me, I’d have liked to see something that is useful to me and wouldn’t drive my crayon eater brain to do things outside of the design intent of the tool.
So that’s the MUT in short: I feel friction every time I use it, whether it’s the hammer getting in the way or just useless parts of it that take up space I think could be utilized better, I find that every time I use the tool, it more or less works, but not without annoying me throughout the whole task.
With all of that said, does anyone here have an idea for a tool that I might like? I suspect I’m too autistic to like any multitool all that much, but I think that isn’t an excuse to stop trying. I got so frustrated in my search that I briefly found myself looking into what it would take to craft my own multitool, until the reality that I would end up spending several thousand dollars on a single multitool that would probably turn out to be sub par set in. I would like to see a tool that has the following:
1. Pliers
2. Wire cutters (ideally to defeat concertina wire and storm fencing but I can live without that)
3. Knife
4. Punch
5. Carbon scraper
6. Hammer as long as it’s designed better than this
7. Bit extender
8. AR-15 front sight adjustment tool
9. Pry bar, 3″ or so long and would be great if it could be used to grab stuck casings from the chamber
10. Threaded hole for cleaning rod
If it has other tools that’s fine, for example I’m not bothered by the presence of the seatbelt cutter (though I have no idea how well it works, and I’m not removing the seatbelts from my car to find out- however it has worked well to tear apart the nylon on some duffle bags I have, so I think it’s fine except where it is seems like you could accidentally get fingers in there), but I’d bet there isn’t a multitool on the market that makes compromises where I think they should be made, instead making them exactly where I want them least.
by i_d_i_o_t_w_a_v_e
