I’m no fan of folders in general, but if I have to name one, it would be Leatherman wave plus.
Until few month ago i would not touch anything else, but i saw a friend of mine use what it looked like a wave plus, but it was not a Leatherman, it was a copy named flissa, it is basically an almost 99% identical to the Leatherman, it was actually even better cuz it had a holder for common 1/4 hex bit, vs specialized bit holder from Leatherman that only fits its own bits. It looked very well made. So i decided to buy 1 myself and try to do tasks that i used my Leatherman for decades. So far it performs just as good as Leatherman, at 1/3 of the price. Have not used it for long, but very impressed so far.
I carried a Benchmade mini Griptillian for many years, great knife, but then I also had to (pocket) carry a Leatherman Juice S2 for the necessary tools.
The TS10 fits perfectly in the sheath, plus I like that I can turn it on in the sheath if I need to see where I’m walking for a quick sec.
Must haves for me are OHO and locking blade. I rarely reach for the knife when I don’t already have something in the other hand. I have had more than one dangerously close calls with non-locking blades.
I can finally say I have my favourite folder.
I’ve been carrying it for well more than a year now.
It is far from perfect but the tradeoffs really work for me.
Pros:
Easily replaceable blade, always sharp with no sharpening
Unlike brand name #60 blade handles, this one uses standard scalpel blades that are abundant, cheap and won’t disappear from the market together with their maker
I like the blade length, it’s about right for me
Nice looking
Flips nicely as well
Cons:
The blade is flimsy
I had the blade jump off 2 or 3 times. This is somewhat dangerous. Would be far worse if not for the fact that I know when I use a lot of force and can prepare for this event. I broke some blades as well, the effect is similar.
The holder catches on things, reducing cutting ability
Cleaning is more involved than with a regular blade, but not a big deal
When cutting paper and other challenging things, it dulls very quickly (but I rarely had issues with that, maybe twice)
So…surely not for everyone. But comparing to my previous EDC (Spyderco Ladybug ZDP-189) it is much better.
Gotta grab a clip for that Kaweco. It’s nice to just be able to grab and go with such a tiny pen, even if it disappears in a pocket. Especially because it does disappear, really.
I learned through doing that the two features I least want in a pocketknife are:
Bearing pivot – bigger rust problem than this non-stainless blade
Non-lightweight grip – dropping an open knife blade down is a perfectly common damage mechanism of well-used pocketknives, and tip damage is proportional to weight.
As overpriced as they are, I have to give some credit to spyderco for pure logical design.
Love my Manix 2 Lightweight in Maxamet. Lightweight is not as strong, but for the few years I have been carrying the knife, it has been more than strong enough for anything I have used it for. I don’t baby my EDC knives.
