I was gifted a leatherman ‘blast’ last year, I keep it in my bag and it comes in handy fairly often.
The wire cutters are really good, I’m sure you could trim cables without fraying them, but it might possibly take a couple of shots to get it perfect.
The one I have has the needle nose style pliers and though I haven’t tried, I doubt you could use it for what you want.
A leatherman will probably come in very handy whilst travelling (make sure to put it in checked luggage), but if you’re going to assemble a bike, get a bike multi tool. It’s not worth the fail.
in addition to to the ‘Leatherman’ I’m gonna buy I’ll also be taking a bike multi tool, cone spanners, full size allen keys, hollowtech bearing preloading tool, spanners and maybe a chain whip/cassette tool (I have one of those stein mini-cassette tools but I’ve yet to get it to work unless my lockring is already loose) and spoke key plus some other stuff I’ve forgotten to add.
Practise with the Stein Hypercracker, leave your chainwhip at home and save a bunch of weight.
I have a Skeletool, it’s good for pliers/knife/screws/bottles.
Most pliers/sidecutters will make a mess of gear/brake cables, can’t you just cut to length before you fly? Or coil up the excess and ziptie, then cut when you can borrow a tool.
The only cable I will have to trim is the front derailleur I think, all the other cables can unhook/dissconect and my rear derailleur is a full length cable (bar ends and running cable beneath bar tape on salsa woodchippers mean a long cable run!) and I’ll take cable ends.
but yeah I might just get it trimmed at a shop in berlin where I’ll be arriving.
ok, I’ll give the stein another crack*
*pun intended
think I’ll leave the phil wood for one of you rich fullas.
I have had the Letherman Charge Ti for almost 10 years and it is awesome. I used it every day when I was a tradie without fail and it will cut cable(not very well, but it will ge you out of strife). I bought my nephew a Letherman Blast for Christmas and was very impressed with the quality.
OR before you travel could lightly solder the ends of your cables to stop them fraying (Baum does this on their builds). You can achieve the same end with superglue.
sounds like a lot of effort for a cable. I have a leatherman MUT which is a fairly big, heavy one, but with the added feature of replaceable wire cutter blades. I used to have a leatherman juice (small) which was excellent quality. The last Gerber I had exploded.
I used to work at an outdoors store a few years back. The Gerbers are definately good if you need full size pliers. the Leatherman Juices are great if you can get away with something more mini. We had fewer returns with the Leathermans, but not that many Gerbers - they are still good quality.
One other suggestion. It may sound silly but if you plan to use the knife a lot (cooking etc). think about getting a Opinel knife instead of using the one in your multi tool. They are fantastic for $25 and don’t weigh too much. Easier to clean and doesn’t cease up nearly as badly cos of its wooden handle, you can grease them with cooking oil too.
.jpg)