Leatherman Arc worth $230 ?? (One big issue, one perfect fix) #Leatherman #multitool #edc

the lean Arc is finally available for everyone to purchase now I've had mine for a few weeks I did an unboxing video which you can find the link to Down Below in the description and I have some thoughts on it I also have a lot of questions that came up from that video that I'd like to address so let's go ahead and take a look at the Le Arc decide whether it's really something you should consider and uh talk about upgrades cuz in this video I'm actually going to break my warranty and install something that I think should have always been the case I went a little bit more in depth about this tool set in my unboxing video but I'll run through it just one more time we have the diamond file and Crosscut in fact I really like the aggressiveness of this file it's one of the best ones I've seen so far from Leatherman we have the scissors which are also pretty good and I've been pretty happy with from the free series tools and then the last three things we have are a new style reamer a micro driver and a new designed a redesigned Flathead and Prime tool look at how Stout that thing actually is now I really like the design in actually all three of these tools and what just a quick um address of the reamer now a lot of people did not like that it does not have the sewing eye making it and all and the thing is and I think Zach from Zack and the wild said it best how often have you ever used it but more importantly how often are you going to have the need to do it but also not have it be synthetic material that will not take that type of stitching and that is actually when they start looking at how many nylons and how many uh rip stops and all this other stuff in existence you realize the sewing eye doesn't really get much use and a lot of companies have gotten rid of it on their multi-tools like Victorinox with their Spirit doesn't have the sewing eye either this also has a wire stripper down here although it is quite small in comparison to something like the lean wave now over here we have a saw which looks exactly the same and functions exactly the same as the free P4 we finally have the bit driver which is awesome now this one stands a little bit further out from the bit holder itself and it has a little bit more play than the lman wave but not bad whatsoever can opener and the big claim to fame here the magnut blade now of note there is USA written both on the blade and on the plier and this is important because not all of the lman tools are actually able to put the USA stamp directly on the tools the lemon wave the lemon surge these are assembled here in the US and the majority of parts are actually also made here but they don't meet that crucial criteria of 70% so that they can actually put that USA stamp that it was actually a big lawsuit back in the day that had them have to take it off these both the free series a P4 P2 and the Ark all have the USA stamp that's means that they must have done something different to allow the bit kit to function and be maybe made here either way this is something that's not to be understated it definitely cost them something in order to get the USA printed on there okay so we have a pocket clip we have the bit d we've gone through everything except the blade Magna cut is the big reason why this thing is so damn expensive it is a steel that is highly corrosion resistant it has good toughness good Edge retention and it's decently easy to sharpen I have to say I've I've done it and it doesn't feel any worse than 154 CM which is perfect uh even though it is a vadium steel it definitely does not feel as bad as some of the others that I've tried like 20 CV so it is a great steel um maybe one of the best in fact in the entire industry now this is DLC coded and it's actually a PVD coating which is very thin it's not going to affect performance it's mostly here for looks though because well Magna cut is nearly impervious not not impervious but very very very very corrosion resistant like 9.5 out of 10 kind of thing and we have the pliers as we talked about this does not have the adjustable pivot like we saw in the 40th anniversary edition and it doesn't have the springloaded pliers I'm less annoyed by the spring-loaded pliers because these are actually really smooth and excellent but the lack of the adjustable pivot that does hurt me a little bit because I just felt like that's such a great feature they could have included with that I'm going to move on to the next part of this video which is addressing some questions but also just try of answering the question does this how does this compare I've got a lot of questions about how does this compare to the surge how does does this compare to the wave how does this compare to other brands and so on so I want to run through that we have to keep in mind the $230 price tag which is a very very very important stipulation we cannot look outside of the fact that this is so expensive does it compare to the wave from a tool set perspective it is actually better okay it's hard to argue that it's not the only thing you're gaining with the leadman wave is the D the uh serrated blade but I'm not sure if it's worth it when you have the Magna cut blade you just have so much Edge retention the other thing that might be a consideration between the two much might lean in the wave's favor is the lack of the magnetic architecture so the wave which I don't have on the table I'm just going to briefly talk about is approximately $100 if you go to eBay and it's a really good abuser tool it really really is and it's going to have most except for the reamer all everything that is here on the arc it's not going to have the edge R tension but you're not going to have to worry about the particulates getting caught in a magnet and uh you're going to have a better like tool that you can beat up on I think a little bit more and I think that's where it's going to be a big difference so no I don't believe it will actually be competitive with the lman wave Now The Surge is an interesting thing initially I said no no there's no way the ark could ever compete with the Surge and I thought a little bit harder and it's a closer match than I thought but no The Surge has certain things that make it Superior to almost any tool on the market one of them being that replaceable t- shank holder that is one of the greatest features that exists it also has a longer frame that gives you more leverage on the plier it's very very ergonomic the tools in general a little bit beefier there's longer blades so no once again even if they were the same price The Surge would still beat it in the context of using it for heavy like heavy duty tasks so I wouldn't say that's there this is a very interesting tool because I think it actually uh caters to a market that really hasn't been catered to at all in the multi-tool world and I think they're going to be very successful because of it you know addressing it with the knife lovers of the world which there are a lot of them so I think that this will end up doing well now the other thing is this comes with a sheath and it comes with a bit kit in fact it comes with this now this is a full complete bit kit that I just unboxed right here but it comes with nine of the 10 bits in this kit nine of the 10 now until I opened this I didn't realize which bit was actually missing and it is the T6 T8 Torx so it is 9 bits minus the most useful one in the entire kit and the one that I have broken in every kit with the exception of this brand new one uh the t68 is a real problem because it is such a soft steel from these lman bits and uh I use it a lot I use the T6 quite often and it's usually the first thing that goes stripped I usually get about three to four uses before it's basically toast and uh that's unfortunate right and the bit kit is going to be I think the big sticking point for a lot of people and the place where you're either going to get it or you're not so I was worried when letherman released the ark if they were going to continue to have the second half of the bit kit out of stock and thankfully they are back so this has just also been reintroduced which is great cuz it was out of stock for months and they were very very expensive on eBay and the bit kits the entire kit is also available and you can buy them on Amazon or on lan.com but this is important do not buy them after the fact on letherman because you're going to have to pay that $7 shipping charge it'll be even more expensive I also recommend if you are getting the ark make sure you pick up a set of spare bits for the tool these three cost $5 it is one of the easiest things to add they should tell people about it when you buy them I don't know why they don't but these do wear out and so having a spare will save you that extra $7 shipping C shipping charge and I have not seen this available on Amazon or anywhere else so that's something as well now I want to go back to that T6 T8 bit here's the problem let's say you have all these nine plus this right you buy the second half you know what you're still missing that T6 T8 bit that is a major problem this missing from this is a really big issue for the sale of the Ark I didn't even think about it but what do you do here do you buy an entire bit kit instead of half that feels really bad to spend $230 on a tool and have to buy an entire bit kit or entire half just to get the T6 T8 bit that doesn't seem right does it that that really doesn't feel right and honestly it wasn't until I set up for this video that I realized that that was the case I I didn't know what was missing until now that's really really unfortunate they're available but it feels a little bit I don't maybe maybe they have a reason I don't know if they have a reason or not but the missing T6 ta bit I think is a huge problem that uh they might have to send these out they might have to send this bit out to everyone and honestly they should okay with that said and now that we've talked about the lean Arc should you buy it I think it's going to come down to the bit kit system for me it's easy right I may have a YouTube channel and obviously this is a deduction for me I mean I would have bought it probably anyway because I love them but I don't know if everyone should go out and just go buy one I'm not sure that it's going to be something that I think everyone's going to see the inherent value of over something like the lman wave I just I don't know if it's there and also the free P4 exists now I don't know if it's in stock right now but it's a pretty good tool better than I gave it credit for when I first unboxed it so there's all of these other tools that are serious considerations and maybe not everyone's going to get the benefit of that um Magna cut blade now at this point we are going to move on to doing some modifications I I am going to immediately void the warranty on this thing and uh that's because I have something that I've been wanting to install for a long time in the right tool and I think that it's finally here I think this is the time to do so this is a full-sized 1/4 in bit driver with a 4 mm bit on the back so how cool is that so when I install this which will replace both the can opener and the bit driver I should be able to have the functionality that I'm really looking for now before I do that I did forget something that I'd like to discuss people have asked about um holsters that you can get for the lean Arc and actually zap wizard who made these sheets they're 3D printed and they are kind of amazing um he already designed one specifically for the lean Arc and the 40th anniversary edition now these have storage for bits on the back they have places for bits on the side they have uh place for um bit extenders I will link to his video and he can kind of show you the whole ins and outs of what he designed but definitely those are available and they're worth looking at and also very reasonably priced as well now let's go ahead and set up we're actually going to do this mod on camera I'm going to speed it up but I want to show you why this makes the tool ideal for me for this mod I use pretty inexpensive tools for the most part I mean you can find something that will work for you but I do recommend that you have decent bits first of all my weha bits I found to be pretty much the highest quality you're going to need two t8s in order to do this adjustment and I do recommend getting something in this design first cuz you're going to need something to hold onto it while you are actually rotating it so I have found that with this having the hole right here this is made by Klein that this has worked perfectly this has been the the perfect tool so whatever you're using for the other thing you're just going to need another T8 so we're going to have those you're going to need some tweezers and I do recommend having some kind of separator some kind of tray or something to hold all the parts do what you want but this is just one way I'm going to do it I'm going to stop talking at this point I might do a little bit of VoiceOver commentary and then we'll show you what it looks like at the end now in reality if I were to do this and I wasn't on camera I probably would be able to do it a little bit faster because I wouldn't be trying to get my hands out of the way so you can actually see what what I'm doing uh this actually was way easier than I thought because the pivot comes in from the blade side and I didn't have to take the whole thing apart in order to get it installed so worked really well and honestly I highly recommend this if you're willing to avoid that warranty on a $230 tool so thankfully that was actually easier than I expected because the pivot is actually on this side as it should be because there's the blade and the screw was on the saw side now this actually goes very very smoothly and I really really like this addition nice and secure on everything everything locks up properly blade is really nice and and solid in there I got that adjustment really nice actually if anything it's smoother now and uh here's check this out so check this out we have the ability to use 4mm bits now in the Lan much much more available than the lean bit system and I can put in either this Phillips driver which is extra long this one came with it and it's really narrow so you can actually like set this in and it will actually hold in there check that out so it actually does work and it also works with this double-sided bit so both of those work and I'm actually going to leave the double-sided bit in there but yeah we have the ability to see if it pops out it does a little bit that's kind of normal with that's kind of like par for the course when it comes to lean free series tools but yeah I'm happy now cuz now I have a full-sized bit driver and I'm going to be good to go I don't have to worry about the 11 bit system anymore but I do want to check if it works with Lon bits and I didn't try this let me try it with the most awkward one which is the T6 T8 just out of curiosity and it does actually function so this will actually function with the lon bits as well because it's deep enough so there you go that's everything now will it function with normal normal bits oh yeah just goes in a little further actually feels really solid with with that so there you go that is my compromised lean Arc this no longer has a warranty at this point I will not be sending this back at any point to lean even if I could reassemble which I can I'm not going to for me it matters more that I have the right tool set that's just me okay and I'm willing to spend the money and cost myself a warranty that is really really good in order to get what I'm looking for there you go that's my Ideal tool set for the Leatherman Arc now I have the Magna cut blade I have a full quarin bit driver I have all the tools and actually really like the ones that have come with this otherwise yeah this will be my EDC for the foreseeable future I'm really really pleased with the way this is set up what do you guys think should Leatherman have done this in the first place I mean you could see right here it is possible it even has the 4mm driver in the back why not right like they could have they but they're obsessed with these smaller bits of these uh proprietary ones where is the there it is just the ability to to use this with two different types of actually three different types of bits With The Lean included I mean just come on this was a no-brainer except then they would miss out on the bit kit costs but I got to wonder how big of a deal is this what do you guys think now that we I I we realize that the t68 is what's missing and even if you bit by the other half you're still going to be missing that bit what do you think would you still buy the arc let me know down in the comments as always guys thank you so much for your time and we'll talk again soon

Channel: Maxlvledc

Views: 111,704

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Id: RVb49LBPVj4

Length: 20min 6sec (1206 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 17 2023