Revisiting The Gerber Dual Force

welcome back to the tool crib today we are revisiting the gerber dual force now for those of you who don't know gerber came out with the dual force which is a set of slip lock pliers and i will say that the slip lock mechanism everything on there works pretty well i have had the opportunity to work with this tool for a little while being as it's more of your heavy duty tool that kind of fits into my realm more and i gotta say in some ways i like it and in other ways i'm a little bit disappointed so first let's start with the jaws on here now i was just trying this out on a couple of different bolts and i will say that for lightly or moderately tightened bolts it did pretty well on removing or being able to grip onto them but if i had a bolt that was really set on tightly then it tended to slip the jaws just don't tend to grip in there in fact let me see if i can highlight this a little bit in fact my jaws have start they're so soft that they're starting to uh round off a little bit just from the the couple of bolts that i tried this with so while the design is pretty well done it's just not it's just not built strong enough for the steel that they're using is just not strong enough to make it a viable option for heavy duty use for moderate use i think it'd still be all right because you have to i had to put a lot of grip strength behind this in order just to hold on to that fastener i will say you can get quite a bit of force on this multi-tool but in the end it still tended to round off and so it just doesn't quite fit the bill for me now when it came to the wire cutting capability uh it did all right i was expecting it to be not quite as good as it was probably because of the fact that the cutters are behind the jaws but i tried it on soft wire in fact i tried it on various sizes of soft wire both in solid and in stranded it did better in solid for sure than it did in straining and strained it a couple times it tried to catch a little bit so it wasn't a truly clean clean cut but it did okay it did a lot better on stuff like tie wire though where it was able to just snap it it did fantastic on that i didn't really have anything big enough to try out the hard wire cutters to see if they would work well i suppose i could have put a nail on it but i don't really want to ruin this set i was just trying to do some some light testing with it so the flyer mechanism all works great the the slip lock mechanism works fantastic on this it just didn't have any issue with it slipping out or you know try to uh trying to you know change positions on me anything any problem like that the problem that i had is that the jaws themselves are just too soft that's that's what it boils down to uh good concept not great materials is how i'll put that so the saw itself was i'm gonna say it was adequate it wasn't exceptional but it did a decent enough job so i tested this on just some regular 2x4 and then i put it up against my leatherman surge as well which in my surge i use a linux aftermarket blade so it's not quite a fair comparison because that linux blade is really good but it did decent um i still think the the leatherman will cut just a little bit better than this one because this is a quite a a thick blade the blade that they use on here is a lot thicker than what you're going to find with other multi-tool manufacturers but the teeth were sharp enough to really get through that so it didn't do too bad at all uh it would have liked it to be a little bit better maybe if this were a little thinner in profile but then again it would make it a little less rigid as well maybe they were trying to maintain the rigidity as as opposed to making it a little better cutter so it it does okay it's not terrible it's not excellent but it's not terrible either and then uh the file okay so i tried to file up against uh this is where the leatherman really shines is because the file on the leatherman is just built better uh that's all there is to it now i tried this on just some regular 836 steel and it did okay uh it takes a little bit longer to file something down i started with the with the crosshatch first and then went over to the single cut file it did decent uh bowed on par with what the saw blade was with the leatherman being as it has a nice cross cut cross hatch file and then a uh diamond file to go along with it it did the same task better and in less time so maybe a little bit unfair comparison because this one doesn't have a diamond file but even on the the cross cut you could tell the difference between the gerber and the leatherman now i will say that i don't have footage of it but the chisel portion of it or the scraper worked pretty well i tried it on just doing a little bit of feathering on some wood and to use it as a scraping tool to scrape off some old residue and it did pretty well so that was done pretty decently i wish the file was a little harder so that it would cut through that steel a little bit easier it'd probably work a lot better on wood of course it's going to gum up a little bit on you as well now the knife blade on here i haven't been uh i haven't been all that impressed with it it didn't come out of the factory that sharp and i barely use this thing so i'm going to show you it is it does decent sometimes but a lot of times it'll catch like that so sometimes it'll catch decent maybe if i get on the right part of the blade garber is not real great about telling us what blade steel they put in there and a lot of times they're putting in a lot inferior quality of blade steel than what other manufacturers will i'm sure it can be sharpened up and stropped up to make it a decent enough blade being as it's a little softer steel i'm sure it's not going to be hard to put a decent edge on there but the edge is not going to last for that long so gerber really needs to upgrade their steels in pretty much everything in the in the file and the in the knife blade as well if they increase that quality and the jaws of the pliers they increase the quality of the steel that they're putting in there a little bit of course that's going to make the tool more expensive as well we all know that then they'll be more on par with some of these uh you know with leatherman and victorinox not to say that they're miles above them but they're definitely a better quality of steels that are being used in both of those multi-tools now the saving grace to this multi-tool is definitely the driver this is one thing gerber has done really well uh this the same driver that they put on the center drive and the center drive plus has proven to be exceptional uh it is just a fantastic uh screwdriver the ability to get it centered out into the frame of the tool where it's all it's really comfortable to use and then you're using regular bits in it and then a couple of of a bit storage on board the only thing that could have made this better is if maybe they would had it uh as double-sided bits as opposed to single-sided but then they might not have been able to get these in there as well so you know it's all uh everything with multi-tools is compromised so you just do the best with what you can but this is definitely the saving grace of their multi-tool i really really like the driver that they came out with a few years ago and it works really well in this multi-tool as well i'll tell you the one thing i like about the dual force is that they're not trying to do too much with it i like this concept of these four larger tools with some extra bit storage and then the slip lock pliers had the quality been better on this tool boy this would be uh a tradesman's go-to i would think uh gotta get a better file in there for sure gotta get a better knife blade in there better quality steel got to get better jaws for or better use better quality steel in the pliers themselves the rest of it is pretty good i like the fact that they're they have a nice strong frame to them you know they use that that same uh six brake frame so it makes the handles on either side uh really robust uh the wire cutters though i would prefer them be at the top don't seem to do too bad uh where they're located now if they can increase the quality of the steels then it's going to be a much much better tool maybe if they brought this one into usa production and just up the quality on a little bit even if they have to jump the price up on these another 30 or 40 dollars by getting better quality steals in here i think it would still be worth it to the right per the right people uh in the trades this would be great because the main tools that you need out on the job site and well it depends on your field too but it's going to be your pliers your knife plate and your driver oftentimes the file and the saw are going to come in handy as well depending on what trade you happen to be in but on the whole it does decent so i'm gonna say it's probably a low b great tool right now a little better steel qualities and that would jump it into an a category real quick and it if they had just had better if they really paid attention and tried to do the best they could with the best quality steels they could get in this they could probably take the market on this for an industrial uh truly industrial multi-tool as it is now still a decent tool but it's lacking a little bit i hate to bash on gerber too much because i really like how they are trying to think outside the box with a lot of their recent multi-tools uh they've done really well from a design or engineering standpoint it's just they have to use better quality materials well my name is ben you've been watching the texas tool crib i appreciate you watching and i'll see you in the next one

Channel: TX Tool Crib

Views: 25,545

Keywords: gerber dual force, gerber center drive, gerber gear, gerber dual force multi tool, gerber multitool, dual force, everyday carry, gerber armbar, gerber armbar slim cut, gerber armbar cork, gerber armbar slim drive, gerber lockdown pry, gerber lockdown drive, gerber centerdrive plus, leatherman surge, gerber center drive plus, gerber armbar drive, gerber gear review, everyday carry gear, gerber multitools, gerber armbar slim, leatherman, gerber centerdrive, gerber prybrid x

Id: _FGc6F3sTvk

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 22 2022