The Leatherman Signal, Tips, Tricks, Mods and Full Run Down.

all right welcome and today we're going to be doing a very in-depth comprehensive look at the leatherman signal we're not just going to be talking about the tool itself we're going to be talking about tools you can pair with the leatherman signal we're going to talk about reasons to carry it we're going to talk about ways you can use it that most people didn't even realize and yeah we're going to talk about modifications we're going to be talking about literally everything you maybe wanted to know and maybe didn't want to know about the leatherman signal so if you like these ultra in-depth ultra comprehensive reviews and discussions this is probably your video so stick around it's going to be a long one but i hope by the end you'll maybe have learned at least a little tidbit that you didn't already know enjoy [Music] okay so let's go ahead and talk briefly about what is included on the standard leatherman signal now i want to mention that these aftermarket parts are in a different color that will come with the red and black so don't expect that to happen if you order a red and black signal but let's talk about what you get so on the outside you have two components you have a sharpener which is decent but not great and then you have this component which has both a fire steel on the back here which is the coating is still on and you have a whistle now the one thing about this that i think is very under valued is the whistle itself when it comes to an actual emergency situation a whistle may be the single most important thing you have other than maybe a flashlight the whistle might be the best way in which you can affect a rescue or get somebody's attention in an emergency i think the whistle is probably the single most underrated edc item when it comes to emergency gear you can only screen for a very limited amount of time but you can blow infinitely into a whistle and because of that it is a very valuable true emergency tool now moving on to the actual frame itself the leatherman signal head is the only one that has this style of clip and it is probably the flattest and most elegant clip that is on any leatherman at no point does it feel uncomfortable it's probably the most comfortable clip that is provided on the leatherman signal now on the back end is what one of the features that i find myself using quite a bit there's a hammer a hex bit hole that does not retain but we'll get into that a little bit as well as a bottle opener and if you've ever seen somebody pull out a leatherman to use the bottle opener it looks so ridiculous okay you can't be smooth or cool opening up a leatherman to use the inside can opener bottle opener combo to open a bottle this you know get it in there pop it open no big deal it doesn't look crazy it's very easy to do and that is true for both this the skeletal and the style cs and ps all of them they can open bottles from the outside very conveniently so if you're going to do that get one of these because the other ones they look stupid trying to open a bottle with it okay just a little aside now the other interesting thing about the signal is unlike other tools it has a actual locking mechanism that keeps the frames together and that is important because unlike other tools the ease at which this opens is much much more you can balance song it open basically and because of that they have to have that lock i actually love the lock and it's going to be an important feature in some of the other uses that i'm going to describe later on in this video so on the inside of course we have a pair of pliers which are the same as the rebar with the wire cutters that are removable as well as that fine needle nose it's an excellent pair of pliers i highly highly recommend them now we also have on the inside the bit driver which is relatively standard as well as the can opener bot opener wire stripper combo and the all now one thing i can tell you about the black oxide it may appear that black oxide may be less prone to corrosion but in fact it's equally prone to corrosion and the black oxide in my opinion just makes it harder to see it does look however very very cool so just something to keep in mind about that and that is true for all tools made in 420 hc now what else do we got going here so on the outside of course we have saw and blade okay and the blade here is really kind of different than some of the other tools you'll see in the leatherman lineup it is incredibly stout over three millimeters thick if i remember correctly and it is in fact thicker than the one found on the leatherman surge okay it has a sheep's foot design which i love quite a bit as a single blade design because it is good at draw cutting and that is one of the number one things that i want from a utility knife right and this is functioning as your utility knife it's not going to be hyper slicely it's not going to cut apples very easily it will do it but it's not great but when it comes to utility tasks this thing rocks so that's what it's there for so that's my general overview of the signal now let's go into specialized cases and different uses for various different implements all right now we have it back together let's talk about using the various different implements one thing that has always kind of irked me a little bit about the leatherman signal but is doable is the fact that when you have any of the internal implements you cannot then close it and there's obviously reasons for that when you use the bit driver you're going to actually have to lock one side in and then hold as as you see here so you'll hold it let me zoom out a little bit so you'll hold it like so and you'll be able to screw it in from there i do not recommend doing it this way as much i have found that i i get a little pinch right here so this is just a little user tip have the pliers arrested under your hands when you're using this you'll find that this is much more comfortable and when you choke up is going to keep you from getting pinched between the pliers and the frame just one small tip there all right now let's talk quickly about the all now they all is kind of an interesting tool and it's one of the few things that i think is missing from the leatherman wave which i think i'm very happy to have in the signal one thing that i find particularly interesting is because it's on the outside of the section that is normally in say a wave or something like that it actually sits next to the um hammer and if you can see there's already a cutout for it so it was designed to do this and when you lock it now you have a excellent point to be able to drill with and you'll get all the way up to there without needing to open up the frame the other cool thing just something fun is you can open up both the blade and that and then you have sort of a pseudo tactical weird looking thing going on and for those people who this floats their boat there you go have a good one okay what's next now let's go ahead and talk about ways to use things that were not necessarily meant to be used the first one we're going to talk about is the hex bit driver that is built into the hammer as you can see it does not have particular retention but that can be fixed and let's go ahead and show how that is done okay what we have here is a paracord it's very familiar i'm sure to most people but inside the paracord is a series of strands now if we take a single one of these strands we're just going to go ahead and pull out some of this we'll cut it up okay what we have is now a bunch of different strands of inner paracord we're going to take one of these strands and we're going to use it to actually create retention inside that hole the way we're going to do that and now there's a couple of ways you can do it you can do it with a thicker piece of cordage where you don't double it up but in this case we're going to go ahead and do that so first thing i'm going to do with the paracord and i've shown this in the past but i just want to go reiterate it in a youtube video is go ahead and make a loop for it this this will make this whole thing removable all right and you're going to go ahead and set it up just like so and this is very very simple you just thread it through which i'm trying to do through a viewfinder and stick it through the loop okay why am i trying to do this through a viewfinder there we go now i do recommend bringing it all the way into the carabiner area like so and if you were to leave it whereas is i would just go ahead and make a double loop and tie it off so you probably will never even notice it but for the sake of this video i want to be able to remove it and i want to be able if i was going to do it i would probably make some sort of dark string so that i couldn't see it normally it would just be unsightly so now what we have this we can go ahead and we can actually insert some hex bits and they'll actually retain okay so here we have a bit extender now in a normal case this would just fall right out but now that we have that piece of string what we do when it happens is it compresses the the string as you put it in and now you no longer have it falling out okay same thing is going to be true for the hex bits themselves so this will retain where this is particularly useful if you had to reach up high and you couldn't hold the bit in you now have this bit completely arrested inside the frame and uh if you needed to put a lot of torque on something this may be a good idea this is pretty pretty strong so you if you wanted to say set this up with some sockets i would imagine that you could do some reasonable amount of work do not try to open it up like like so and then try to torque on it from no that's not going to work however i will say that um for adding a lot more leverage this is pretty good and being able to get retention out of the hex bits i think it should have been a no-brainer from the first place with leatherman but i don't blame them for not including this feature to begin with this is a very very easy thing for you to do it costs practically nothing and it dramatically enhances the leatherman signal and its functionality okay one thing that's also missing from the leatherman signal is a small the the small micro driver now there is a a number of reasons to carry the leatherman signal and i'm going to actually address that at the very end of this video but the biggest one of the biggest downsides is that it doesn't have the micro bit screwdriver but there is a way to actually utilize it without making any modifications to your tool so we're going to go ahead and show you that so this is the micro bit driver that you can find on on the wave or the charge and if you take this out there's a little bit of a trick here now if you look at the down at the top let me zoom in just a little bit so you can see what i'm talking about there's a section with the two sides come together and where the plier comes together and believe it or not without without actually doing too much work you will actually be able to fit it directly into that slot there is a small space you may have to pull the pliers apart slightly oh i forgot i gotta lock it it's kind of important so you keep it locked and you'll actually be able to slot this in and you will you will angle it and you will find the slot once you do it will stay in its fixed orientation the pressure you can put pressure on it and twist it and it will stay in place now it's not the most secure thing you can push it in a little further and it will stay there but it works and it works pretty well it's also in line with the very center of the tool so you'll be able to use it properly all you're going to need to do is be able to fit it inside the bit kit and you will have in fact a place to be able to use it this is actually a huge advantage to having the lock because even when i'm not pressing it's holding that bit in place inside the signal so this will give you access to the micro bit driver in actually a very nice orientation in fact and you don't have to have that driver section that's built into something like the leatherman charge anyone who's spent any amount of time with me on my channel or on my instagram has seen how much i like to modify my tools because i really don't think life is long enough to spend with tools that aren't going to accomplish your task so there are modifications available for them and signals two of which which are great because they do not require any compromise of the warranty which is worth a lot is these add-ons that are 3d printed by metro grades goods now both of these allow you to carry additional bits okay so you can get two additional bits inside the leatherman signal and this of course replaces the whistle and ferrocerium rod and this replaces the the um sharpener now i actually prefer the whistle now that i've played with it a little bit but i also prefer this over the um the sharpener section especially because i usually keep a diamond file on my key chain setup so for me this pate in particular works really well and gives me access to a second bit inside the leatherman signal that's two additional functions so maybe i keep the t8 t10 or something along those lines that i want to use regularly if i have another knife that i'm trying to maintain it's a really good idea so there you go that's that's that's one modification but there are many many more available for the leatherman signal but because of these modular components there are available modifications that will not affect your warranty those are the ones i recommend to most people and those are the ones i think you should check out so this one is made by metro grades goods i will go ahead and put a link in the description to this particular setup all right let's talk about pairings for just a second so no multi-tool is going to do it all and usually if it does it all it doesn't do it well and if it does have it all it's probably freaking massive so one of the best parts about the leatherman signal is that it is very compact but it does pair particularly well with tools especially those that contain scissors one of those tools that pairs very well is the leatherman style cs it is also made by leatherman has their excellent warranty and has a set of tools that are particularly complementary it has a diamond file for your nails it has a large pair of scissors and with small modifications can do far more so one thing that we know we have with the signal is we have a bit driver and one thing that you can do with the style series specifically is you can modify them to hold a leatherman bit in the back very nicely retained and now you have access to a secondary pair of drivers right and that can come in handy because you can sometimes have to come at something from two sides and you need two different ways to arrest them whether it's a plier and a driver and not being able to separate them can come up and having a second driver is really really important so for me the style cs or ps are particularly good but the cs definitely is really really good for this because of the larger scissors which can in theory be as good as something like the surge scissor i think with the proper sharpening the other complementary tools that really come to mind and there's you can extrapolate this to other implements that are similar and most of and all the ones i'm going to recommend are keychain tools are something like the victorinox manager and i like the manager a little better than rambler because it has that pressurized spin pen insert as well as the tweezer and the tweezer is definitely a different set of functions than the pliers on the leatherman signal and so that's really good there's also a just so you know if you didn't know the leatherman cs style cs has a tweezer as well so keychain tool with a pair of scissors is going to be a perfect complement to a leatherman signal why should you have them separate instead of inside the tool the thing about the leatherman signal is with how compact it really is it is much more comfortable to carry inside your pocket it's why i think that this tool is really meant for edc versus what it was originally marketed for so if you're ready we'll go to the next section we'll talk about why you should carry the leatherman signal and yeah and we'll talk about it then okay maybe i should have put this at the beginning but here we are why should you carry the leatherman signal over something like the leatherman charge or any other particular implement well first of all this is one of the very few multi-tools that is available on the market that gives you access to all three major hand tool functions that is including things that can shape aka a hammer you have things that can grab aka the plier and you can have things that can separate cut which is the both the saw and you have the blade okay there is no hammer on the leatherman charge and i do not recommend trying it okay so that is built into the functionality but it's also quite light at 7.6 ounces and it is very thin thin tools are particularly important when you're talking about everyday carry because you don't want them to be bulging in your pockets you want them to be discreet comfortable to carry and this particular tool is good at that particular function now why do i not think this is a good camp tool it's not really a great camp tool because it one the one area that is very important when you're talking about a outdoorsman's tool is you're going to be working at length for a period of time on something and you want ergonomics to be up front and you know as good as they can be and the thing about the signal is it is not the most ergonomic leatherman out there by any stretch in the imagination is it a great survival tool yeah and where i think survival implements like the ferrocerium rod rod and whistle come into play are when you don't think you're going to have them on hand versus when you might always carry them if you're going out in the wild you might consider carrying a lighter you might consider carrying a compass you might consider carrying a lot of these tools that are not present in your mind on a day-to-day basis but because the leatherman signal has those functions and they don't impede any other aspect of the tool it is particularly good for everyday carry and so for that reason i do highly recommend this tool even though some of the aspects of it are a little cumbersome such as using the bit driver and having to keep it on uh you know open fully you know in long length when you're when you're trying to use it so when you when you want to use the bit driver you know you have to hold it like that yeah i get that that's a little bit of a hassle but it is a very very compact tool and for me i find that i mostly use the knife i use the pliers which is very easy to access because of that ballok song function and i use the hammer a lot i actually use the hammer quite quite a bit and i didn't expect that but i do and those three functions are very quick to use very easy to access that's great that's excellent um so for me the leatherman signal is fantastic i use it as a utility knife i'm not out trying to uh slice tomatoes really thin or anything crazy so the the thick stout blade with that um i think i think this is what a saber grind i don't know you'll have to correct me on that one but that that utility blade shape with the serrations it works for the functions i need it to on a day to day basis it's certainly not going to be as good for carving as something like the straight blade on the charge or any of the internal implement versions the st 300 or the rebar or the swiss champ or the swiss tool or the spirit or that kind of thing so for those outdoor tools they have their place this one is really particularly good at edc because it is small and compact yet packs all these functionalities for emergency scenarios that you may not have seen coming for that reason i think it's particularly good and that's why i wanted to just have this quick discussion and maybe make you guys aware of other things that you can do with this tool such as locking bits and so on so forth so i hope this was enjoyable i hope you learned something if you did if you know something about this tool that i don't know please tell me please tell me because it's something i can then pass on to others i hope if you liked it and you're still watching this that you will like you will subscribe i'll be having much more of these in the future talking about different multi-tools especially as i condense my collection and i'm going to want to make sure to have a video like storage of those items before i get rid of them so you have a good one guys

Channel: Maxlvledc

Views: 223,180

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Id: 97DR7pwXpOQ

Length: 23min 53sec (1433 seconds)

Published: Sun Dec 27 2020