I need to reinvigorate my blogging rate and I've decided to start this weekly blog I'm calling #ToolTuesday. It's heavily inspired by my great friend @biglesp who for a long time has run the excellent #TuesdayTooling series over at his blog. Les focuses on software and microcontrollers on his Tuesday Tooling posts exploring tools and toolchains to get you up and running doing cool things across a variety of platforms. I've chatted with Les over the years that I should do a similar series but which looks at hardware tools useful in all kinds of making and tinkering and so here it is!
This first post is an odd starting point as I bought a stack of these Swann Morton Unitool multiblade craft knives recently as they are being withdrawn as a product. It's a shame as they are an excellent little tool. The three blades are larger than many of my smaller craft knives/scalpels and are excellent for all kinds of jobs. The very flat edged "D" blade is superb for cutting flat sheet items like balsa or cardboard and I use the angled "A" blade as a de-burring tool a lot as it can centre into small holes really well. The middle blade "B" is slightly odd in my opinion but as such falls into the "blade that gets used for heavy beater work" so I've abused that blade for all forms of carving and even wire stripping etc.
The blades pivot and are retained with two thumb screws and they stay in place very well, which also leads to another reason I love the design, you can lock the blades away and close the device and the holes in the blades combined with the thumbscrews make it really secure. I've never had a blade come loose or open in my pocket.
Finally, I love the look, when I was young and building plastic model kits the orange plastic handled single blade craft knives from Swann Morton where the only widely available choice and the Unitools styling reminds me of many happy hours tinkering! Hope you've enjoyed this first post, see you next week!
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