Leatherman Tread, a New Wearable Multi-tool | Hacker News Reader

Leatherman Tread, a New Wearable Multi-tool

leatherman.com

103 pointsunwind55 comments

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It's a watch band.

“I began wearing prototypes myself to test comfort and usability, and to ask for feedback,” said Rivera. “Folks immediately associated the bracelet design with a watch and asked, where’s the watch? We decided to make a timepiece an optional part of the Tread.”

> optional part

http://www.quickmeme.com/meme/36fj0t

Actually -- the group on the right should read "men who THINK they need a phillips screwdriver"

I don't understand the downvotes. Phillips Screwdrivers are next to useless. Most "crossed" screw heads are Pozidriv, which is superior. Or is this an(other) America/Europe thing?

Based on my immediate WTF IS POZIDRIV mental response, it must be another America/Europe thing. In my day-to-day American cheeseburger life I need phillips, flathead, maybe hex, and maybe torx. I carry a Victorinox Cadet because I cannot feel it on my person and it has the first two plus the pretty alox scales.

uk here. not sure i've ever seen a phillips screwdriver. we just use posidrive, but call it phillips all the same. i'm not old enough to remember pre-metric though.

I've never heard of Pozidriv before, but reading about it on Wikipedia it says "They can be unscrewed with a regular Phillips screwdriver". So it sounds like Phillips screwdrivers are still quite useful.

It "sort of" works. A Pozidriv screwdriver will have better grip and if you apply too much force the PH screwdriver will possibly destroy your PZ screw head. (And vice versa).

Good to know. For context, as an American, I've definitely seen Pozidriv screws before (without knowing that they were a distinct screw type from Phillips), but there's also plenty of Phillips screws here too. I'm not sure offhand which is more common here.

I'm US based and I've been taking things apart for 25 years. I've seen hex, torq, hell nintendo used those weird Y screws for a while. Had to google Posidriv and I've never seen one of those used here. Everything is Phillips.

To be fair, it's a pretty masculine bracelet.

Intersexion.

who said it's specifically for men?

Women can wear this too.

It doesn't look like it has a decent blade, which is arguably the most useful thing one could carry around (aside from a pen, which the Tread also does not have).

This isn't my problem, but I've heard from people with hairy arms that metal banded watches are a nightmare because the links are constantly tearing out hairs. This could present the same problem.

Being a Leatherman product, it's probably going to be overpriced just for the basic links. Adding the watchface to make it somewhat usable all the time will probably push that price right into the stratosphere.

I'd like to take a closer look at it, but from what I see in their video, I would say pass.

I don't think the lack of a blade is an issue. Don't most people who carry multitools already have pocket knives? Pocket knives which are often better quality than any multitool blade you're likely to find?

> Don't most people who carry multitools already have pocket knives?

I don't think so. I carry a mutlitool and I would not want to carry a separate knife as well. The 3 things on it I use most often are knife, bottle opener, and screwdriver. My multitool's knife is also the highest quality blade I own.

Throwing out the opposite perspective, I carry a keychain Squirt, and while it has a knife it isn't a terribly good one for anything that requires a sharp blade. So I carry a Spyderco Dragonfly as well.

But I honestly think this is aimed more at the crowd who would carry this:

http://www.leatherman.com/25.html#start=1

...which is the travel-compliant bladeless Leatherman.

In the comments it mentions aiming at a price of $150-200. Which isn't expensive for a good watch, but a pretty big price tag for a leatherman.

The $150 price tag is for the watchless version. The version with the watch will have an MSRP of $500.

Leatherman sells a lot of tools at that price range, for instance: http://www.leatherman.com/7.html#start=3

I think it doesn't have a blade because it wants to be TSA-compliant. Even the possibility of having a blade-link in there would probably get it confiscated or at least slow you way down at the checkpoint.

The world of watches is heading in interesting direction. Slap this band onto an iWatch and you would be unstoppable!

There is an opportunity here. The first thing I thought of is the iWatch.

Apparently Apple really should have called it the iWatch.

Whenever I bring up the Apple Watch the conversation usually gets derailed with the other person insisting it's called the iWatch. I usually just give in so we can actually talk about the watch :)

I would be extremely pleased if the tolerances on this thing were loose enough that you could CNC/3D Print new links for it and install them yourself. Neat idea.

Looks like you're set as long as you manage to make proper screw bores.

Unless you're injection-molding, casting, or forging links, I doubt they'd last more than a day or be actually able to e.g. Turn screws. PLA or even ABS isn't great for tool tips.

DMLS pieces can be pretty durable.

As a set of hex wrenches, it's not useful. You'd probably scrape your wrist trying to get it into position for use while wearing it. If you take it off, you don't have enough leverage to do much. One flat bar with hex holes, like a bike emergency repair wrench, is more useful.

Also, the web site coding was botched. Notice how the hex holes aren't regular hexagons. Now do a "view image" on the image. Whatever generated the HTML mess for that site (it's clearly from a generator) botched the IMG size information. Demandware, "Online shopping with the leader in On-Demand eCommerce solutions", would be better off just using Wordpress.

By the way, is this thing metric or English?

Only a #2 Robertson (square)? Have these people ever been to Canada? #1 is much, much more common (since they'll be on the head of most wood screws)

It'd be cool to have a way to bind the links up so they stayed stationary, and then you'd rotate your workpiece around it. Instead of spinning the screwdriver, which would be awkward with the floppy bracelet, you'd prop it up and turn your item around the bracelet.

It looks interesting but the price on them is insane. The watchless version has an MSRP of $150.

Very elegant piece, no doubt. But for what it's estimated to cost, I think I'll be keeping the $10 keychain Swiss Army Knife and the $2 credit-card sized multi-tool that everyone and their mother got as a stocking stuffer for the moment.

This entire thread feels like an advertisement, and all the post have a very reddit-feel. Am I the only one noticing this?

Won't it get caught in my paracord bracelet though?

This is revolutionary. Pocket tools never stay in my pocket for long so there are tons of times when I needed a tool but it was somewhere else.

A wrist tool is the perfect solution. Watches stay on my wrist a lot longer then pocket tools stay in my pocket.

Leathermen [Leathermans?] are correctly worn in a holster on the belt like a Batterang.

But wearing it in a holdster is pretty unhip. Is it really worth having the right tool for the occasion if you look like a tool yourself?

Obviously you should aspire to be form first, then function.

> But wearing it in a holdster is pretty unhip.

Which is quite ironic - Holsters should be definition of "hip".

And irony a hallmark of hipsterism.

I would rather wear this then an iwatch.

Same.

When I see these sorts of things I'm reminded of the type of people who like having guns [1] (or watches rated to 100m when they've never gone on a dive in their life). It's like they're hoping for a chance to use their gadgets. I've honestly never been in, nor expect to be in, a situation in which I'll need some tiny watch link screwdriver that's not going to give me any leverage while I simultaneously also don't have access to a real tool. I mean, what do you expect to happen at Disneyland? The ferris wheel gets stuck and you somehow fix it with your multitool?

I don't think my experience is atypical either. I have had to use tools in an emergency before (loose sense of the word emergency here... just a bike problem on a long ride), but in that cases I had my bike tools in a pouch on my bike, so I really don't understand the appeal of this sort of thing, other than just the novelty factor.

[1]: Guns are fun to shoot or hunt with, I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about the kind of person who has guns for "protection", of which I'm acquainted with a few.

I used to carry a leatherman, I wore it on my belt and it was part of my everyday carry.

I understand that some people don't need stuff like this, but when you're out of the house for 12h in a day it's very handy to have tools maybe... idk, 0.0001% of the time.

it's in those moments that you need, either a screwdriver or.. a small piece of metal, or something to cut with... that you really appreciate having to lug a small tool around.

Or like all the "TSA-compliant" pocket multi-tools that have everything I could possibly need in a pocket knife except, well, a knife--which is probably the tool I'm most likely to have a use for.

> I'm talking about the kind of person who has guns for "protection", of which I'm acquainted with a few.

I have a gun which is used for protection, namely from black bears which tend to frequent the spots where I go ATVing. They've also made their way into town a few times, so it's not that long of a shot.

It's also always worth remembering that the police are an average of 5-7 minutes away in the event of an emergency. What that means to you is different than what it means to someone else.

Also, to be fair,

Guns are used an estimated 2 million times a year by civilians to "protect" in the US. Here's only the latest incident I've come across, where a couple were saved from injury or intended death (as admitted by the perp) because they had a gun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?x-yt-cl=84359240&v=0UXe9seMabc...

It's a bit disturbing, crazed guy breaks through door and gets shot 3 times, not fatally. A situation predicable enough that they had a video camera running, although it got knocked over about when he fully entered the apartment and got shot the first time.

There are a very few people who apparently are "hoping to have a chance" to use their guns to shoot somebody else. We generally hear about them because of the word we have for them afterwords, normally: criminals. I'll let you judge for yourself how eager this guy was, he lets go of some of his verbal and emotional self-control once the assailant is on the floor in pain and not so much of a danger anymore.

ADDED: Ah, yeah, just renewed my CCW license, and asked the person about how many state licenses are outstanding in my county, Jasper of Missouri in the SW corner, includes ~90% of the city of Joplin. About 5,000, about double from 3 years ago, which means a solid 5% of the age eligible population. We've clearly indicated we have a desire to be able to use our guns to "protect" ourselves and our loved ones (8 hour class, $100 for initial license, $50 for every renewal); I kinda doubt that many of us are are "hoping to have a chance" to "protect" ourselves with our guns....

If I owned a pistol I would apply for a CCW simply to make it easier to legally transport. I probably wouldn't carry.

It would also be nice if you substantiated that 2 million figure, or at least clarified exactly what it means.

You might change your mind as you get older. One thing I noted in the required 8 hour class was the demographic leaned fairly older, e.g. 45 and up. If you assume 3/5ths of those licenses are held by them (including me), that's 7.5% of the county's population.

As for the figure, Google is your friend: https://www.google.com/search?q=2+million+gun+self+defense+u...

These figures come from surveys, and the delightful thing about them is that the gun-grabbers collected the first data set. It didn't ask about the number of times per year, so that one resulted in a figure of at least 1 million times per year.

No, "Google is your friend" is terrible. You pick a source that you think is of high quality and are willing to stand by, not 'every source that sort of mentions it'.

The top link from your search extrapolated from a self report survey of less than 5,000 people. This article questions how reliable the end figure is:

https://stat.duke.edu/~dalene/chance/chanceweb/103.myth0.pdf

Is it specifically this sort of useless tool that has no possibility of use because it's just the tip and no torquing handle, or is it multitools in general? I get the former. I've never understood micro-multitools. You'll break your knuckles before you ever get a screw undone without something to grip.

But I use my (proper) multitool very regularly. Not regularly enough to bother packing a toolbox in my car, but regularly enough to keep my multitool on my desk and put it in my pocket if I'm going out to anywhere other than "just the movies." I'm actually on my second multitool, front wearing out my previous (admittedly cheap) one.

This is my current tool: http://www.leatherman.com/29.html

The only tool I haven't used on it (and I've only had it since Christmas) is the detent pin punch. It's marketed towards shooters, but that detent pin punch is probably the only part of it that is specific to such a need, as it can be removed and replaced with a barrel brush. Whatever. It's the best-built multitool I've ever had. The screwdrivers are actually useful. The knife finally locks. The "barrel carbon scraper" is just a scraper, and far better than trying to use the knife to dig at things. The bottle opener doesn't tear through caps before it removes it. The hammer is kind of silly, but then again, if it weren't there, there were a couple of occasions that I would have just had to live with a problem rather than re-set a nail. The pliers are smooth and strong. The wire cutters are sharp and strong. The wire stripper actually works.

Yeah, it's not strictly necessary to own one of these things in my life, but it makes life more convenient. I don't really need my smartphone, two different laptops, and a desktop, either. But it is convenient and I can afford it over doing without.

I have a tiny swiss army knife on my keychain - the scissors/knife are used constantly. Opening boxed packages, envelopes, food, even basic grooming.

I agree with you that the screwdriver bit is terrible compared to a real screwdriver, and it's more useful as a tool to pry things apart where you'd worry about chipping the knife blade.

The big swiss army knives - I'd be hard pressed to justify carrying any of those around.

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