To Each His Own Kit

Tools in my current kit, from the top: Customized Gray Wolf Knives M-3 with full 5-inch blade in 01 steel, MoraKniv No. 137 with lamInated 4-inch carbon steel blade, Original Leatherman Tool and Victorinox Trekker Knife/ Multitool.

 

 

One is None, Two is One...

...so goes the saying, which likely originated somewhere in the US Marine Corps., but has been widely reiterated by survival experts everywhere. It's such a confusing statement. What does it mean exactly...in terms of knives and cutting tools for bushcraft and survival?  I've interpreted it above, as you see. Somebody else would come up with a different solution. While there is some good advice out there, nobody can decide what works for anybody else.

One is None, Two is One....I have four blades in the picture above....where does that leave me? How far do you take that basic advice?  It's not so obvious when you consider the possibilities. Am I "Tool Heavy" or just TOO heavy?

Not to pick on the Leatherman Wave, but I will a little. It has fallen out of my chosen kit because it is too heavy for me as a stand-alone back-up.

 

Conventional wisdom of many -- two blades , One Fixed and a Multitool:

On this advice, I bought a Leatherman Wave. It's a very nice multitool, but it also weighs 8.5oz without the sheath. Some people would opt for the Supertool 300, but it weighs even more at 9.5 ounces....that's over half a pound!

I found myself leaving the Wave in the car, or at home or anywhere but on my belt or in my kit. The fold-up pliers are nice, and all of those screwdrivers, but I almost never use them. I would love to more often use the knife blade and the saw blade, but since the multitool is oddly heavy and often awkward to use, I didn't have those with me because I left the multitool in the car, or worse, at home in that plastic gear bin.

My solution to a too-heavy single multitool is a pair of more user-friendly...and lighter multitools instead.

My solution is to follow the One is None, Two is One philosophy to the bitter end which creates more options. It now leaves me with two extra tools to keep track of instead of just one...an annoyance for some I'm sure, but this works for me and here's why:

For me, it's all about maximum versatility, while keeping weight reasonable. The reasonable solution might not always be the obvious one, after you put in some thought.

I have an original Leatherman, which gives me the fold-up pliers and some screwdrivers and a still awkward-to-use blade...but it only weighs 5 oz instead of 8.5 oz., and since I hardly need the pliers, but again, they are nice to have, I can stow that thing in my pack instead of on the prime real estate around my belt. I'm sure there are more current multitools that have good pliers and are even lighter than the 5 oz. original Leatherman I have.

The other half of the solution is a Victorinox Trekker....it features a larger, much more knife-like cutting blade than the Wave does, and an aggressive and equally user friendly saw blade, plus more of those sort of useful (but not always) screwdrivers, in a much lighter package, not to mention tweezers and a toothpick.

Other advantages....assuming you also carry two fixed blades...the Victorinox weighs in at 4 ounces and the Original Leatherman at 5 ounces. For only one extra ounce I get redundancy in quadruplet ( 4 blades) that is able to be distributed more carefully  as well as prioritized more easily in my kit. For instance, I can stow the fold-up pliers that are nice to have but almost never needed, in my pack somewhere, and I can put the much lighter Victorinox Trekker in my pocket, or even around my neck on a lanyard, where it is always with me and always accessible, without pulling my pants down. It's much harder to lose all your gear if it's not all in the same place, in my opinion.

Two other options to buying an expensive multitool just so you can have portable pliers.....get some pliers instead!

One is None, Two is One....but maybe you don't need it anyway....

 

Another solution....maybe no "Multitool" at all?  How about instead, if you really feel a need to have some pliers with you and you really hate carrying a heavy multitool that is awkward to use on almost all of its functions EXCEPT the pliers....just carry some pliers.....

Above is a very small pair of needle nose pliers that weighs three ounces. Combine that with the Trekker or an even lighter Victorinox, like the Camper, which comes in at under 3-ounces and still features a usable cutting blade AND a decent saw blade, and you have packable pliers and an ultralight back-up blade for around six-ounces total.

At the bottom of the above picture is another good idea, for which I must give credit to Dave Canterbury in one of his older "Bushcraft Kit on a Budget" videos. It is a small pair of vice grips where the adjustment screw is replaced with an eye bolt. This pair comes in at around 5 ounces, and is again stowable in the pack, separate from a small cutting blade, for those "almost never, but nice to have" scenarios. It's a good idea and definitely a very inexpensive tool option.

The Victorinox Camper is an ultimate third-teir blade redundancy, at under three ounces and featuring two cutting blades and a decent saw blade. The most useless feature of this model is in my opinion, the cork screw, but then again, if you find yourself trekking across the Napa Valley, maybe not.

To Sum up?

As I have said before in videos, and now on this blog....listen to experts sometimes for general ideas, but don't take what they say as the gospel. There is more than one way to skin a cat...as they say. Do research and figure out what works for YOUR bushcraft kit. Creative planning can sometimes save a camper, hiker, bushcrafter (You fill in the blank) space or weight or provide convenience well above supposedly "convenient" all-in-one tool options.

One is None, Two is One....but some times one of those and two of these is better all together, and it is definitely more customizable.

I hope to see you on the trail soon!