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Grant Lamontagne

Grant Lamontagne

As the founder of Multitool.org Grant has been a collector of Swiss Army Knives and multitools for over 25 years, and a user for over 40 years. 

With a day job working in the field, either out in the woods or on industrial sites, Grant uses tools every day for all manner of different purposes.

Monday, 22 August 2016 00:04

Small Bike Trailer

Bike TrailerI have been thinking of getting a small trailer for my bike to carry camp chairs and the like. While driving around the neighborhood yesterday I got a little lost and came across this:

I called the number on the for sale sign, the guy came out and we discussed price until we finally agreed on a good number.

The trailer was far too large for my needs, being about four feet wide!Bike Trailer 2

Almost immediately when I got home out came the tools. First the box came off- this is one of those roof rack pods that people put on top of cars, and is the main reason this trailer was so wide. I'll list the box for sale on a local classified site and probably make much, if not all of my money back.

Once the box was off it was a simple matter of removing the hitch bar (which will also need to be modified once the trailer is thinner) then disassembling the frame.

Once the trailer was in pieces I decided to use the central pipes to cut a couple of shorter rods to attach the two outer frame pieces directly to each other rather than over a foot apart.

Bike Trailer 4It was a hard go using the SOG PowerLock but I made it! I have a hacksaw but it is in my Jeep which is at the dealership for service right now. I also have jigsaws, reciprocating saws and angle grinders which would have been a great help too, but they are in my garage a thousand miles away.  

So it's up to hand tools and a small drill that I have here. By the time I killed the drill battery I had managed to get fairly close to having it pretty well put back together.

As you can see it is significantly thinner than it was before, and if I can get my hands on a power saw I can make it a few inches thinner yet.

Megan wants me to put some sidewalls on it and I want to put some d rings on it to have places to tie things down to it. So, there's still some work to do, but I'm done for now since I have to wait for my drill to charge.

I'm thrilled with it so far, although I haven't tried towing it yet. I pulled it with the seller's bike before I bought it, and it was surprisingly easy to haul then. I'm imaging with the pounds it has lost by taking the cargo pod off and removing a couple of feet of pipe it should be even easier.

Bike Trailer 5The rain finally subsided today so I had another chance to go out and work on the trailer again. I had to cut the hitch back somewhat- the curve was set for the original width, which would have made the bike too far off center to be towed properly once the extra width was shed. Unfortunately there was a casualty.

My poor Powerlock got it's lock broken, and now the metal saw/file won't lock open. Before anyone takes any shots at the Powerlock, this one has seen an awful lot of use and I don't think any other tool would have fared any better. At any rate, I am sure SOG will look after it, although I hope they fix this one and not replace it with a newer PowerLock or something else. But, that's a discussion for another time!

I pulled out my Leatherman ST300 to finish the cut and, while it did just as good a job as the PowerLock was doing, I still missed having an actual hacksaw. Or a reciprocating saw, jigsaw or grinder. Luckily I'm heading back to my old place next weekend, so I'll probably take the opportunity to pick up a few tools, but that doesn't get the job done in the meantime!Bike Trailer 7

So here is the finished (for now) product. I'm hoping that once I get my tools I will be able to thin it out a little more so that there is no gap between the deck boards, although I may decide to leave it as is. I dunno- I'll leave it as is for now, and try it out. If it's acceptable the way it is I may keep it like this. The bike is also a little off center, but again, I'll wait until I decide how wide I want it before finalizing that.

Bike Trailer 9It is towable now and doesn't actually feel off center, although TBH I don't really have enough experience hauling a trailer on a bike that I wouldn't necessarily know if it was or not.

I jumped a few curbs with it and the deck boards came loose so I may decide to use some U brackets or bolts to lock them down. Once I decide how long the hitch needs to be I also need to round it off so that it allows for easier turning without catching the rear wheel axle. It doesn't really seem to do that now, but I'm the paranoid type and once I have my grinder it will only take a minute to do.

All in all I'm pretty happy with it as it is now, and once I get my hands on some of my trusty power tools I will make it even better. Bike Trailer 11

If you have any thoughts, questions or comments, feel free to have your say on our forum!

Saturday, 20 August 2016 12:22

Donation Draws

After ten years in operation, Multitool.org has grown into quite a monster.  For years I personally funded the site out of my own pocket, but as the site grew, so did the expenses.  In the old days we hosted the site for a mere $5/month, at least until we started crashing teh shared server package we were on.  We were given a polite but firm shove out the door from our first host, not because they were bad people, but because we were growing out of control for what they were providing us, and when we crashed the server we took out many other websites with us!

Friday, 12 August 2016 11:44

RIP JoeBW

Some of you may be wondering why the sudden logo change at the top of the page- it is in response to some very bad news I got last night.  One of our early members, and serious Leatherman and Victorinox collectors, Joe Wright, aka JoeBW on ours and other forums has passed away.

Wednesday, 10 August 2016 12:35

National Day of Adventure

In 2011 the company formerly known as Wenger Swiss Army sponsored the Patagonia Expedition Race, also known as the World's Toughest Adventure Race.  Even though Wenger has been absorbed into Victorinox it seems the spirit of adventure is still alive and well with the upcoming National Day of Adventure on October 16th.

Tuesday, 09 August 2016 13:20

The Fantastic $5 Challenge

01Assume for a moment that you want a decent multitool, but you don’t have or want to spend a lot of money. In fact, your budget is a total of $5US, including shipping. I realize this may seem a bit extreme, not to mention a bit of an impossible task, but I like extremely impossible tasks, so I thought I would give it a shot.

Looking on eBay you will find all manner of cheap tools, many from the Far East, many cheap knockoffs of existing designs from major manufacturers like Leatherman or Gerber, many from custom makers like Peter Atwood or Ray Kirk, and many that just leave you scratching your head as to what the heck they are for, or what was the designer thinking when he/she designed that?

Thursday, 04 August 2016 14:01

I like Big Trucks and I Cannot Lie

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With all due respect to Sir Mixalot, I have a deep fascination with trucks. To me, a good truck is a vehicular multitool- it carries anything you need and manages both highways and dirt tracks with relative ease no matter the weather.

Wednesday, 03 August 2016 13:15

CRKT Stepping up their game

CRKTAnyone familiar with CRKT knives and tools knows that CRKT has never been interested in making the “same old, same old” kind of product, and you have to respect both their ability to create new and exciting products and share the lime light with their designers. Elsewhere designers aren’t credited on a product unless they have a big name, and how are you supposed to get a big name without being able to put it on anything?

After Megan and I had finished swimming for the day at a friend’s cottage (ie the impending thunderstorm chased us out of the water!) we decided to relax and open a bottle of wine. The only problem being that the rose we had bought had a cork, and we had no corkscrew as I’d misplaced my trusty yellow scaled Compact after our last trip. Luckily I have since found it, but that didn’t help us then!

Going without wine wasn’t an option, so I had to dust off an old trick that Tim Leatherman himself taught me. I’d say that he would be proud of me for remembering it, but as the only tool I had was a SOG PowerLock, I think the shine might come off that a bit…

Monday, 25 July 2016 15:59

Tenth Anniversary Multitool.org Shirts

As part of the 10th Anniversary Celebration we are offering these Limited Time Multitool.org Shirts so that you can celebrate with pride!

What we have are two designs, in three colors each, for a total of six different shirts. 

LM 07 19 2016 FinalLeatherman USA has launched the New Skeletool RX First Responder Multi-Tool. In a release last week the company explained that the new tool will help first responders “be ready to respond quickly and safely in emergency situations.”

It looks like the tool has many of the same features of the regular Skeletool with a few minor changes. This model contains a carabiner/bottle opener, hybrid needle nose pliers/wire cutters, 154CM serrated knife and a replaceable carbide bit- strong enough to break windows.

As always, we’ll post a review as soon as we’ve had a chance to really use the New Skeletool RX First Responder Multitool.

Have you used this tool? Let us know at forum.multitool.org.

Interested in this or a different tool and still have more questions?
Why not join us over on the Multitool.org Forum where our community can help you find what you're looking for!

Join the discussion now!