Leatherman Micra

The Leatherman Micra is the second smallest of the Leatherman pocket tool offerings, exactly 0.1 inches smaller than the tiny Leatherman Mini-Tool, but 0.25 inches longer than the new Leatherman Squirt.

The Micra is available in five different finishes: plain brushed stainless steel or red, green, blue or black powder coat. The colors will eventually wear almost completely off after a year or so of average use, but that just gives the tool a unique look so that you can't confuse it with another tool.

There are technically ten tools on the Micra, but only six blades.

The main tool - instead of the commonly found Leatherman pliers - is a rather hefty and incredibly sharp pair of spring-loaded scissors. These scissors are far above and beyond the flimsy fold-away scissors found on Swiss Army knives, quite capable of trimming the thickest of fingernails, yet precise and sharp enough for detailed paper cutting.

I actually prefer these scissors over many others in my toolbox. Their small size and spring-loaded function makes it quite easy to do detailed work, or even run them in long cuts across paper or cloth like you would a fine pair of work scissors. The scissors will work in either the right or the left hand.

However, cutting wires, metals, thick foils or plastics or even thick fingernails should be considered abuse of the tool, and a steady diet of such will nick the blades and even warp them. And if you do use them to trim nails, be careful. You could take an unhealthy chunk of finger off with these.

The other tools are:

• Small flathead driver (also good for small Phillips head screws) with a bottle opener.
• A flat, dog-eared ended tool for large Phillips.
• Tweezers.
• Nail file and nail cleaner.
• Large flathead driver.
• Small but very sharp and functional knife.
• Ruler.

None of the bladed tools actually lock into position, but the excellent design of the Micra makes that less of an issue. Just mind the knife, yeah?

My only complaints about the Micra are the tweezers and ruler. The tweezers are less then perfectly functional, but seem to be designed to allow modification. You could take a pair of needlenose pliers and bend the tips slightly inward to give a sharper grip, for example.

They'll do when nothing else is handy, and I have even used them to extract dozens and dozens of inch long California Thistle needles out of most of my body after a really dumb mountain bike crash.

And I can't really complain about the ruler, as it is just icing on the cake. The ruler is actually just labelled hashmarks stamped into the main body handles. By opening up the Micra so that the hinge-points of the two halves are butt-to-butt, you get a usuable five inch or eleven centimeter ruler.

I've owned 4 of these so far, and feel naked without one in my pocket. I haven't had to buy new ones because they broke - they do come with the standard lifetime guarantee - but because they were all either lost or stolen. (And like the large Leathermans there is a month/year date stamped inside the body of the handles, as described in that node.)

Can they handle anything and everything you can throw at them? Of course not. Would they replace a full sized Leatherman? Nope.

Can you carry them in your pocket everywhere for opening packages, cutting rope or string, and making emergency repairs on small electronics? Easily.

They're quite sturdy for the size and weight, and the knife is razor sharp. You could do minor surgery with it. I frequently use the curved point on mine as you would use an X-Acto knife for cutting out graphics or newsclippings I want to save.