As summer creeps in and people plan their family camping, hunting and fishing trips, a dad’s got to assemble a Batman-like utility belt. Recently, knife wizards Gerber sent me a couple of their Bear Grylls line tools to
play with – the Survival Tool and Pocket Tool. These two tools are great for the camper, fisherman and hunter – but also really handy for weekend warriors and suburbanite dads alike.
Oh, and before you’re left wondering – this is the Gerber Legendary Blades company…not that baby food subdivision of Nestlé. We know: you’re a dad, you hear “Gerber” and all you think of is mashed peas.
So – if you are indeed the outdoorsy type, boy do these Gerber tools fit the job. But a guy like me that gets out only once a year for a fishing trip and spends most of the year as an indoorsy, tech-inclined dad still can get a whole lot of usage out of them.
The Pocket Tool
The Pocket Tool is a pocket knife design, and has an unserrated all-purpose fine-edged blade, a crosshead driver, a small and medium flat head driver, and a bottle opener. As a father, I’ve used the two drivers on numerous occasions to open up battery compartments in my son’s toys. If you’re a new father – trust me, you’re going to want a pocket knife with a small screwdriver head on-hand, because when a doe-eyed toddler asks “Daddy can you fix it,” you need to be on your A-game. I keep this knife in an upper-compartment of my desk, next to my cache of AAA batteries, so when my kid comes calling, I can have his noise-maker back up and running before the first tear even thinks about falling.
The flat head usually knocks these tasks out no questions asked. The crosshead is good for when you’ve got to actually open a toy up and unscrew larger screws. It’s also good for the screws on your computer or other household appliances and electronics.
The blade is not serrated, which makes it good for your knife needs, though if you’ve got a box to open, you can just as easily use one of the semi-sharp edges of the flathead screwdriver.
The body of the Pocket Tool has a rubberized/plastic grip in the recognizable grey and orange design that is typical of the Bear Grylls series. The tool feels solid, is heavier than your average Swiss Army
pocket knife, and doesn’t slip in your hand – wet or dry – from that rubber exterior.
The only thing I’ve run into that it’s less than pleasant to swivel the crosshead driver out of the tool’s body. The other tools have easily-used fingernail notches, but the crosshead’s is set in further and mighty stubborn. If they’d included a small nub for leverage like they did with the knife, it’d be perfect. Other than this complaint, this is a great tool that I expect to get years of work out of.
The Survival Tool
The Survival Tool is a multi-tool design, and has 12 components on it, and comes in a grey rubber belt clip case also containing a small flashlight and fire starter rod.
The tool has plenty of components, the most prominent being the fold-out needle nose pliers. These will be useful for many things, from fishing to grabbing and torquing things around the house, to cutting wires, ribbon or shoelaces with the sharp, inside wire cutter edge.
The Survival Tool has, in addition to the needle nose pliers, a file, partially-serrated blade, wood saw, small flathead driver, medium driver, crosshead driver, a bottle opener, scissors, and a pierce. These components will lock when in the “out” position, and a little switch on the handle releases them when you’re ready to fold back up.
My only grievance is that the Survival Tool has two serrated knives – a partially-serrated blade and a wood saw – instead of one serrated and one non. Sometimes you don’t want to use a serrated edge, even as an outdoorsman, as in the case of gutting a fish. Serrated blades will tear the fish up and leave you with a mangled catch. To be fair, the partially-serrated blade is indeed only serrated on the bottom half of the blade, but I’d have preferred one fully serrated and one non. I’m not sure I (or most people) would need a wood saw. Bear Grylls would for sure, but most of us will be whittling sticks and cutting drywall, not sawing through branches in order to make a raft.
However, the partially-serrated blade did come in handy around the house while mounting my 48″ LCD television on our living room wall. The knife cut and sawed through our drywall with ease. Using that partially-serrated knife and a couple of the driver heads, my television was mounted in no time.
The Survival Tool also has the signature grey and orange rubberized exterior, which means that whether you’re working in wet or dry conditions, it’ll stay in your hand, and not slip out and land blade-first into your thigh. Again, this tool feels solid and weighted, and makes a great addition to a fisherman’s creel and a geek dad’s utility belt alike.
In lieu of drawing them like one of our french girls, we took a couple of photos of the Gerber Bear Grylls Survival and Pocket tools for your enjoyment:
Sorry about the shadows. In honor of survivalism and mother nature, we worked with them.
The Bottom Line
Pricing for the knife-style Pocket tool is $16 and $85 for the Survival Tool. For the amount of usage you’ll get out of either one, I recommend them both! Wherever you fall on the scale of zero-to-Bear-Grylls, you’ll find something to do with these tools. As an outdoorsman, you know what you’ve got to do with blades and tools like this. But as a dad – even one that doesn’t go on camping trips – you’ve got a ton of things to open, unscrew, change batteries in, disassemble, reassemble, score and cut. One of the things we recommend here at 8BitDad is that all fathers get themselves a good multi-tool. For the price, the Gerber Bear Grylls line – these two tools specifically – are awesome ways to make you feel like you’re surviving the wild, even if you’re only surviving battery replacement duty.
Whew. We made it all the way through the reviews without making a Bear Grylls “better drink my own piss” joke! In honor of that, feel free to celebrate with us – we’re going to take five and have a nice tepid mug of our piss!