Leatherman Surge Repair

Added: 2026-05-19

[00:00:00]Welcome back to the Tool Crave. A couple of videos ago I showed you that uh my Leatherman Surge, my daily carry, has got an issue that I was going to send in for warranty. But uh a couple of comments in the video were that if I might try to attempt this on my own because they have similar problems, but they live outside of the US and so sending their multi-tool in for warranty repair, the shipping costs are pretty prohibitive for that. So, I'm going to try to attempt to fix this on my own.

[00:00:30]Now, after taking a little closer inspection on this, what I can tell is that the frame somehow got bowed a little bit in here. So, I think if we just flatten this frame back out, we should be able to straighten this back out and it should be pretty good to go with it. So, normally I would use a punch for this, but all of my punches are really long and they're not going to do really well here on camera, but I also found that if I use just like a 5/16 inch nut driver, I think that's going to work perfectly because it captures the inner part of the frame without extending over to the sides. So, it's going to put pressure in the right place. Now, I'm just going to put this up on a block and we're going to try it one by one, just tap it here and uh a little bit at a time to see if we can't straighten that frame out. Now, the reason I need to open this up, you'll notice that the pins here, which capture the knife blade when it opens, when you have the tool shut, they come to the inside. And I really want those to spread out a little bit, so I want to have the handle open uh about halfway or maybe a touch more whenever I'm doing this and hopefully that will have those springs spread out enough where I can tap down on this and see if we can't fix it. So, let's give it a try. We're going to use this and then just a little hammer and we're going to just give it a couple of gentle taps.

[00:01:59]And then, let's give it a try.

[00:02:02]And we're going to need a little bit more.

[00:02:06]So, we're going to have to hit it a little bit harder, I believe.

[00:02:10]So, we'll set it back on here.

[00:02:14]We'll see if that one hit will give it enough. Oh, it's getting closer.

[00:02:19]At least they're opening. It's not quite there yet, but let's try it again.

[00:02:23]Set this down.

[00:02:27]I'm going to try to get this pin so that it's all the way up at the front here.

[00:02:33]And we'll just give it a nice shot.

[00:02:39]Oh, almost. A couple more times, maybe.

[00:02:43]And maybe I need to go back a little bit, too. So, I'm going to try to to hit it backwards just off the edge. I'm going to come back just a little bit.

[00:02:57]Oh.

[00:02:58]Oh, that's getting close. So, let me uh let me just do it a couple more times here, and I think we're going to have this problem fixed. Now, I am marking up my frame a little bit, but for this workhorse, I don't care that much.

[00:03:17]And there it is.

[00:03:18]So, in the end, not that hard of a fix.

[00:03:21]Now, I can tell that this one is still could use a little bit more. I might try to go just a touch more because it still feels like it's a little bit loose. So, let's put it back up here.

[00:03:33]And maybe I need to open it up a little bit further to make this work right.

[00:03:38]Try to get this set up here.

[00:03:48]Uh it's getting awfully close. We're definitely fixing the problem. It's just a matter of maybe it would be better if I disassembled this to get it a little uh I think maybe those springs are kind of holding back and not allowing me to get enough puncture pressure down, but maybe if I just hit it a little bit harder and it might cure it.

[00:04:11]There it is.

[00:04:13]Yeah, I feel I feel really good about that.

[00:04:17]So, for those that are having this issue, you might check your frame there. Now, you can see that I've marked it up quite a little bit there, but it is definitely looks like it's flattened itself back out.

[00:04:30]I might have a little bit more like a little closer to this edge. In fact, I'm going to try to do that. I'm going to try to set my pressure a little bit over here on the right-hand side and see if that doesn't cure it the rest of the way.

[00:04:49]Yeah.

[00:04:50]Yeah, I feel good with that.

[00:04:52]So, set that back on there and now we're pretty straight again.

[00:04:57]And tool is working like it's supposed to again. So, for those that have this sort of problem and you can't afford to send your tool back to Leatherman, it seems like it's a pretty simple solution. Now, granted, I did mark this frame up a little bit. Um maybe if you put uh small piece of cloth down there in order to prevent any marring when you're doing this type of operation, that might help it out a little bit. Uh but like I said, with this Work Horse, I'm not really that concerned about it. Anyway, quick fix for your Leatherman Surge or Charge, Wave, whichever you have. My name is Ben. I appreciate you taking the time to watch. I'll see you in the next one.