The Leatherman's serrated and plain-edge knives can be opened and closed with one hand. The blades aren't mixed with the other tools, which is why we think it's the safest of the large tools tested.

Following the theme of our knife-test article of June 2000, we decided to look at multi-tools, highly portable gadgets that incorporate up to well over a dozen functions.

Multi-tools can't be evaluated by the same criteria as knives. They offer different sets of functions in varying configurations, and many of these interact with one another, both statically and dynamically. So we've distilled our discussion into short statements about what we believe to be important about each tool, bearing in mind that everyone has different sets of preferences and requirements when it comes to these things. We hope that the feature lists and our thoughts will allow you to select a…