Leatherman has discontinued my favorite multitool :(

I bought a Leatherman Squirt S4 way back in May of 2003. I've carried that little tool every day since then, and it sure looks like it. Its been good to me. The scissors have been probably the most-used tool, though the little screw drivers and the bottle opener see fairly regular use as well. Because I almost always have a full-fledged knife with me, the little knife has probably been the least-used tool. The crappy little tweezers broke apart and were lost a while ago.

I've been thinking that perhaps it's time to retire the little workhouse from my EDC and replace it with a newer model. However, searching through stores, I've found that the little Squirt S4s have been discontinued! Bwa??? I know I'm not the only person that likes these things, and can't imagine that the pliers version sold dramatically more. I can't quite imagine anything that I'd need those tiny little pliers for.

The new model is the Squirt PS4, shown above, which "combines" the P4 pliers tool and the S4 scissors tool into one tool. However, the scissors look to be the Swiss Army Knife variety, which are pretty crappy in my experience. The scissors on my old S4 are AWESOME, fully functional scissors, still working perfectly after 7 years of regular use. The Squirt IS finally available in Black, which is cool, but come on, why no version with the scissors as the main tool? They even have an Electrician's version of the tool with a wire stripper instead of the pliers. But no scissors.

Leatherman does still have scissor keychain tools in their product line; they have the venerable Micra and the new Leatherman Style CS. The Micra is not as well made as the Squirt line, and the Style is actually bigger while having less tools, so neither is a suitable replacement.

However, I think one could probably put together a frankenstein tool easily enough. The new Squirts and the Style are both secured with torx screws instead of the rivets used on the older models, so it should be a simple procedure to up both tools, take the scissors from the Style and swap them into the PS4. You would then have two pairs of scissors on the tool, though, but you could probably swap the crappy SAK scissors for something else. Maybe I'll give this a shot and post the little science experiment in the future.

You can still find the S4s on Amazon and other places online, but if you want one, act now, as Leatherman isn't making any more! I've been keeping an eye out at local retail stores and am not seeing the old S4 or P4s anywhere, so online may be your only hope at this point.