Benchmade
Oregon City, 1988 — a family-owned American knife company that will sharpen your knife for the rest of its life, and whose signature lock is now out of patent.
Leatherman
Portland, Oregon — the pliers-based multi-tool invented after a cranky Fiat and leaky hotel plumbing, still built in the city where the company started in 1983.
Tim Leatherman spent a 1975 budget trip through Europe fixing a cranky Fiat and leaky hotel plumbing with a scout knife, wishing the whole time it had pliers. Eight years later, in spring 1983, he and college friend Steve Berliner launched the company on a first order of 500 tools from Cabela's, and the Pocket Survival Tool created the category everyone else has been iterating on since. The company says its tools are still built in Portland, Oregon, and backs them for 25 years — with exclusions a working buyer should read first.
- 1983The company launches in spring with the PST, after a first order of 500 tools from Cabela's
- 25 yearsThe warranty term, from the date the user receives the tool, per Leatherman's own policy
- 500Tools in that first Cabela's order — the entire commercial history at day one
What we'd reach for
- Wave+The default answer when someone asks which one to get — the mid-size tool the rest of the line gets measured against.
- ArcThe flagship with the MagnaCut blade — notable here because the warranty page specifically covers sharpening for it, which is a sentence most warranties would never risk.
- SkeletoolThe stripped-down carry option — fewer implements, less weight, and the one that lives in pockets rather than on belts.
The origin story is unusually well documented because the company tells it on itself: on a 1975 budget trip through Europe, Tim Leatherman and his wife Chau “constantly came across leaky hotel plumbing and road-side fixes for their cranky Fiat.” His own words: “I was carrying a scout knife and used it for everything from slicing bread to fixing the car. But I kept wishing I had a pair of pliers!”
It took eight years of prototypes and rejections before the company launched in spring 1983, with college friend Steve Berliner as partner and a first commercial order of 500 tools from Cabela’s. The Pocket Survival Tool those orders bought — pliers at the center, everything else folding around them — defined a category that didn’t exist before it.
Still Portland, and they say so
Leatherman’s claim is direct: “we’ve been building our tools in Portland, Oregon” — from Tim’s first prototype to the current line, by the company’s own telling. That makes Portland home to two of this roster’s tool companies — Gerber since 1939, Leatherman since 1983 — with instructively different answers to the origin question. Gerber’s catalog is honestly split between Portland and imports, item by item; Leatherman’s stated position covers its tools as a class. Forty-plus years in, the company remains privately held and doesn’t narrate its ownership on the page.
One footnote the roster already knows: Leatherman spent most of a decade as the owner of Ledlenser, taking a majority stake in 2011 and selling in late 2018 — and its warranty policy still bothers to tell flashlight owners where to go instead, which is the kind of tidiness you’d hope for from a tool company.
The 25 years, read before you need them
The warranty “lasts for 25 years from the date the user receives the tool,” covering defects in materials and workmanship, with repair or replacement at the company’s discretion. Members of its free program get an extended 40-year term. Now the exclusions, in the policy’s own words and worth quoting: abuse, alteration, theft, loss, “unauthorized and/or unreasonable use,” rust and corrosion, and cosmetic wear — “Fading, Scratches, Scuffs, Stains, Chipping, etc. are considered normal use.” Accessories and sheaths get two years, and only three named ones at that. Proof of purchase from an authorized dealer “may be required.”
And one line this site’s trade audience must see: commercial and bulk purchases are excluded. The same carve-out sits in Gerber’s warranty. If the tool is going on a work belt and the warranty is part of your math, you are outside the paper’s intent — buy accordingly.
Where they fall down
The commercial exclusion. The people most likely to earn a broken tool are the people the warranty declines to cover.
Rust is on you. Excluded outright — a marine or coastal user should read that as a maintenance schedule.
Line breadth has outrun clarity. Wave, Arc, Free, Signal, Surge, Skeletool and their variants overlap enough that choosing has become its own research project.
The warranty routes through authorized dealers. Gray-market and marketplace purchases put “proof of purchase may be required” to work against you.
Where Leatherman fits
The belt of trades. Sailors, ranchers, riggers, stagehands — anywhere the next problem is unknown and pliers are the likeliest answer.
The drawer that fixes the house. The Wave+ has ended more household searches for “the thing” than any dedicated tool.
Not for: jobs a dedicated tool already lives at — a multi-tool is the second-best tool for everything, which is its entire value. Knife-first buyers should be at Spyderco or Kershaw instead.
Why we rate them
The story checks out on their own page. Fiat, plumbing, scout knife, eight lean years, 500 tools — no myth-making required.
The Portland claim is stated, not implied. “We’ve been building our tools in Portland, Oregon” is a sentence a buyer can hold them to.
The warranty is long and specific. Twenty-five years, with exclusions in writing rather than discovered at claim time.
When the day’s problems haven’t announced themselves yet, we reach for Leatherman.
More in Camp & carry
All brands →The nearest neighbors on the shelf — same categories first, same department after that.
Böker
Solingen since 1869 — a chestnut tree on the blade, a trademark that crossed the Atlantic twice, and four production lines that are not the same country of origin.
Case
Bradford, Pennsylvania — the traditional American pocketknife, owned by Zippo since 1993, and datable to the year by the marks stamped on its tang.
COAST
Portland, Oregon, since 1919 — a salmon knife sold out of a Model T that became the light on every hardware store shelf in America.