Knog Folding Tools

Knog is a design oriented company—if it comes from them, it can’t look like anything else. Back at Interbike we saw a glimpse of their “keyless” solid state lock and the two pictured folding tools. Knog sent a pair of the tools in for closer inspection, and after a spell sitting on the kitchen table where every house guest felt the need to pick up the “Shifter” folding wrench I figured it was time to give them their due. The industrial design is impeccable, with each tool neatly folding into a square footprint, lightly held together by magnets when stacked. The tools earned Knog an Australian International Design Award, and certainly make good conversation pieces. As for the tools themselves, the $20 Knog Shifter folding adjustable wrench opens to about 17mm, but is too wide to be used as a pedal wrench and while opening large enough to use on 15mm axle nuts is a recipe for rounding out a stubborn one. At 140g it’s pretty heavy too. As a wrench it’s pretty cool, but as a bike tool it’s best left as a last resort. The $30 Knog 20 Function Multi Tool packs a lot into a small package, with 8, 10, 13 and most importantly 15mm open end wrenches (that will fit most pedals) along with a chaintool and spokewrenches in the handle, and a 2-8mm hex heads, a Torx bit and screwdrivers in the folding lineup. I’m generally not a fan of adding removeable bits to hex ends to make other tools as I tend to lose these immediately upon use and two of the aforementioned 20 tools fall into that category, in this instance both the 8mm hex and the Torx interface. And like most multitools, you’re not going to get the most leverage in the world out of any of these tools. That said, having allen keys, a chaintool and a 15mm wrench all on one compact tool is pretty nice and fulfills the minimum of what I’m willing to ride with around town with along with a tube and pump. Both tools are available in a few different colors, with the folding multitool also in 7- and 12-tool versions for a few dollars less.