Hey there, it’s time for another of our very occa­sional series of art­icles on the tools we love. Two is a series, right?

Today it’s the 140W 230V Draper Multi Tool.

Now, they call it a ‘multi tool’ but I think that’s a bit vague; after all any tool that does more than one thing gets called a multi-tool. I sup­pose my pre­ferred altern­at­ive of ‘rotary tool’, i.e. a tool with a bit what goes round, isn’t much less vague.

Don’t get me wrong, the ‘multi’ bit is abso­lutely spot-on; the tool comes with loads of attach­ments, and you can get many many more. I’ve used my multi-tool for: drilling, sand­ing, pol­ish­ing PMC beads, widen­ing the holes in pearls, lino cut­ting, and dis­tress­ing wooden frames (well you’d be dis­tressed too if you has a wire brush applied to you!)

In fact, some­what embar­rass­ingly, I’m not even sure what some of the attach­ments do. So I like to make it up: “Oh, that’s to reverse the polar­ity of a neut­ron flow”, or, “That bit de-gausses a flux capacitor”.

The best attach­ment –sold sep­ar­ately– is the ‘flexi-shaft’, as shown above. Like a spam email, the attach­ment offers to extend the reach of your tool, make it easier to grip, and allow it’s deploy­ment in hard to reach places. It really does make del­ic­ate work much easier.

Probably the most fam­ous name in the multi/rotary tool world is the mighty ‘Dremel’. I’m  more sure they’re great tools, but they’re not cheap. The Draper Multi Tool is much more reas­on­ably priced, and has done everything I’ve asked of it. Maybe if I was a DIY user, and wanted to use it on metal or masonry, I might be inclined to look upmar­ket a bit, but for light craft/hobby work it’s great. Plus, I like to pre­tend that the com­pany that makes it, Draper, is in fact the com­pany formed by Don Draper when he final gets tired of Advertising. Though I sup­pose that if that were true, it would prob­ably come with attach­ments for stir­ring cock­tails and maybe for unfasten­ing the hooks on brassi­eres, which are about the only two attach­ments it doesn’t have.

So there we go: the 140W 230V Draper Multi Tool.

If you use any tools that you’re par­tic­u­larly keen on, why not let us know in the comments?