@Broch
Nowadays most lightweight tent stakes have attached a cord loop and with the hook at the Victorinox Compact you can pull them out. That's pretty handy.
Deep in the woods you only need the nail scissors and perhaps the toothpick and blister needle.
But if you touch civilisation, all what's attached to the Compact becomes useful.
It has attached all what's needed for hiking tours and nothing else, and that makes it light and compact and comfortable in the pocket.
What this little saws can cut I can easily break with the boot or cut off with a fix blade knife or even with the blade of the Compact, as long as it isn't bone.
The awl / drill would be nice to have if I would make ski sticks or something similar. But I discovered that I didn't use it after I played with it when I was a child, even as long as I used exclusively old school leather - linen equipment, what I did for many many years.
The Compact is no office knife. It is a trekking knife, meant to replace the older Climber, because the conditions such knifes are used in did change.
How often do we currently need the better working can and bottle opener at the Climber?
Bottles nowadays have screw closures and if you want to open a tin you just pull the ring.
The Compact combines screw driver, bottle and can opener in one tool, just in case you find a beer bottle with crown closure or a tin without pull ring, what happens less and less often.
After the old cotton and linen tent sheets with metal eyelets died out and the modern cordage became so outstanding light and strong that everybody can easily carry several metres around, the reason to carry such a small saw through the summer doesn't exist anymore in my opinion.
The poles were made easily with that saw but I seem to be the last one in this forum who owns such stuff. And yes, I also replaced it with lightweight plastic fibre tarp and poncho and strong lightweight cordage in my currently used every day equipment.
I mean, deep in the woods one needs the nail scissors of the Compact and could use the knife blade, but of course the full tang fix blade belt knife is the far handier option.
But if one touches during a trekking tour the civilisation, the Compact offers all tools which could be needed on a touristic camping ground, in a youth hostel, on the bench in front of the supermarket or in similar situations.
May be that you don't need a cork screw in Mid Wales. But in France for example you aren't completely equipped without.
You could simply press the cork into the bottle of course, especially if you do that hidden deep in the woods.
But don't cry afterwards if the frogs have seen you doing it and call the Welsh a barbaric tribe.
www.ffx.co.uk
i had a few cheap pocket knives as a kid probably a year or two younger than that, i usually ended up getting one whenever we went on camping holidays. Then one day whittling sticks in the garden, probably making a "bow" (really a stick with the bark shaved off and a string on it) my brother wouldnt leave me alone so i said "go away or ill stab you"
