Have you ever used a tool or product and thought to yourself, "if they just tweaked this or that aspect of it, it'd be so much more useful"? Well, one of the best things about running your own tool company is that you're free to combine your own experience using the products with customer/expert feedback, and then get to work making them even better. That was where we found ourselves at LogOX in 2021. Our American-made LogOX 3-in-1 Forestry MultiTool was the best-selling and highest-rated forestry hand tool on Amazon, averaging 4.8 stars across thousands of verified customer reviews, and sold online in over 30 North American and European stores, like Lowe's, The Home Depot, and TSC. But there were clearly areas of improvement for the tool that we'd identified and kept reoccurring in customer feedback from emails we'd received, to social media comments, and FHC posts as well. As a result, we identified five key areas for improvement for 2022 and immediately began the R&D work necessary to prototype, test, and then get the updated model into production. I recently went into more detail about our iterative design process on this project and our company's philosophy on continual innovation when I was a guest on the ReddyYetti "Built On Passion" podcast episode #297 . For the 2022 update, we focused on five key areas of improvement: 1. Swing-Lock Attachment Pins: Previously we'd used (3) two-piece clevis/hairpins to attach the cant hook handle extension and timberjack attachment to the Hauler. While they made the tool far more modular and portable than anything else on the market, they could be easily separated/lost and were generally cumbersome. The new single-piece design, which as the name suggests, easily locks a bail in place making it faster and easier to switch between configurations. 2. Wooden Cross Handle: We added 1/2" in length to the wooden cross handle to better accommodate users wearing gloves and those with larger hands. 3. Hi-Vis Safety Hook: We changed the hook color from a powder-coated black to the same hi-vis orange as the rest of the tool to make it visually contrast better with tree bark, to reduce the likelihood of striking the hook with a chainsaw while bucking them. 4. Longer Handle: To provide more leverage, we lengthened our cant hook handle extension to make it a full 40" medium-length cant hook when attached to the LogOX Hauler, which by itself is a great 21" cant hook. 5. The Patent-Pending BigFoot Timberjack: We set out to totally redesign our timberjack attachment with the goals of making it a more stable bucking platform, less prone to sinking into soft ground, and easier to drag logs with. As you can see in the two videos, the unique attachment we've developed, which we're currently in the process of patenting, achieves that intent. We have the upgraded LogOX models in stock and for sale on our website. For folks who already have a LogOX, we sell an upgrade package as well. As always, we hook up our fellow FHC members, so you can use FHC15 to take $15 off any order of $100 or more on our website. Please let me know in the comment section if you have any questions or feel free to reach out to us directly via our website.
