Cool Tool: Update on the Butane Lighter Air Bleed Tool
UPDATE
I received the Butane Lighter Air Bleed Tool a few weeks ago and I have to say, this thing is friggin’ awesome! Gone are my days of finding a paperclip, small screwdriver, or another tool to bleed my lighters. The tool works as advertised and fills a need for all cigar smokers. The tip of the tool fits perfectly over the fill valve on the handful of lighters I tested. The two holes for bleeding the air and butane work great. You have to be careful to make sure neither of the two holes face toward you. Otherwise, you’ll take a nice hit of butane in the face. A couple of dots on the handle or another indicator of the location of the holes would help those who can’t see tiny holes in a brass fitting.
While the Kickstarter Campaign is over, you can now buy the tool at a variety of online retailers for around $15. See below for links to purchase the tool. This is well worth the purchase.
Version 2.0 is already in the works and the improvements look pretty slick. Check out a video of the planned improvements below.
ORIGINAL POST
Keven Shahan is an inventor and a cigar smoker. Frustrated with using various tools to bleed his cigar lighters, he decided to invent his own cool tool to bleed his lighters. The result of his effort is the Butane Lighter Air Bleed Tool. OK, not a cool name, but the tool is definitely cool! To fund his idea, Shahan is conducting a Kickstarter Campaign.
So what makes this such a cool cigar accessory?
Two things. First, the tip of the Butane Lighter Air Bleed Tool is the same tip used on your butane container so the tool will fit over the fill valve on your cigar lighter. Second, the tool has two holes in the tip that allow the air to bleed out. Instead of using a screwdriver, knife, etc. to push on the edge of your cigar lighter fill valve and hoping to not block the darn thing, this cigar accessory solves your bleeding woes. That sounds a bit creepy but you get the point.
Back in 2016, I reviewed the Butane Screw Thing and declared it the “coolest cigar accessory ever”. From the looks of the Kickstarter Campaign, I’m going to have to change my mind!
You can buy one in aluminum for $10, gun metal gray or matte red for $12, and two in the color of your choice for $17. If you simply want to help an entrepreneur meet his goal, you can donate $1 to receive a personal email from Shahan. Maybe he’ll throw in a heart emoji for free.
The Kickstarter Campaign ends on May 20th, 2018 and the Kickstarter Campaign has already reached the goal of raising $2,500. As of this writing, backers have pledged a tad over $3,000 so this Kickstarter Campaign is a go!
Here’s what Shahan has to say about his invention on Kickstarter:
“I don’t know how many butane lighters that I use to throw away because they stopped working, then one day while at a friends house, I noticed he was sticking something in the bottom of his lighter and some gas came out. I asked him what he was doing and he said he was bleeding the air out. He said if you don’t bleed the air out, you can never get the lighter full of fuel again. Well, that was a long long time ago.
For the last decade or so, I have been bleeding all my lighters the same way as everyone else, just sticking a pointy object in the bottom to bleed out the air. Then one day I ruined a very expensive lighter by hitting the bleed port the wrong way. I was always careful after that, but it always stuck in my mind why there wasn’t a tool designed to bleed the air of lighters.
I searched and searched and though several companies claim to offer a bleeding tool, their tools are nothing more than fancy picks or awls.
Then steps in an engineering buddy that turned my thoughts into a sketch. Then it was off to a local machine shop that turned that sketch into a physical prototype. After a few prototypes and testing, I landed on a design that works on just about every refillable butane lighter on the market.”
Check out a video describing the Butane Lighter Air Bleed Tool below:
I backed this Kickstarter Campaign and ordered two of the Butane Lighter Air Bleed Tools. I’ll update this post in a few months with my thoughts on the tool after using it live and in person.
