A regular pair of pliers is fine most of the time, but for delicate work with squarish objects you can’t go wrong with a pair of parallel pliers. [Neil Paskin] decided to make his own pair from scratch. (YouTube)
The jaws were machined down from round stock in [Paskin]’s mill before heat treating and tempering. The steel portions of the handles were cut from 16 gauge plate steel and half of them were stamped on a fly press to make the bridging section around the pivot bolt. The filler for the handles is copper on one side and brass on the other as [Paskin] didn’t have enough brass of the correct size to do both.
The steel and filler were joined with epoxy and copper pins before beveling the edges and sanding to give a comfortable contour to the handles. The bolts for the pliers started as ordinary hex bolts before being machined down on the lathe to a more aesthetically-pleasing shape and size. The final touches included electrolytically etching a logo into the bridge and then spraying down the pliers with a combination lubricant and corrosion preventative spray. This is surely a pair of pliers worth handing down through the generations.
For more mesmerizing machining, checkout this pocket safe or this tiny adjustable wrench.
If you like these, you should also check out Knipex pliers. I like them so much I ran out and bought all three sizes after I got the first one.
But they don’t offer that style of pliers… The next best substitute coming to mind are their awesome plier wrenches.
Are you the knipex shill that hangs out on DIY all of the time?
Unlikely to be a shill since generally Knipex is actually good quality. Consistently comes out on top in project farm’s non-biased tool testing videos.
All hail Knipex
Knipex is love
Knipex is life
Buy now
I also be free of charge Knipex bot. Why? That’s why:
“Knipex 86 03 400”
best.tool.ever.
87-41-250 for nasty bolts/fittings. Not *quite* parallel, but they’ll be close at hand for nearly everything you do.
Well done.
I used to use these when I worked for a Telecommunications carrier.
https://www.delock.com/produkt/86469/merkmale.html
Mr. Paskin does a LOT of cool stuff, glad he’s getting some recognition for his work. He’s almost on a par with Uri Tuchmann, and it seems like every video is something new to learn. Gotta love his videos.