Ladies & Gentlemen, allow me to present the most useless wire cutter ever produced. I tried to cut a wire with it and one of the jaws broke off.
There are lessons for us all here I think:
1) Do not grab the nearest to tool to do a job. Get the right one.
2) Just because the wire looks soft it doesn't mean that a little pair of cutters will go through it.
3) Fat wire needs the big cutters. Or better still a piercing saw.
4) If a multipack of pliers and cutters costs the same as a pint of beer, the quality might not be of the highest order.
To top it off, when the cutter broke the handles grabbed the skin on my hand and I now have a lovely little blood blister. Just my lick to find the one pair where the sharp edges are the least destructive part of the package !
I've got tools like that. I recently gpot a pack of knife blades that bent and snapped more than they cut any materials.
ReplyDeleteOTOH The sky is the limit for prices, for even simple tools. It's hard to know where the treshold between cheap and reasonable quality is, and when the next threshold of 'professional' quality comes along.
Yes, tool prices can be scary. I bought a new set of cutters yesterday from a shop in the Jewelry Quarter in Birmingham. £12 inc VAT. But I also thought hard about the £35 +VAT pair. If they last (a big IF) then that would be worth the money.
ReplyDeleteI tend to buy tools that are cheap and if I wear them out replace with better quality - that way I don't spend money on something that won't see the light of day.
Mind you, I've never had a pair of cutters go like this before !