Why weld an eyebolt to visegrips?

September 25, 2007 12:21 PM

What is the use of an eyebolt welded to the knurled adjustment knob of a pair of vice-grip pliers, like this?

I found this while riding my bike to work today. My guess is it's to create some sort of clamping tie-down, but I suspect there is something more purposeful behind this. The weld isn't very pretty, FWIW.

posted by exogenous to grab bag (17 comments total)

makes it easier to turn the adjustment knob that changes the width of the jaws. Also, gives you something to hang it by.
posted by cosmicbandito at 12:22 PM on September 25, 2007

You can hang it on a hook.
posted by originalname37 at 12:22 PM on September 25, 2007

makes it easier to turn the adjustment knob <- especially when wearing welding gloves.
posted by ArgentCorvid at 12:30 PM on September 25, 2007

How else can Capt. Hook tighten the vise-grips?
posted by JJ86 at 12:37 PM on September 25, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

WAG here: the eyebolt makes it possible to attach a lanyard, to prevent the tool falling away from you if you drop it while working on a tower / over a sewer / etc.
posted by harkin banks at 12:40 PM on September 25, 2007 [1 favorite has favorites]

You can torque it tighter by putting a screwdriver through the eye than you could by tightening an unmodified knurled knob with your fingers.
posted by Wet Spot at 12:44 PM on September 25, 2007

Would be easier to twist with a length of pipe or anything that can service as a lever. For leverage. Also, it gives you something else to have obsessive thoughts about putting your finger inside of, rather than the business end of the grips. So that's a plus.
posted by yerfatma at 12:47 PM on September 25, 2007

What they said with one addition: when you've got a vice-grip already clamped on something you can't tighten it up any further with the knurled screw without unclamping, moving the screw, and reclamping. That eyebolt will allow you to clamp it, then tighten as much as you want with a screwdriver in the eye of the bolt.

The downside? The screw threads cut into the handle of the vice-grips cannot sustain much force because the handle is merely rolled into a cylinder with an open side. The level of force you can exert with the new arrangement can open up the cylinder and the screw will slip; after a few iterations of that the threads will be stripped.
posted by jamjam at 12:50 PM on September 25, 2007

You can't easily twist that knob when the jaws are locked--anyone who's used Vise-Grips knows you open the jaws, adjust the knob, and then clamp them down--so you would never put a screwdriver or a section of pipe through the eyebolt to give you more leverage. Speaking as someone who does a fair amount of welding, my guess is the eyebolt makes twisting the knob easier while you're wearing gloves.
posted by fandango_matt at 12:55 PM on September 25, 2007

... to prevent the tool falling away from you if you drop it while working on a tower ...

Looks like it might have failed this time.
posted by originalname37 at 12:59 PM on September 25, 2007

Hacky fix: you could clamp the vise grips to an object and then run a cable or rope through the eyelet for a totally jerry-rigged way to attach a temporary line.
posted by ga$money at 1:00 PM on September 25, 2007

I agree with the gloves assessment. Lots of people use Vise-Grips to hold work together when welding it, basically as a quick-release clamp. (IIRC Vise-Grip even makes a set of 'pliers' that have big, clamp-like jaws.)

And it's definitely not for additional torque, since as other people have noted, over-torquing the adjustment screw will ruin the pliers. You add more force by opening the jaws, turning the screw, then closing them down -- so that the force is added through your hand compressing the jaws, and not through the screw.
posted by Kadin2048 at 1:16 PM on September 25, 2007

Another vote for tie-off. I spent several years working in theater, and every electrician we had wore an adjustable wrench tied to his belt with a few feet of black cord. This seems to be to be the same situation, except that vise-grip pliers don't (by design) have an eye on the end. One cheap weld (available in the set shop), and there you go - vise-grip pliers you can take up in the catwalk.
posted by god hates math at 2:00 PM on September 25, 2007

I've made several of these. In my case it was for a combination of two of the above reasons a) makes it easier to operate with gloves and b) so you can hang something from the pliers. Specifically I use them to hang trouble lights and to temporarily hold hold bundles of wire while wiring up a deck/trailer. I've got some magnets with loops for this purpose as well but they don't stick to aluminum.

I think you'd twist the knob off before being able to turn the screw tighter when the jaws are engaged.
posted by Mitheral at 3:44 PM on September 25, 2007

Another possibility springs to mind. Cast eye bolts like that are expensive (I use links of chain at approximately 1/50 the cost). The owner might have lost the adjustment screw and the only thing they had handy the right length was a piece of threaded rod and a threaded eye bolt. The welding was to keep the two pieces together.
posted by Mitheral at 3:51 PM on September 25, 2007

nth-ing the lanyard explanations. Welding a loop on to the handle was the first thing radio linesmen in my previous job did when they got new hand tools.

You then have a half-dozen lanyards with safety clips at either end - one end clips to the tool, the tools go in your tool bag ( the rule was "never carry tools up a ladder / tower with you"), and the other end clips to your tool line. Once you've got your tools up, you tie off the tool line somewhere handy to the job.

(Nobody followed this religiously, of course - it was a real PITA, for the same reasons that nobody bothered with all that safety line crap when climbing a little 30' tower. But, you had to at least have the look of the thing so the safety inspectors wouldn't ping you...)
posted by Pinback at 7:14 PM on September 25, 2007

Thanks folks - due to the nature of the responses I'm going to refrain from trying to draw a "best answer" line. BTW, although not evident from the cameraphone pic, the eyebolt is welded to the original adjustment screw. The eyebolt seems disproportionally big, which makes me think it came from a junk drawer or something. It perhaps a bit of karmic balance, one the ride home tonight and only a few hundred yards from where I found this tool, some asshole almost took me out in his SUV while talking on his cellphone and pulling into the Pentagon's parking lot, despite the full set of lights on my bike.
posted by exogenous at 8:20 PM on September 25, 2007