Getting to Grips

One of the perennial problems of working alone is that you never have enough hands.  Something as simple as clamping two pieces of work can be a real frustration, especially if you’ve spent ages lining everything up and then when you reach for the Vise-Grips they aren’t set to the correct tension.  Do you let go of the work? Try to hold the grips under your arm to tweak the adjuster with your free hand?  Hold them by the adjuster and try to swirl them around? Invariably whatever you do you don’t get the tension right first time… You know the drill.

So when I popped into my local Mole store to pick up some cat food (I always have a trip down the tool isle) I found something quite interesting.  A set of self adjusting Mole Grips!

These Hanson brand grips seem well made and use a locking cam system to achieve the automatic adjustment. I don’t imagine for one minute they will achieve the same pressure as my Vise-Grips but if they will hold everything in place whilst you get some extra grips onto the work then they have to be worth a try.

I’ll let you know how we get on together over the coming months….