You pay a ton of money for a good crimper and it’ll only crimp one style of connector.  Knipex feels your pain, so with their MultiCrimp crimping pliers you get either three or five common, interchangeable crimping dies in a quick-change magazine.

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Knipex’s concrete mesh cutter may look like a bolt cutter at first glance, but take a closer look.  The jaws open on the side of the very flat head, giving you better access to cut small-diameter rebar and concrete mesh in place.

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Knipex designed these slightly odd-looking cutters to cut up thin-walled plastic pipes and hoses. They cut from the middle of the hose out, so you don’t need to reposition or make more than one stroke with the blade.

The blade point hits the hose or pipe from the center and cuts cleanly through with both edges of the blade as you apply pressure.  It cuts hose or pipe with exterior diameter up to 1”.  In a pinch it could probably handle something like copper pipe or wire cable, but smaller auto hoses or garden hose will part like butter.

Hose Cutter [Knipex]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

Cutting glass in a straight line is a snap, but curved cuts are a different story — I’ve tried and failed spectacularly.  But maybe if I’d had a pair of these glass-nibbling pincers I would’ve done a better job.

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The electronics geek in me got giddy when I saw this picture of Knipex’s ribbon-cable cutters. OK, so not everybody is going to get as excited about this tool, but next time you have to cut ribbon cable, you’ll remember this tool exists, and you’re going to be bummed that you don’t have one.

Knipex’s cutters cut ribbon cable up to 56mm — that’s 2.2″ for you metric-impaired readers — without crushing the conductors. The integrated fence in the base allows you to make perfectly rectangular cuts, and you can replace the blade with a conventional, trapezoidal, utility-knife blade.

Knipex makes the handle and blade mount of these 8-1/2″-long cutters from high-strength steel. A spring returns the handles to the open position when they’re released, and a locking lever keeps them closed for storage.

Look to pay anywhere between $60 and $100. If you don’t have that kind of money burning a hole in your pocket, or if your employer can pinch a penny so hard that Lincoln cries, UltraShear makes a cheaper alternative — albeit without the fence — the Superknife.

Cutter For Ribbon Cables [Knipex]
Street Pricing [Google Products]

The upper jaw on these pliers looks like the beak of a bird of prey — it’s not hard to see why Knipex calls the pliers Raptors. As you squeeze the Raptor’s handles the jaws remain parallel, which allows them to grip hex bolt heads and nuts sized 3/8″ through 1-1/4″ perfectly, without rounding. Since the pliers grab the flat sides, they work especially well on fasteners with rounded edges.

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Even electricians need ratchets, but when you’re working with high-voltage, you can never be too careful. That’s why Kinpex makes both 3/8″ and 1/2″ drive insulated ratchets along with insulated extensions and sockets in both SAE and metric sizes.

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If you’ve ever tried to strip Teflon- or Radox-shielded cable with a regular pair of snips, you know it can take a while and be super messy by the time you’re done. You can strip that insulation off faster and much more accurately with the double guillotine method. Knipex has adopted that method for their new universal insulation strippers — and, following the lead of razors like the Mach 4, they’ve added blades.

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Think of Knipex’s Pliers Wrench as a cross between an open-end wrench and a pair of really-accurate slip-joint pliers. They deliver the gripping strength of combination pliers with the precision of a wrench — a great way to prevent rounding off that chromed nut on your sink or repeatedly slipping off the bolts on your Harley.

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I wonder if Knipex chose the Spider-Man blue-on-red color scheme for their new heavy-duty 9″ linesman pliers in order to tout the “upgraded gripping zone” featured in the new design.  Maybe not, but it’s still cool — and the gripping zone is pretty neat, too.

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While these cable cutters are more evolutionary than revolutionary, their new design does reduce their bulk significantly, rendering them lighter and theoretically easier to wield than other multi-purpose cutters.  When you’ve got to carry ‘em around every day, lighter is better.

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We’ve always heard positive things from readers (and friends) regarding Knipex’s offerings, so we’re thinking about giving these auto-adjusting pliers a try.  As you can see in the picture, they’re pretty much standard slip-joint pliers, but a second joint in the middle lets them automatically slip to the correct size. 

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When it comes to getting the project done in the eleventh hour we are the kings tools that aren’t really designed for the task at hand.  They come flying out of toolboxes (kitchen drawers, etc.) to attack whatever funky issue we’re currently facing — so we can go to freakin’ bed.  Or go out drinking.  Or play some Halo.  You get the idea.

So when we saw the Knipex plastic pipe cutter, it immediately struck us that it could be used for automotive wiring harness sheathing in a pinch. 

The plastic pipe cutter isn’t really much more than a razorblade with a ratcheting squeeze handle wrapped in a die-cast aluminum body, but that can be super useful if you are going to be wiring all day and cutting 6mm  – 35mm tubing or plastic pipe — like we were last week.

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Phillip submitted these very nice electricians’ pliers.  At first glance they look like plain needle-nose pliers, but if you look closely you’ll note that there are a few extra features designed into the jaws.  Specifically, they can strip 14-gauge and 16-gauge wire, and they can crimp solderless terminals — and still serve as quality needle-nose pliers.

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In every heist movie ever made someone always pulls a tool out of a their magic bag of tools that appears out of nowhere.  Nine times out of ten what they pull out of that bag is a small pair of cutters that look just like normal cutters but cut through steel like tin foil.  As unlikely as that seems, it might have been somewhat believable had they been using the CoBolt lever action center cutter.  

In short, think of them as pint-sized bolt cutters. 

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Knipex claims these cutters offer a perfect combination of cutting blade hardness and leverage (think handle length and shape) to cut with far less effort than other end cutters, which comes in handy when you’re cutting something bigger than bailing wire — like bolts, nails, or rivets.

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When we saw these, we experienced one of those “why didn’t we think of this” moments.  Thankfully, Knipex did think of it — water pump pliers with an extended, narrow jawset which can fit into all sorts of little, tight spaces.

There’s not much to say about these that you can’t figure out just from looking at the picture (right), except to point out that they also have a large number of lock grooves, which’ll make it easier to set an exact adjustment.

Knipex offers these in a variety of sizes, ranging from 7″ starting at around $20 all the way up to 22″ sets that go for more like $85.  We found a number of sets available online as well.

And, if you need a pair of these right now, you can often find them at your local Sears store as well as in some other retailers’ shops.

“Cobra” Extra-Slim Water Pump Pliers [Knipex]
Street Pricing [Froogle]