The 180 mm Knipex plier wrench is a good size for all of my boat and trailer applications.photographs by the author

The 180mm Knipex plier wrench is a good size for all of my boat and trailer applications.

I have a lot of wrenches and pliers in my shop. There’s plenty of room for them there, but aboard my boats I have to keep my toolkit to a minimum. A single tool that can stand in for several is a welcome addition; the Knipex plier wrench, as its name suggests, does the work of both pliers and wrenches. Its parallel jaws will fit hex nuts and bolts and its extraordinary gripping power makes it possible to tighten them and loosen even rusted ones without slipping off and rounding their corners.The power comes from the short half-circle tab, a part of the upper handle that drives the sliding lower jaw. From the center of the pivot to the bearing surface on the tab is just 3⁄8″; from the center of the pivot to the middle of the handgrips is 4″. That’s a mechanical advantage of 10.7 to 1. With my grip strength of 85 lbs (measured by squeezing a bathroom scale in both hands and dividing the reading by 2), the pliers can apply 909 lbs of pressure. Squeezing at the ends of the handles pushes that over a half ton. By comparison, my old pair of angle-nose slip-joint pliers, roughly the same size and shape as the Knipex, can expert only 218 lbs at the jaws’ tip and 544 lbs at their inner angle. The Knipex can flatten the edge of a steel washer and pinch small cable crimps tight, things pliers can’t do.

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