Monday, November 15, 2010

WOODEN PLIERS

This weird thing has been in a desk drawer for 2 decades now. It's a wooden pair of pliers with extra littler pliers built in here and there. I made it back when I was a teenager with a coping saw and an X-Acto blade; hence the cuts are crooked and rough. It's difficult to get a good angle of it so I took a few pictures.

Here's the 2nd one and it isn't any more clear.

And yet another difficult-to-understand photo.

You can fold the tiny pliers handles in to make it look like this.

Then you can fold the medium-size pliers handles in. It looks like regular a regular pair of pliers now, sort of.

When you fold the big pliers handles together it settles into its original form, a stick.
This was not my idea. I saw a picture of one in a book a long time ago and wished I had one. Since they didn't sell them at the store the only alternative was to make it myself.

To make one of your own there isn't really any pattern for it. Just start with a square stick and do the biggest pair of pliers first. Cut as much as you can with a coping saw (or preferably a scroll saw), and then do the rest with a very long, skinny, thin carving blade. Just keep working your way to the middle of the wood, going at it from both sides and meeting in the middle. Take your time and don't force anything too hard. Eventually you'll feel the pieces separate.

Once you get the biggest pliers handles completed, do the same thing in half(?) scale to each handle, and then quarter(?) scale to those new handles. Whatever the scale would be. It's math; therefore it's magic and mystery, and does not compute in my head.

6 comments:

  1. What's that old expression ? A Man without Wooden Pliers is like a Fish without an Electric Guitar (?) You continue to cover all the bases ! They should use this device in Transformers 3 (insert metamorphosizing sound effect here) !!!

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  2. your mind works in mysterious ways my friend. i cant imagine looking at something and then thinking to myself, hey i can carve this outta wood! brilliant.

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  3. KW: You are a seriously unusual dude.

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  4. Mykal and Willy, thanks guys!

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