Bent-Nosed Pliers: 90 degrees off.
**image courtesy of a patient cat and a steady hand. No cats were harmed durning the writing of this post. Image above: "Using bent-nosed pliers to test if your cat is pointy." I'm learning how to work with gems and silver. It's something I've wanted to do since I was a kid, and, well, no time like the middle age to do something. There's a number of specialized tools, and they're cool, so, why not share. Bent-nosed pliers are the first I want to share. At first, they seem like an unnecessary complexity to what is basically the Platonic ideal of a tool: pliers. Two sticks, held together with a hinge, giving you a levered mechanical advantage that you can use to pinch something and thus manipulate it in various ways.…