Vise-Grips Memories

A Restorer Reacts as the Tool Line Moves Overseas.

Editor’s note: A Vise-Grips is one of those tools that you pretty much expect to find in everyone’s toolbox.

So when it was announced a few months ago that the manufacture of the popular tool line would be moved from Nebraska to China, many folks responded with a sense of nostalgia regarding a favorite helper

After all, the Vise-Grips line has quite a history as an American Designed and manufactured product. The device goes back about 90 years to when it was developed by William Petersen, a Danish immigrant who worked as a blacksmith in DeWitt, Nebraska, a town in the southeastern portion of the state.

As the story goes, Petersen realized that working with metal would be a lot easier if he had pliers that would clamp down and hold things “in a vise-like grip.” So he came up with a method of combining the function of pliers and a vise in one tool and hammered out the first metal prototype on his forge.

Since then the Vise-Grips line has been manufactured in DeWitt, and when the word came out that another page in American manufacturing history was about to turn, a number of people, including veteran restoration pro and Auto Restorer contributor Larry Lyles, couldn’t help but react…

VISE-GRIPS IS moving to China. When I read about the move in the local newspaper I can’t say I was surprised. These days it seems every industry out there is headed for China. Cheap labor, lax environmental laws and fast ships to bring the bright shiny new Chinese-made Vise-Grips back to the U.S. That equates to profits and the whole world operates on profits.

It’s just that American-made Vise-Grips have been a tradition in my toolbox for as long as I can remember.

In fact, we’ve been working together for so long, I’m not sure I want a pair of Chinese-made Vise-Grips co-mingling with my American-made Vise-Grips. I’ll have to think about that one.

A Shared History

We go back a long way, Vise-Grips and I. When I turned 12, my father gave me a shotgun for my birthday. My brother gave me a pair of Vise-Grips.

I still have the Vise-Grips.

Since that first pair I’ve managed to accumulate a number of Vise-Grips. They all work great with the exception of the springs. It just doesn’t take me long to render the spring inside the Vise-Grips into a stretched length of coiled wire. The Vise-Grips still work; it’s just that I often have to tuck that arm thing back into the tool in order to get them to work— which is something I do almost daily. (I know that replacement springs are available, and I have replaced a few of them. The problem I run into is that I often use the Vise-Grips in the presence of a lot of heat. The springs don’t like the heat.)

I’ve used Vise-Grips to steer vehicles, clamp fuel lines, hold fenders in place, and connect chains when I needed a longer one. That’s just a few of the things I’ve done with Vise-Grips. I also know everyone who owns a pair has a Vise Grips story. Some are ordinary, some are really out there. Here’s my “out there” Vise-Grips story.

A co-worker I’ll call “Jerry” had just crawled underneath a wrecked truck so that he could stick his hand where it didn’t belong. A few seconds later a loud crash followed by a number of words not to be repeated here came from the corner of the shop. Jerry’s hand had become trapped between a broken leaf spring and the top of the front axle. We worked frantically to remove his stuck hand. But no go. The broken spring held him fast.

Then someone yelled “Vise-Grips! We need Vise-Grips!” They came from everywhere, dozens of them. Within minutes we managed to stair-step that assortment of Vise-Grips along the length of that broken spring, slowly compressing it until at last Jerry was free.

He was immediately whisked off to the local hospital where he would make a complete recovery.

An Easy Tool Retrieval

Those of us left at the shop removed the Vise-Grips from the broken spring and piled them on the floor.

The big question then was how to determine whose Vise-Grips were whose. Some were dented, some were chipped, some looked brand-new, but they all looked like Vise-Grips. I gathered the eight pair I had contributed and returned them to my tool box.

How did I know which were mine?

I owned the ones with the broken springs. I can only hope the Chinese use better springs.