Knipex has new needle nose combination pliers with a 185mm (~7-1/4″) length, expanding upon their existing 145mm (~5-3/4″) length pliers with similar features.
The Knipex needle nose or long nose combination pliers features straight wire cutting blades, wide gripping jaws, fine gripping jaws, and a round slot for gripping smooth round materials such as nails and wires.
The pliers will be available in four styles:
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- 08 21 185 – black atramentized with dipped handle grips
- 08 25 185 – chrome plated with cushion handle grips
- 08 22 185 – polished black atramentized with cushion handle grips
- 08 26 185 – chrome plated with VDE insulated cushion handle grips
The pliers can be used for common tasks where you might want fine gripping or twisting action, or if you’re working in tight spaces.
But they also have specially shaped jaws that can securely grip larger flat parts.
The jaws appear to be straight and flat near the tip, before slightly tapering away from each other.
The shape of the jaws gives you more gripping contact area than other styles of long nose pliers that only have straight jaws.
The inner gripping area is larger and tooth in such a way it can grip and turn 6pt hex head fasteners.
It can also grip smooth cylindrical objects.
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A groove in the mid-section of the fine-tooth jaws allows for slip-free gripping of smooth thin materials, such as nails.
The cutting edges are induction hardened to approximately 64 HRC.
Wire Cutting Capacity
- Medium Hard Wire – 3.8mm
- Hard Wire – 3mm
- Multi-Stranded Copper Wire Cable – 13mm
- Multi-Stranded Copper Wire Cable – 25mm²
Price: ~$40 and up
Note: Amazon has lower pricing than USA dealers, but you have to wait for international shipping – which is free via Amazon Global Store UK – and it’s unclear as to whether this will affect USA warranty coverage.
Discussion
These pliers look to fill multiple roles.
I have pliers with grooved fastener and tubing-gripping jaws, but I rarely use them on hex bolts or similar. Maybe your needs and usage environments will be different.
The fastener-gripping grooves aren’t new for Knipex either – I first posted about their simialrly featured combination side-cutting pliers more than 13 years ago. That’s not a bad thing, it only means they perfected its shape long ago.
I’m intrigued by the shape of the fine gripping section of the jaws. In my experience, long nose and needle nose pliers work best on very thin materials. It looks like Knipex came up with a way to shape the jaws for greater contact when gripping a broader range of materials.
Maybe Knipex carried the idea over from their TwinGrip pliers?
Will pliers like these replace two (or more) pliers in your kit?
fred
Nice – I ordered a pair of the plain-jane ones (08 21 185) via your Amazon link.
$33.70 with free shipping from the UK – will make a good “stocking stuffer”
MM
I love Knipex pliers and I have a lot of them but this is one that I don’t think I’ll be picking up. I have many different pairs of needle-nose, gripping, and cutting pliers so this isn’t adding any functionality I don’t already have.
That said I could see these being useful for someone who doesn’t want to carry a lot of pliers on the job and wants one pair with a lot of flexibility. These look like a nice middle-of-the-road design. The tip fits into tight spaces better than most pliers but at the same time they are not so delicate as standard needle-nose.
Jared
That’s exactly what I thought about them. Great solution for someone looking to pack less tools, but unnecessary if you’re working out of a tool chest or just don’t need to combine functions.
Daniel
I have the 08-21-145 version and they are one of my go to pliers on a daily basis for repairing equipment. I use them it install c & k clips, reform stamped metal, and general grading pulling and twisting. I absolutely love them.
The Snap On LN46ACF have given them bit of competition on which ones I grab, but the Knipex combination still gets the most use.
Wayne R.
A few months ago, I ordered the smaller size from Amazon. I got some weird rock & roll CD instead, had to UPS it back to Britain and Amazon lost it somewhere. I finally got a credit back after calling CS, and haven’t tried again.
Wayne R.
A few months ago, I ordered the smaller size from Amazon. I got some weird rock & roll CD instead, had to UPS it back to Britain, and Amazon lost it somewhere. I finally got credit back after calling CS, and haven’t tried again.
Spevak Designs
Thanks for the heads up. Ordered a new plain red handle pair via Amazon UK for $33.60 incl intl shipping to US. I really like the 145’s and find them to be very handy but occasionally a bit small to handle. They have much stiffer jaws than a typical needle nose and are much more stout in gripping and twisting motions. Happy to see they’ve made a larger pair and looking forward to adding them to the toolbox. I think these will do quite well.
Koko The Talking Ape
For the first time, I can think of a possible improvement to a Knipex pliers. That fastener gripping area, with the large teeth, seems likely to chew up hex nuts and bolt heads. Or at least that’s happened to me when I used slip-joint pliers a few times.
So a better design might be something like you see on “parrot-nose” pliers, with a toothed recess on one jaw with sides at 60 deg to hold two flats of a hex nut, and a protrusion on the other jaw to press on a third flat. That kind of three-point hold would also work on round pipe and rods, but not on square nuts. And maybe it would make the jaws too bulky. But I don’t like the round, toothed recess that doesn’t seem designed for any particular use. Well maybe there’s no better alternative for general use.
Otherwise, these pliers look well designed. The front part of the jaw is especially clever. And like other Knipex pliers, I would expect these to be beautifully made and finished.
Koko The Talking Ape
Or, instead of parrot-beak jaws, maybe they could use the jaw design that Knipex’s own TwinGrip pliers use. Here’s ToolGuy’s discussion of the design.
https://toolguyd.com/knipex-twingrip-pliers/
The jaws make a parallelogram that looks like it could grip fasteners well, but maybe they’re designed specificially to work with for slip joints.
Come to that, why aren’t there any long-nose pliers with slip-joints ? Or parallel jaws?
MM
I suspect the reason for the traditional serrations instead of the parrot-beak is that these pliers are meant to be general purpose, so that “gripping area” is for gripping all sorts of round-ish objects and not just hex fasteners.
There aren’t many slip-joint long nose pliers out there but there are a couple of really good ones. Snap-On LN47ACF and LN46ACF are 9″ and 7″ respectively.
Koko The Talking Ape
I’m sure you’re right, though that means that while the gripping area can grip lots of things, it will grip nothing very well, and will tend to damage whatever it grips. I think I would rather have two or three less versatile tools if they do their jobs better.
Thanks for the tip about that slip-joint long-nose! It hasn’t happened often, but a few times I’ve had things slip out of my long-nose pliers, I think because pliers jaws were too far out of parallel. I just wish those Snap-ons had a locking joint like my Twin-Grips.
MM
I like the Twin-Grip’s joint much better than the traditional slip-joint style on the Snap-Ons, but even with that style of joint those are very good pliers. They are not cheap but I feel they are well worth the money. Snap-On’s “Talon Grip” pliers have just as much attention to the detail of the jaw design and serration quality as Knipex. The teeth are hard and sharp.
Koko The Talking Ape
Just another thought in case somebody from Knipex reads these comments: Instead fo a 60 degree recess in one jaw, make it 120 degrees, and have the other jaw grip an opposite flat on the fastener, much like Knipex’s own Raptor pliers do. That would let the jaws stay slim, and would work on both square and hex nuts and bolts. It still wouldn’t grip round stock, but we have their Cobra pliers for that.
JoeM
Okay, this isn’t a criticism (At All!) but am I imagining that this is the design of pliers that we had on the Pre-2013-ish Leatherman tools? Before the replaceable blades and larger plier heads, weren’t they cut like this? Needlenose, leading into Round Grip, leading to Cutter? One may point out that gap in the middle of the needlenose, but I believe the Charge models had a crimper there for the longest time, before being re-released as Charge+ and Charge+ TTI, with the new-and-improved replaceable cutter blades. They moved the crimper to where the Surge has one, between the handles, behind the plier jaws. (Also happens to be a hard wire cutter on the Surge, but not the Charge… If I recall correctly.)
If it is the same design… umm… Is that a good thing? Leatherman replaced that gap in the needlenose due to it compromising the strength of the pliers, making it snap off there. Are these Knippex designs any stronger? Or better designed to compensate for that? For the price, I’m pretty sure they’re using a better steel than Leatherman’s 420C standard stainless, but… is it enough?
MM
This design is a middle-of-the-road compromise. They are certainly going to be weaker than larger square-jawed pliers like linesman’s or pliers that lack any sort of notch. But at the same time they can reach into tighter places than the typical linesman’s type pliers and are more robust than a traditional needle-nose design. Whether they are good or bad depends on your requirements. I wouldn’t choose these for fixing fences but as a general purpose repair or service tech these look great. Knipex has had this same style of pliers before just in a shorter length, I assume they must be popular for them to expand to a larger size.
I don’t have much interest because of their redundancy to other pliers I already own but if I had to build a general purpose traveling toolkit or some similar application where I had to keep the number of tools low I would strongly consider these.
Heck, I may end up buying a pair anyway. I’m a sucker for Knipex pliers with the chrome finish and VDE grips. It is very rare that I work on live electronics but it’s nice to have the added safety, and most importantly they are just so comfortable, and very good about not being slippery if your hands are dirty.
JoeM
Okay MM… From your description (Which I appreciate thoroughly! Such a lovely writing style!) I’m not imagining it, these are the Knippex attempt at what the older Leatherman pliers were failing at… Hence why they were replaced in newer models, obviously. I was really asking if I was the only one seeing the similarity, but you’ve confirmed I’m not imagining things! Thank You very much for that!
I don’t own any Knippex, but I do like them. Like Wera, Wiha, and Proto, they have my serious respect for the quality they put out. Yeah, you can get cheaper, but you get what you pay for. These are the kinds of companies you save up for, so you can relax and worry less about damaged or broken tools. And, yeah… I do have two of the Leatherman models that I could compare most of it to, my Next Gen Wave has the old style, but not the groove in the middle of the Needlenose. It was the Charge series that I was concerned for, since they had the wire crimper in the nose, and there were frequent reports of breakoffs at that point. I trust Knippex has done something better to ensure that groove isn’t a weak point.
It’s a good design! It’s worth having multiple sizes for good designs!
Jeremy Neill
They’ve got me plain and simple. It’s to the point where I have to buy these things cash only to leave no paper trail for My wife to see. I’ve got way too many Knipex pliers that look brand new because I just look at them say “my precious” all day.
criketzchirping
As an auto mechanic I am heavily invested in Knipex pliers, mostly because of their superior quality and gripping retention. However, I doubt I’ll get a pair of these because Snapon already beat them to the punch with the LN46ACF pliers, which I have and love. Probably my biggest complaint about these is that they are not slip joint like the Snapon’s. That being said the teeth design is very similar and looks like they would be able to grip anything it can fit its jaws on- including round stock. Not that they need to be able to grip round stock; because I would 100x sooner grab a pair of cobras for that job than a long nose pliers.
Ciccio
I am not sure if i want to spend $$$ to buy this pliers. I mean they look very good and i’m sure quality is on par with the brand name, but…… as a HVAC service tech i already have my long nose pliers from Klein, and to be honest this is the only one i use. I also have a lineman ones and barely use them.
Over the years i tried different brands, made in America, China, Germany and so on.
Nothing beat Klein pliers to me. Although i have side cutters and pump pliers from Knipex and they are the only one i would buy again.