Review on Grip GR127B06 Bent Locking Pliers by Jorge Maertz

I was looking for the highest quality long jaw pliers as I will be using them a lot in a variety of situations and need them to work well. I'm an HVAC technician, so I travel light when I'm on rooftops or other hard-to-reach places. Many of my tools are multifunctional and should work without complications that reduce the quality or time of a project. Pride was not the focus here, I wanted a high-quality instrument. I have other grip-on pliers, such as the standard locking pliers set, and they are well constructed, have minimal pivot flex, good jaw alignment, and are durable. fair price. So I settled on these 10" curved long noses. They came with an orange and black grip-on powder coat which looked nice and even. The product description says nickel plating by the way, but as the picture reflects, they are powder coated orange and black.The jaw adjustment screw, like most locking pliers, was not too smooth and had a slightly rough thread.The cocking mechanism was smooth and offered good leverage, but business has been downhill.The jaws have a significant angular displacement of about 5 degrees In other words, if you look at the tips of the pliers when the pliers are pointed at you, the jaws are tilted or twisted. It looks like the lips were twisted when used as part of the "curved nose" feature " been bent. This makes them pretty much useless for any precise clamping task. I put them in a vise so they're off now straightened, but that was a bad oversight for a $30 pair of pliers. Additionally, the clearance of the jaw hinges allows the tips of the jaws to move back and forth about 3/16 of an inch. Not ideal for tasks that require the jaws to come together evenly. I think this can be reduced by hitting the hinge. a rivet to reduce the tilt of the hinge, or replace the rivet with a bolt/locknut. The connection could lengthen the frame that holds the jaw in place and that would also provide more stability without sacrificing ease of use . Come on engineers, what happened to the "Top Line" and not the "Bottom Line"! Anyway, I'll take a look at this now and see how it works. The jaw processing is fine as the tips say. slightly deformed at the end, causing excess material to pop out like mushrooms, possibly due to the forging process. This too was corrected by sanding the excess but now the finish was gone and I didn't even have to do that. So combine everything with a $32 label and I get 2 stars. Unfortunately I can't find any better quality 9" or larger long jaw pliers so I'll stick with them. I never thought I'd write a story about pliers but hey, life is strange!