If you ask ten electricians which company makes the best lineman's pliers, all ten would say 'Klein' (trust me, I actually asked ten... and I'm an electrician). In fact, most electricians call any lineman’s pliers “Kleins” - though they probably shouldn't. They have set the standard for lineman’s pliers in the way that Xerox set the standard for copying machines back in the day, or Kleenex did for tissues. Klein tools are on the top of the list for electrician's tools because it's their specialty - and when that's all you do, you tend to get good at it. The Klein lineman’s pliers are said to be the best made. With all of the recent competition, and years of other manufacturers crafting competing products, we were curious to see if they still held the title.
There's something about having good hand tools. When you've got them, you never want to go back to anything less, and when you don't have them, they really make an impact when you finally get to a point where you can put your hands on something that's really designed well and performs perfectly for the job at hand. When we decided to rewire a two-story 1920 home in our neighborhood, it was obvious that the job would require great hand tools. For all of our wire stripping needs, we turned to Klein and their Klein-Kurve K1214 Dual NM (Non-Metal) Cable Strippers. These are reported to be among the best 12/2 and 14/2 wire strippers you'll find on the market and they are something we see a lot of out in the work force.
Electricians use glow rods when they're looking to pull wire from a crawlspace or from one open cavity to another. It's a wonderful solution for easily identifying whether or not you've struck the right location when drilling a new entry point for 12/2 or other electrical wire, or when needing something a bit stiffer than Jet Line that can be sent "upwards" from below. It's also world's easier to manipulate than steel fish tape over shorter distances. If you've ever done electrical work, it's likely that you've used a threaded rod system, but Klein's 15' Glow Rod set is particularly nice in that it has the added advantage of drawing attention to itself in the wall cavity through the use of luminescent rods.
Klein Tools are known for their durability, ergonomics and robustness. In fact, when you reach for a pair of Kleins, it's a good thing if you have the name brand, but if you don't - the company has so infiltrated the market that the entire genre of lineman's pliers have been renamed to "Kleins" by most professionals and tradesmen. We're not sure how the company feels about that, but it's certainly a compliment by anybody who's not a lawyer or trademark protector by trade. We ventured out and grabbed one of their High Strength Stainless Steel 240' Fish Tapes for a recent rewiring job that we undertook on a 1920's Colonial Style home. This home presented a tremendous amount of challenges to us for pulling wire from the crawl space to the second story attic.
New tools are often nothing special. Most of the time they are incremental updates, but occasionally, they alter the makeup of an existing idea enough to be considered original - like the one-handed reciprocating saw, for example. But other times, they are downright original. I mean, truly original - as in "the first of its kind". Milwaukee pulled this off when it saw a need for identifying and fixing fluorescent lighting. There simply wasn't a meter on the market that could troubleshoot and fix this style of lighting quickly and easily. What the new Milwaukee 2210-20 Fluorescent Lighting Tester does is allow maintenance professionals to extend a probe, turn to the lamp function, press the test function and check to see if the lamp is good or bad. But how? The meter emits high frequency voltage when it contacts the glass. This process "activates" the bulb because the rod acts as a ballast which will energize a good lamp.
Sometimes I'm enamored by fancy features and new, advantageous inventions that call me to a higher realization of what a particular tool can do. Other times, I just like to grab what I need, know it will work, and go. Amprobe makes the aforementioned tool, but the ACD-4 Clamp Meter isn't it - this is a tried and true device aimed at putting a simple-to-use clamp meter into the hands of just about anyone. And it works.
Some people have extensive electrical test and measurement devices on-hand, ready to go at a moments notice. But there is the homeowner who doesn't need all that much - and why spend more than you have to to get a basic kit that can handle light duty testing for live power and ensuring that outlet you added is working correctly. Need to check the voltage on a circuit or even a 9V battery? Perhaps a less-robust set of tools is all you really need. For this very reason, and for this very consumer, Amprobe has released the PK-100R Electrical Test Kit at Lowe's. It's a compact kit that will, let's face it, do 90% of the tasks you're likely to take on as a homeowner.
When we first set eyes on the Milwaukee 2205-20 Fork Meter, we thought it was a quaint tool - but its compact size is in stark contrast to its impressive feature set. Turns out, this is a rugged compact CAT IV electricians tool that has lots of great features, not the least of which are an integrated LED work light and reverse white-on-black LCD display. After using it over the past few weeks, we've come to appreciate its convenience and size as well as the way it makes one-handed measurements both possible and practical.
In my time I've used a lot of meters. Ever since my first home I've installed enough circuits and cabling to rewire half a city block. I've had a trusty Fluke meter for some time as well as a number of generic volt meters and such that have done the job sufficiently, albeit with varying degrees of convenience and accuracy. What fascinated us about the new line of Milwaukee Clamp Meters was the amount of convenience features bundled into a CAT III-rated UL-certified solution that seemed to be a nice one-tool-fits-all solution for most journeymen. In particular, the Milwaukee 2237-20 Clamp Meter, with its integrated LED light and reverse white-on-black LCD display, has proved to be one of the easier meters I've ever used.
The Milwaukee 2202-20 Voltage Detector with LED light is a simple, but perfectly useful tool. It's strength is in the fact that it does what it needs to without frills and without costing an arm and a leg. It's powered by a couple of AAA batteries and is small and light enough to store in a pocket, tool belt or just about anywhere.
When it comes to identifying circuit breakers in an existing home, using a circuit breaker finder may be the easiest way to make a difficult and tedious project as simple as possible. By using a transmitter and receiver, a circuit breaker finder like the A.W. Sperry CS550A quickly and easily identifies individual branch circuits at the panel box without interrupting power. It is quite simply the easiest, if not best way to accurately locate circuit breakers. The system is compact in size and extremely easy to use and locates both AC Breakers and Fuses.
See All Articles In This Section
