Piers Carpenter Road Tests Maun’s Thin Jaws Parallel Plier

Maun's Thin Jaws Parallel Plier

Interested in the Maun Thin Jaws Parallel Plier?

Don’t just take our word for it.

In this post, professional jewellery-maker Pliers Carpenter puts the Maun plier to the test.

About Maun Jewellery Tools

Maun has long been a respected brand within the jewellery sector and community, so much so that our tools are often referred to simply as Mauns.

We’re renowned for our British made, high-quality, durable tools that are suitable for professional use, last through the years and deliver results.

Benefits of the Thin Jaws Parallel Plier:

Jewellery makers have many processes they follow when creating their masterpieces, so having tools that can help along the way makes life that little easier. This parallel action plier boasts thin jaws along their full length. This tool offers easy operation in confined workspaces. Great for manipulating or straightening wires and chains. Engineered with smooth parallel jaws for a secure grip without damaging delicate pieces.

Maun currently manufactures just one version of this plier:

•    Maun 4880-160 Thin Jaws Parallel Plier 160 mm.

Piers road-tested them, and here’s what he had to say…

If you don’t have time to watch the whole video, we have highlighted Piers’ key messages as he road-tests the 4880-160, a 160 mm flat nose parallel plier with this jaws which allows for gaining access in confined spaces. He speaks on the benefits of the tool, and how he uses them for his work.

“Thin Jaws Parallel Plier, 4880-160. They are really fine, long jaw pliers from Maun. They are really good!"

Piers highlights the benefits of the thin jaws, comparing the tool with the Maun Snipe Nose Plier.

"These are really useful because they have that straight jaw, that's really fine. So they're perfect for things like bending a piece of sheet into a collet.

The other ones that I suppose would be closest for them in the Maun range would be the standard snipe-nosed ones. Now the difference that you've got is that these are tapered, so if you want to get a nice 90° fold in a piece of metal, you'd have to be holding these off at an angle which then increases the width of where the plier is holding on to. You don't have to lean these thin jaws at all, they're just dead straight. So, the width of the piece of mess that you hold them can be, well, just under 3 mil, which is very useful when you're making things like collets and generally just bending sheet metal into a nice square 90° angle. They're really useful for that."

Piers explains how he mainly uses the tool and why it is beneficial to his work.

"What I actually use them for most is when you melt up your gold or your silver or you know, precious metals, melt it in a crucible and pour it into the skillet. Now when you pour the metal into a skillet, you're going to end up with borax left from the melt on top of your ingot that you've poured.

It's also recommended that you forge out your ingot your rough ingot to compress the metal a bit before putting it through the rolling mills. Now these are perfect for that because I do a lot of remodelling of jewellery, so using people's precious metal, there's not always a lot and I suppose as well with the price of precious metals at the moment, you can't have a lot left over.
So that means sometimes you might be making a ring out of an ingot that's, you know, an inch long and five mil wide, so trying to hold that whilst forging it is really difficult and that's where I use these on a regular basis because they've got this stepped-in section. All of this rough surface is where the metal hasn't sort of been all compacted and everything, it's just sort of sat on top of each other on a molecular scale. What I would do, or what I do what I use these for on a regular basis, is hold the ingot in there and then I rest the pliers in that gap and it gives me a really nice sort of strength to hold the piece with clearance at the top so that when I hit that down with my big hammer, it clears the pliers. There's no damage to the pliers. It's just really good for that, you know?"

Piers explains why the larger plier for this design works really well for him, along with the added PVC grips.

"They have a longer handle than the others which at first maybe put me off a little bit because I don't have big hands. They are quite considerably larger if you are using them daily like on on the bench, making things that might be a bit frustrating for me, but for what I use them for, it's actually a benefit. It means I can really get a whole handful of grip.
They also have these finger gaurds on the grips, which are really good because you can rest your index finger above it and you know they're not slipping out, especially if you're really going at something in the hammer at the other end of the jaws. It just really improves grip.

Generally, I'm not a fan of the rubber grips, I prefer the feel of the metal. But again, for these it's perfect because when you're hammering something, the vibration from what you're doing, the force gets dispersed into whatever is surrounding it, including the pliers. Having that rubber grip for what I use them for dampens that vibration as well, which I think is brilliant."

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Further Reading

We hope you enjoyed this post by Piers Carpenter road testing the Maun Thin Jaws Parallel Plier.