Knipex vs. Klien

jamiedolan

Hello;

I am making out my Christmas list, and plan on asking for some new electrical tools, strippers, linemans pliers, needle nose pliers, side cutters. I want insulated tools, and have been looking at Klien. However I have noticed some of the Knipex tools look pretty nice and have seen some good pricing on them.

Any thoughts on the Knipex tools? I guess I have little doubt as to the quality of Klien as they are very well known and the Kliens I have now are very nice tools.

Jamie

junkcollector

Knipex makes excellent tools. No one will argue that.

I have (and probably many others) have noticed that Klein's quality has slipped a little in the past few years, but as a whole they make good products.

Why insulated tools? Planning on working on live circuits? I personally think that the handles make them too bulky for general use and are a waste of money for the do-it-yourselfer. But...Each to his own.

hychesee

I know this is a month old but I just got here.

Jamie, I was an industrial electrician at a 2 million square foot facility about 20 miles south of you. We were required to have double insulated tools to work on live equipment and had bought Knipex as a companion to my Klines, they are very nice and so pretty that you didn't want to use them, I even kept them in a separate box to keep them safe.

If you are using them in a required environment and be inspected you will keep them all wrapped up too, they have the pretty colors to tell when one of the insulation barriers have been breached, they then have to be replaced. We also needed special clothing spec'd down to our underwear.