About 20 years ago, another tradesman asked me if I had a wire cutter he could borrow. I loaned him my end-cutting pliers. He tried to cut off a hardened-steel deck screw with them and chipped the cutting edges in the process. He offered to replace the tool, but I declined. I had always used the tool to cut and pull nails, and it still had plenty of intact edge.
A few days later, I noticed that the wire cutter worked better for pulling nails with the chipped edges. Instead of sometimes cutting through the nails, it gripped them more thoroughly. Using an oscillating multitool and a small grinding stone, I rounded the broken area and ground off a small portion of the adjacent cutter so that the gap was about half the diameter of an 8d nail. This worked so well that I ground a smaller recess on the other side for finish nails. I still have the normal cutting edges in the center of the jaws when I need them. This is now a “must-carry” tool in my belt.
Doug McClurg, Murphy, OR
This sucks ass