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- Verified Buyer
These pliers are certainly worth investing in if you are an avid fisherman or you just like to use good high quality equipment during your outdoor fishing adventures. I'm both, but as a mechanical engineer, these need to go back to the drawing board. I purchased the 7.5 inch pair so this review is only on that item as it is a little different than the smaller versions. The 7.5 inch pair are sized just about right for my hands and feel pretty good when using. They feel very smooth and solid and have good weight to them and they are certainly heavier than my old aluminum pair, but would be lighter weight than a carbon steel pair of the same size. The jaws are well aligned and they have stayed that way even after pretty heavy use on the ocean, dehooking sharks (10/0 hook) and other pelagics (3/0-5/0 hooks and toothy creatures). They are one piece construction with solid jaws through and through. The carbide cutters work well on braid and fluorocarbon. They spring open very well too and maintain their springiness so far. The leather sheath is thick, durable, semi-water proof/resistant, and adds additional quality and look to the total package.Now for the negative....Yeah the sheath is leather and durable and seems to be doing well, even around salt water, but I think a high quality poly-something or some other man made material that's water proof should be researched, investigated, and possibly used instead, if found to be better than leather....or, for the price, provide both kinds of sheaths so if using in the water, one could go with the man made sheath, and if using on dry land, they could stick with the leather sheath. The lanyard is a total joke, it's short, thin, made of some kind of fiber material, and breaks and wears out easily. The carabiner is a nice touch, but it's just unnecessary at it's current size and weight for the intended application. I replaced my lanyard, carabiner, and connection ends with the best ones I could find, a poly-something sheathed stainless steel coil lanyard with heat shrinked aluminum ferrules, and then I also replaced the carabiner with simple high quality 316 stainless steel heavy split rings, I think 1 inch diameter or they're maybe 1-1/8 or 1-1/4 inch, it just works better in my opinion. The connection points for the lanyard are the next areas I would also redesign....first off, the connection points on the sheath and on the pliers are heavy stainless steel D-rings, like an 18-8, 303, 304 type stainless, and at first site look solid, durable, and high quality, but have major design flaws. Anything fishing, should be 316 stainless steel. 303, 304 work but slightly magnetic and slight rust, just light surface rust, won't really hurt structurally but over time could present problems, staining probably being the worst, but still not a major problem if that's what material is used. That said, I really don't know what material these D-rings are made from, assuming stainless though for sure, probably not 316 but still stainless and working good so far. The main problems with the D-rings are the locations. The first bad location is the D-ring on the back of the leather sheath, why not out the side, I see your sheaths that you sell separately have it that way and just curious why not your plier sets? It makes more sense to have the D-ring out the side like just about 99% of all other plier sheaths. My reason for out the side rather than from behind is the way the lanyard tangles and pulls from the back location. An out the side D-ring location would allow the lanyard to have a front facing connection that wouldn't wrap around the sheath and tangle. Then there is the D-ring on the pliers....Danco/Premio has to know this design is total crap, come on. For the 7.5 inch pliers, the handles have cutouts, to look cool or to reduce weight or to just look different than the smaller versions, but by having these cutouts, rather than a dedicated hole for the D-ring like the smaller versions, the D-ring on the 7.5 inch model can slide up and down in the handle cutout and can also roll and turn sideways and can jam in the cutout and also crimp and abrade the crappy fiber lanyard and cause it to prematurely wear and tear and fail. To fix this, I cross drilled a separate hole on the end of the handle and ran my split ring through that hole, which is basically perpendicular to the orientation of the original D-ring. I was going to re-use the D-ring in the new cross drilled hole and then attach my split ring to that D-ring, but decided it was cleaner and more direct just to attach the split ring directly to the pliers. Put some blue tape around the hole to prevent scratches while attaching the split ring. The look is way cooler and more professional with the new cross drilled hole and split ring location compared to the old location in the handle cutout, plus the lanyard and D-ring no longer jam in the handle cutout causing those type problems. The next problem lolol, I'm a mechanical engineer so critiquing designs, research, development, brainstorming, redesigning, etc....are my bread and butter, is the handle design. Now the handle design might only apply to the 7.5 inch pliers from looking at the photos of the different sizes. You see how the handle of the 7.5 inch size curves inward at the very end of the pliers, well this is a problem. My old aluminum pliers, the handles just basically just stayed straight, pretty much like the smaller versions of these pliers which if you look at the photos of the smaller versions with the single holes on the handle ends you can see how they almost, just barely, even ever so slightly, hook out just a bit, but basically just stay straight. Why is this important you ask, well, when you are removing the pliers from the sheath while hanging on your waist belt, the 7.5 inch pliers with the inward curved handles are hard to grab a hold of, especially with wet hands, and your hands just slip off. I end up grabbing just one handle and lifting just that as I can get my fingers around it enough to hold on and pull up. I tried my old 7.5 aluminum pliers in the danco/premio leather sheath to test that theory and sure enough that did the trick. I could reach back and lift them right out, so the smaller version danco/premio pliers probably work fine too and don't have that problem like the 7.5 inch version. I don't know why the engineers at danco/premio (if they have engineers, which could be where the problem started lol) changed the design between the 6.5, 7, and 7.5 inch models, but they screwed the pooch by doing so. Okay, and as if that weren't enough, my last negative would be the jaw length. At least for the 7.5 inch model I think the jaws could be just a little longer, like 1/8-1/4 inch is all and continue the taper down to a smaller point as well, just a bit, but they're good like they are anyway, this would just make them better. In fact, let me know if I can help improve any of your other stuff. I use to do this for a living but I'm older now and just fish lol.Bottom line, Compared to other all titanium pliers on the market these are probably the best bang for the buck and despite my critique and recommendations for improvements they are still good solid quality pliers that just need a few improvements...at least the 7.5 inch pliers do. I think the smaller versions might not have the D-ring problem and the handle curve problem, but still would have the leather sheath, the rear D-ring location issue, and the crappy lanyard (laughable) material and length. Hope this helps.
