Monday, July 29, 2013

Waldes-Truarc circlip pliers

I was reorganizing my circlip pliers and found I had three made in the U.S. by Waldes-Truarc:



The one at the bottom is very clever, since, by changing the pivot position, it can be switched for use with both outside and inside snap-rings.

I can't find out much about the company, aside from the fact that it's been in existence for almost 75 years, and it introduced 2 types of retaining rings for aircraft use in 1942.  It was acquired by SKF in 1985.

The German Seeger-Orbis website states that one of their employees, Hugo Heiermann, first patented the retaining ring as a "Bolt Locking Device" in 1927, and claims that these are still colloquially referred to as "Seeger rings" in Europe.  

1 comment:

  1. Lovely tools, but sadly nowhere near as useful today, now that circlips or "Seeger rings" are positioned in such dastardly tight spaces that you'll need all of the best most specific style of bent long-nose pliers ... and need to modify 'em too as I've recently had to do, just to rebuild a couple of motorcycle hydraulic master-cylinders. I had deemed my multi-tip set as "cheap" but after using 'em I came to se the utility in leaving their tips soft: you can bend 'em just enough to reach into position yet they're not so soft as to bend under repeated use. Makes a lot of sense. If I had bought the several pairs of more conventional hardened tool steel "pliers" style, which would've been necessary to match the range of the "cheap" adjustable set, I'd have had to grind 'em down to kindling just to reach the clips!

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