My go-to trick for stubborn lockwire always failed until a coworker showed me a better way

I used to twist lockwire by hand with pliers and it always came out loose or uneven after I pulled it through the first hole. Last week, my coworker Dave showed me to wrap the wire around the pliers jaw twice before the final twist, which gives a perfect tension every time. Has anyone else found a weird little twist technique that made lockwiring way easier?

2 comments

2 Comments

kevin_schmidt971mo agoMost Upvoted

Man, that's such a good trick! It's funny how the little extra wrap changes everything. It's like the same thing with tying knots or even tightening a belt, sometimes you just need that one extra loop to make it hold. Once you see it, you start noticing that pattern everywhere, like how people add a second twist to a zip tie or double wrap a hose clamp. It's always the small, dumb fix that saves you the most time in the long run.

angelac631mo ago

Oh come on @kevin_schmidt97, you're really selling this like it's some kind of life hack epiphany... it's just an extra wrap on a zip tie, buddy. I've done the double twist on a clamp plenty of times when I was too lazy to find the right size, and half the time it just makes the thing harder to undo later. Same with "the perfect knot" - I've seen guys in my garage spend ten minutes on a fancy wrap when a simple overhand would've held just fine for what they were doing. Sure, it works sometimes, but let's not pretend it's some universal truth, you know? It's just a trick, not a whole way of seeing the world.