Choosing the Right Tool

Choosing the correct tool is highly important. First and foremost, your tools should be comfortable for you. They should also match your skill level. If you are a beginner, then it might be best to invest in a tool that is manufactured in Asia and retails for $7.95. You don’t know how much beading you might do. When you get to be a pretty regular hobbyist or a even a professional, it might be time to spend more and receive a better quality tool. The Soft Flex® Professional Tool Line will be used as an example to demonstrate the types of questions that you should answer when choosing a tool. We distribute a number of tools that range from beginner level to an advanced level that are manufactured all over the world. The Soft Flex® Professional Tool Line are only the tools that we manufacture here in the United States.

What length best fits you?

In our Soft Flex® Professional Tool Line, we created two handle lengths, 3.5 inches vs. 2.5 inches.

Here is why we manufacture the 3.5 inch tool handle:

A tool is deemed ergonomic if it materially contributes to reducing the probability of cumulative trauma disorders with the hand, finger, wrist, or arm. The Soft Flex® Long Handled Tools have handles designed for transferring force from the operator to the point of operation in a highly ergonomic manner. The average American’s palm is approximately three inches wide. Therefore tool handles should be three inches long at least and 3 to 4 inches would be even more desirable. The length of our handles, from the joint to the tip, is about 3.5 inches. The long handle forces the operator to use all four fingers to operate the tool, which spreads the load evenly for comfort. The longer handle also uses the entire width of the palm in a bar of force. In contrast, a short handle presents a point of force which digs into the palm, compressing nerves and tendons and reducing blood flow.

After careful consideration and many customer recommendations, we decided to manufacture the shorter handled version. Here is why:

The average American’s palm is three inches wide. However, the average beader using our tools is a woman who has a smaller palm length. So, the 3.5 inch handles can be uncomfortable and hard to use for a designer who has small hands or is just plain used to using a shorter handled tool. Furthermore, we take our customers’ requests very seriously and kept hearing a call for length options.

Another factor to take into consideration when choosing a tool is what materials make up the handle?

The Soft Flex® Professional Tool Line features, as standard, a unique double-sheathed, ESD safe, cushioned grip. The inner sheath is a tough vinyl, ESD safe material which holds the leaf spring and the cushioned surface to the handle. The outer sheath, also ESD safe, provides a no-slip, cushioned surface for the designer’s hand. This is important because the slight compressibility of the cushion aids to distribute the pressure more effectively. It can even absorb sharp particles which could be imbedded in the hand. The Soft Flex® Company Tool Line has a cushion grip that is almost always considered by operators to be more comfortable than the hard plastic used by competitors.

Is the tool constructed to handle day-to-day wear and tear?

There are three things to look at with this question, the type of metal used to manufacture the tool, the type of joint that holds the pliers or cutters together and if there is a spring to add bounce when you are using the tool.

Our cutters and pliers are constructed of a high grade alloy steel. Steel is an alloy of iron, carbon and small proportions of other elements. Iron contains impurities in the form of silicon, phosphorus, sulfur, and manganese. Steel manufacturing involves the removal of these impurities and the addition of desirable alloying elements. An alloy is a substance with metallic properties that consists of a metal fused with one or more metals or nonmetals. They are used more extensively than pure metals because they can be engineered to have specific properties. For example, they may be poorer conductors of heat and electricity, harder, or more resistant to corrosion. The grade of the alloy steel depends upon the type of materials that they are mixing to create the pliers or cutters. Lower grades of alloy steel will knick or bend under pressure from daily wear and tear more easily. The high grade alloy steel that is used in our tools is made in the USA, insures structural integrity, top mechanical properties in tensile and yield strength and hardness.

There are a few different types of joints on the market. The tools that we offer are either manufactured with a box joint or a lap joint. In manufacturing a hand tool, there are always 2 sides that have to be connected at the joint. A box joint has one piece that slides inside the other and the joint is inside the tool. A lap joint has two equal sides that are bolted together and the bolt will show. The heart of a cutter is its joint, the area that joins the two halves of a tool. The Soft Flex® Professional Tool Line features a lap joint with a unique construction that includes four design elements: a nut that is strong, tough and hardened to resist high pressure, a washer that eliminates metal-to-metal wear and reduces friction, matched bearing rings that minimize metal-to-metal contact and a screw with fine-pitched threads detailed for the perfect factory setting.

There are a few different types of springs and sometimes there will be no spring at all. Usually only lower end tools come without a spring. Try to avoid tools without springs. They are hard to manage, for a beginner or an advanced jewelry designer. Our tools have either a double leaf spring or a gentle coil spring. The Soft Flex® Professional Tool Line features a double leaf spring.