How Hand Tools Are Made

Arguably, in the construction industry, we get to see some really cool things. Behind the scenes stuff that most folks would never see!! But, in this latest episode of Electrician U, Dustin has the opportunity to visit the KLEIN factory near Chicago and see the process of making Klein Tools! There are many tool manufacturers in the world. And for almost all of us tradesmen (and women), its just like Fords and Chevys! We are usually loyal to either one or the other! But to see the process of making tools from one of the Top Shelf manufacturers is an awesome opportunity! It doesn’t get much cooler than that!

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There are several different ways to manufacture a tool with the two most common being Casting and Forging. Casting is the process of pouring a liquid metal (also Super-Hot!!) into some type of mold to get it to the desired shape you want. Forging, on the other hand, is the process of taking a piece of metal, heating it up so it can be worked, and hammering (either by hand or with a machines help) repeatedly into the shape you are after. Klein tools uses forging to produce their tools as forged steel typically is stronger and less prone to breakage/wear resulting in a better product. I am not a metallurgist, but something to do with altering the grain flows within the steel itself! We wouldn’t expect any less from the Top Producer of Electrical Tools!
The first step in the process (for our tour of the plant, we witnessed the forging of Lineman’s pliers, but the general steps would be relatively the same for any plier type tool) is taking 20’ long pieces of high strength tube steel and cutting them into smaller pieces to be worked. The pieces are then fed onto an assembly line where they are fed thru an electrical induction heater to heat the material so it can be worked (and by hot, I mean Glowing Red Hot!!). The next several steps are where the magic actually happens! A series of huge machines hammers the steel into the desired rough shape and then splits the tool into the two individual parts. These forging machines are VERY BIG and smash the steel into its desired shape with TONS (literally) of force! An amazing sight to see, to say the very least!! And while this process is mostly automated (as the stamping action is performed by a machine doing the heavy lifting), it still relies on human interaction to complete the process. So, from a worker standpoint, it is the best of both worlds!!
An annealing process is next, where again, the steel is heated up to change the properties of it so it will result in a better tool in the end. The parts are then tumbled (in a process similar to sand blasting, but with steel shot) to remove the scaling from the steel during the heating and forging steps. A sort of pre machining process called Coining is one of the last things to be done before the individual parts are sent off for final machining and assembly. This Coining process is an additional machining step that Klein takes which results in the tolerances being much tighter than without this step (again, another reason why Klein is considered Top Shelf!!).
At this point in the forging process, we have two separate pieces of what we would recognize as a pair of Lineman’s Pliers. The separate pieces are now sent off to a different plant to be assembled into the final product. One of the awesome things about Klein Tools is that the entire journey of their tools is done here in the USA! American manufacturing is some of the best in the world and Klein Tools takes pride in its tools that are used to build America, right here in the states! Unlike many manufacturers that claim to be Made in the USA, by doing a single part of it, but the WHOLE process!
We hope this has been an insightful look into the awesome process of forging a pair of Klein pliers. We do have other videos available that show the finish machining/assembly process as well as other Klein Tool manufacturing. Make sure to check those out!! Is there something you would like to see in future videos? Please leave your thoughts in the comment section and let us know! Please continue to follow Dustin and Electrician U as we are constantly adding new content to help our followers learn all about this awesome trade we are in!!