The third hand grabbers I have all put bare alligator clip ferrules in the adjustable sockets with a thumbscrew to secure them. Over time, that thumbscrew crunches the ferrule and makes the clip hard to adjust. This has become enough of an annoyance that I rummaged around in the brass tubing cutoffs to find some that fit into the ferrules:
Given the sorry state of the ferrules, they required quite a bit of squeezing and shaping until that tube fit inside, but after that they rounded up nicely.
I suppose I should solder the tubes in place, but …
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
Comments
4 responses to “Soldering Third Hand Alligator Clip Improvement”
…but what would you hold them with? :)
Ahem. One can never have too many third hands…
fourth hands, fifth, sixth, … :)
But seriously, I’d think solid rod would work a lot better than brass tube… the tube’s not that much stiffer than that what it’s reinforcing.
If only I had a bag of rod cutoffs…
In truth, the tubes stiffen that flimsy ferrule remarkably well, even though they’re not much thicker. The gap in the ferrule weakens it, so soldering the whole affair together would probably make it nearly as strong as a solid rod.