Channel Locks

6"x4" oil on raymar panel • My camera is, factually, the devil. The background of this is actually dark green with a little blue, crimson, and a smidge of black, not black with some blue smeared into it. Ack!  •  Anyway… If entitled accurately, this painting would be labelled "Xcelite Pliers" (Xcelite is a tool brand we sold at our family store about 3,000 years ago) not "Channel Locks." But everybody calls them channel locks (based on the tool's mechanism and from the brand Channellocks, a company that is now going to sue me), just as people call paper copies Xeroxes or tissues Kleenex or wire cutters dykes (though I do not know who Mr. Dyke was). Channel locks are great go-to tools everyone should have handy. Their adjustable jaws are good for plumbing—indoor or outdoor—and just general torquing around the house and are exceptional at quieting down the kids. I have many pairs (of the tool, not the kids).
 
Posted September 27, 2013
sold • private collection goshen, in