Have you ever stumbled across a tool and then wondered how you ever got along without it before?
I have! Just recently, too!
Hemostats (haemostat) -- "a surgical instrument that stops bleeding by clamping the blood vessel"
The jagged TEETH on these things, though, make me thing that the version I got would make a pretty unpleasant blood vessel clamp.
However, for holding wire, tiny jewelry bits, hose, or really anything, they are excellent! Mostly I use them for holding tiny bits of wire as I manipulate the in-bead LEDs that I am building up these days.
I can't hold the wire by HAND since soldering makes my fingertips burn, and frankly, my fingers are just too big to get into that small space.
I could hold the wire with tweezers (my previous solution), but I keep dropping stuff.
I could use squeeze-to-open tweezers, but those don't hold all THAT well and I never could find a set I liked.
The hemostat, however, especially the one with the curved tip, clamps down on the wire like a hungry piranha and does not let go... until you ask it nicely. A piranha with manners.
Now I'm using (and abusing) my 3 hemostats with abandon, wondering how I ever survived without them.