I am trying to demagnetize this vise grips.
They became magnetized because of repeated times that small magnets on my work bench stuck to the vise grips.
I tried the method where you hit it with a hammer, but it does not work.
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Sign up to join this communityI am trying to demagnetize this vise grips.
They became magnetized because of repeated times that small magnets on my work bench stuck to the vise grips.
I tried the method where you hit it with a hammer, but it does not work.
There are a few ways to destroy a magnet.
Placing the piece within a coil of wire running AC while it is aligned cross-wise to the Earth's isogonic lines (East to West)
? I have used such a demag coil many times, and merely slowly pulling the magnetized object out of the demag coil (while paying no attention to how it was oriented) did the job.Are you certain that it needs to be so aligned to the earth's magnetic field? I never heard of this, do you have any references or anecdotal experiences?
Aug 8, 2019 at 3:35
Beyond the great answer by Stan, there are actually a few tools that'll demagnetize things. Googling "demagnetizer" seemed to bring up a lot of good options, with a lot of places to get them, including the standard online, department, and home improvement stores.
You can demagnetize the tips of the jaws, but not the whole tool with this one.
You rub the tool on the outside of this block to demagnetize, if I remember correctly.
You can also get an electromagnet to do the same. The below is a random example that happens to demagnetize watches, but there's others out there, including ones that do old-school CRT TV screens.
I was able to demagnetize the vise grips by heating it up for about 5 minutes using a propane torch.
My father did it many years ago at home with old soldering gun that he always had at home. It was very easy:
How it works: the rear part of the soldering gun creates a magnetic field of periodically changing polarity (it's under alternate current). As you slowly move the item away, it's magnetic field will be constantly oscillating with lesser and lesser amplitude, so it will basically converge to zero :-)
PS: the image is just for illustration (not our original soldering gun :))