Self locking pliers are sometimes essential, I used to carry a Crunch alongside my Rebar, but the pair of them make for a weighty carry.
One of my other hobbies is Slingshots and I know from that how much force can be built up in simple latex flat bands. So I cut a 15mm wide strip of 0.5mm Snipersling yellow and wrapped it round the handles. Pulling it to it's elastic limit on each wrap adds the force of each wrap to the previous and when it's gone round 20 or so times the force applied is tremendous.
Here I used it to grip a Remgrit jigsaw blade the gript was strong enough to saw through a small bolt.
So it's not a replacement for a Crunch or other locking pliers, but for the sake of carrying a strip of latex you can have the emergency functionality of a locking plier.
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