Does anyone know what these grips are called?

Do you mean slip joint pliers? Sometimes called water pump pliers. But not really like a mole grip, and only a simple pivot, so not as much grip.

We had a whole selection of moley-type grips in the workshop for holding joints together for welding. Ones with longer sides for clamping sills, ones with two "C" sections for clamping around box sections ... there were quite a few others that never got used.

Better than a G clamp, as you can work them with one hand, while the other keeps the pieces aligned.

That's what it sounded like to me too. The other slightly clever thing about them is that they self-tighten (provided you turn them in the right direction of course).

I have a couple of pairs of waterpump pliers - some of the most useful things I have. The things I'm thinking of are a bit like that though. Mostly like Mole grips, but having a line of pivots at right-angles to the line of the handle, rather than just one. You can pull the moving handle back against the spring, and move the pivot to another recess to widen the jaws. The name stamped into the handle was French, but I can't remember it.

No I think they are different - I have seen these; indeed I was using some only last weekend. (they are very old- but still worked). They are just like mole grips but the pivot point can be moved like water pump pliers. Should be on the site where they are this afternoon so I will take a photo and post it if nothing comes up sooner.

Sounds clever. I think the Mole is one of the most useful of tools. I've heard of people using them as a temporary replacement for a lost motorcycle gear pedal. The lack of parallelism at wide openings is one of their few weaknesses.

I just bought a new pair, the others having 'disappeared'. The pair they replaced was bought from the same shop (in Brighton) over 50 years ago - it's now being run by the fifth generation of the family!

Found a similar (modern) set with image search. For some reason adding French to the search term made all the difference.

Yes, extremely similar to that, but the jaws were not at all claw-shaped. But many thanks for that.

I've used them as a gear pedal when I was a lad, but they are obviously a bit awkward to use, and they wreck the end of the shaft. Mind you, the splines on the pedal shaft never lasted long anyway.

I once temporarily replaced a throttle twist-grip with a choke lever which was clearly a very bad thing to do. Fortunately, the roads were much quieter then.

Yes, that's it. Although ISTR that the bottom jaw was a bit more substantial. But I could easily have imagined that.

There are several varigations in the 500A range (the 500 I linked to seems to be discontinued)

Great, thanks. I have to say that IMVHO, they worked rather well.

Water pump pliers

Dockerills?

Dan S. MacAbre used his keyboard to write :

I think they are what electricians used to use to tighten steel conduits and they called them 'dogs'. The proper name, I don't know, but made by 'mole'. Two parts sort of L shaped, one fitted into the other and the pivot point was a threaded thumb screw bolt. That was adjustable to enable the 'dogs' to be used on various conduit sizes.

When worn, they tended to slip and bit your fingers - a small pair of Stillsons was much safer and gripped rather better.

Tandy used to have those. I think they were just called parallel grip pliers. Rather odd name but I gues they were made by some other company. I wonder where mine went? That is going to annoy me now. Very handy for taps. Brian