The John entity posted thusly:

# 572 I had one of those back in the fifties when I was a little
kid. It was a wire cutter but I used it for cutting anything i could
get in the blades. It worked good for trimming the apple tree we had in
the back yard, but it was really ment for stripping and cutting wire.
It had a lot of leverage since the cutting hole was close to the pivot.

You _thought_ it was a wire cutter, but...

http://miningartifacts.homestead.com...tingitems.html

Last picture at bottom of page.