Hemostats are used in medicine for everything from holding cloths and barriers together to pinching off a blood vessel. You can buy a fistfull of them at the local gun show for next to nothing. They're really handy for all sorts of applications.
I replaced a pitch trim sync switch and a push to talk switch the other day on a King Air. Once the switches are out of the yoke, they need to be desoldered. Once the solder connection is broken, the switches tend to shrink back into the yoke like traumatized blood vessels, never to be seen again. The soloution is to clamp them off with a hemostat.
The hemostat holds the wires right there, and also acts as a heat sink for the soldering process. They act like little self-clamping needle nose pliers. They come in all sizes and lengths, and are amazingly useful.
