dritz plier kit review

i frequently find myself attaching snaps to my craft projects.  even with practice, i found the old fashioned method of using a hammer and a spool a thread a little too unreliable results wise.  so then i turned to this plastic contraption, which i quickly realized wasn't better at all... and in fact was possibly worse.

one day i was at joann's clutching a 50% off coupon with nothing to buy until i stumbled upon this plier kit.  at half off,  i decided it would be interesting to give it a try.  the tool also can double as an eyelet attacher, and it came with a handful of eyelets and snaps.

that was over a year ago.  

the other day i decided it'd be wise to get a head start on christmas gifts, so i made a couple baby bibs and tested out the plier applicator... jaw... thing. 

doesn't it look like some sort of robot dinosaur? 

the directions from dritz are on the back of the package, and as usual i found the instructions rather lack luster.   i figured out that the rubber pieces included in the kit were supposed to go over the metal pieces  as you see above.  the idea is simple enough-- each snap is comprised of 4 pieces, and the tool is used to clamp together each half of the snap (so 2 + 2).  

i immediately liked how the rubber kept the pieces from moving around, so they'd be perfectly aligned. this can be a little trickier when done the most basic way with a spool of thread and hammer.

however, when i squeezed the clamp together, i realized the fundamental flaw with the applicator--the pressure is difficult to make even on all sides, so you run the risk of one side of the pieces not being fully attached to each other.  i wound up doing some extra hammering to secure them tightly.  i tested a handful of these snaps, and the results were unimpressive- about half were ruined.  

overall, i was pretty unimpressed. i may give it a couple more tries in the future or just go back to the most basic method.